The cognitive basis of language: how children learn language.

The nature vs. nurture debate: behaviorism or an innate capacity for

acquisition?

How do children develop?What is Language?How do children acquire Language?

3 domains occurs in development

Language is code that we learn to use in order to communicate ideas and express our wants and needs. Reading, writing, speaking, and some gesture system are all forms of language

Language is the systematic and conventional use of sounds (or signs or written symbols) for the purpose of communication or self-expression

Speech is the spoken form of language

Children learn language and speech by listening to the language around them and practicing what they hear. In this way, they figure out the rules of the language code. It is not learned all at once but in stages over time.

Harvey Daniels in “Nine Ideas About Language” says:

“ Children learn their native language swiftly, efficiently, and largely

without instruction

There are numerous theories about language acquisition, and they include 2 main schools

of thought

These theorists propose that

we are pre-wired forlanguage learning. It

is partof our human “nature

These theorists propose

that language is anentirely learned

behavior

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

INNATE

NATIVIST

LEARNED

EMPIRICIST

Knowledge originates in human nature

Plato and KantChomsky

Language is innate, and that our brains contain a dedicated special purpose learning device that has evolved for language alone

Language Acquisition Device (LAD)Receive primary linguistic input in the form of sentences of the language heard by the child,

and produces, as output, grammatical sentences of the language

Children are not predisposed to learn any particular language; all are born with the same facility and will develop as native speakers of

the language of the community into which they are born. The child has innate knowledge of

universal principles that govern the structure of language

UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR

Language is essentially the same experience for all human beings, no matter what

language they speak, where they are or how they interact with their model

Some forms of languages is common to almost all human beings.

Language is an ability human process, not by virtue of specific learning or teaching,

but by virtue of their humaness

Behaviorism & associationism Knowledge originates in the

environment, and comes in through the senses

Children are ‘conditioned” to learn language by a stimulus-response pattern

Aristotle Skinner

There are no limits to what a human being can become, given time, opportunity and the application of very general laws of learning

Constructivist & EmergentistRecognizes that many factors

influence language developmentOutcomes can arise for reasons that

are not obvious or predictable from any of the individual inputs to the problem

There are three well known theories:

1.Development cognitive theory (Jean Piaget)

2.Information processing model3.Social interaction (Lev Vgotsky)

Children construct their own knowledge in response to their experiences

Children learn many things on their own without the intervention of older children or adults

Children are intrinsically motivated to learn and do not need rewards from adults to motivate learning

Four major development stages in children that describe how a child learns

How the brain processes information and draws comparisons between the brain and a computer

Social interaction plays an important role in the learning process

Zone of Proximal Development describes the differences between what a child will do on his/her own or with guidance