{"id":470,"date":"2023-03-02T20:17:07","date_gmt":"2023-03-02T20:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/content.one.lumenlearning.com\/introductiontopsychology\/chapter\/learn-it-language-development\/"},"modified":"2023-08-24T04:33:28","modified_gmt":"2023-08-24T04:33:28","slug":"learn-it-language-development","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/content.one.lumenlearning.com\/introductiontopsychology\/chapter\/learn-it-language-development\/","title":{"raw":"Language: Learn It 3\u2014Language Development","rendered":"Language: Learn It 3\u2014Language Development"},"content":{"raw":"

Language Development<\/h2>\r\nGiven the remarkable complexity of a language, one might expect that mastering a language would be an especially arduous task; indeed, for those of us trying to learn a second language as adults, this might seem to be true. However, young children master language very quickly with relative ease. B. F. Skinner (1957) proposed that language is learned through reinforcement. He\u00a0thought that we learn language in response to reinforcement<\/strong>, such as through parental approval or through being understood. For example, when a two-year-old child asks for juice, he might say, \u201cme juice,\u201d to which his mother might respond by giving him a cup of apple juice.\r\n\r\nNoam Chomsky (1965) criticized this behaviorist approach, asserting instead that the mechanisms underlying language acquisition are biologically determined. The use of language develops in the absence of formal instruction and appears to follow a very similar pattern in children from vastly different cultures and backgrounds. It would seem, therefore, that we are born with a biological predisposition to acquire a language (Chomsky, 1965; Fern\u00e1ndez & Cairns, 2011). Moreover, it appears that there is a critical period for language acquisition, such that this proficiency at acquiring language is maximal early in life; generally, as people age, the ease with which they acquire and master new languages diminishes (Johnson & Newport, 1989; Lenneberg, 1967; Singleton, 1995).\u00a0Noam Chomsky called this innate capacity to learn language a language acquisition device (LAD). So, which researcher is correct? Both Chomsky and Skinner are right. Remember that we are a product of both nature and nurture. Researchers now believe that language acquisition is partially inborn and partially learned through our interactions with our linguistic environment (Gleitman & Newport, 1995; Stork & Widdowson, 1974).\r\n\r\nChildren begin to learn about language from a very early age (Table 1). In fact, it appears that this is occurring even before we are born. Newborns show preference for their mother\u2019s voice and appear to be able to discriminate between the language spoken by their mother and other languages. Babies are also attuned to the languages being used around them and show preferences for videos of faces that are moving in synchrony with the audio of spoken language versus videos that do not synchronize with the audio (Blossom & Morgan, 2006; Pickens, 1994; Spelke & Cortelyou, 1981).\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Table 1. Stages of Language and Communication Development<\/caption>\r\n
Stage<\/th>\r\nAge<\/th>\r\nDevelopmental Language and Communication<\/th>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<\/thead>\r\n
1<\/td>\r\n0\u20133 months<\/td>\r\nReflexive communication<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
2<\/td>\r\n3\u20138 months<\/td>\r\nReflexive communication; interest in others<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
3<\/td>\r\n8\u201313 months<\/td>\r\nIntentional communication; sociability<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
4<\/td>\r\n12\u201318 months<\/td>\r\nFirst words<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
5<\/td>\r\n18\u201324 months<\/td>\r\nSimple sentences of two words<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
6<\/td>\r\n2\u20133 years<\/td>\r\nSentences of three or more words<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
7<\/td>\r\n3\u20135 years<\/td>\r\nComplex sentences; has conversations<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<\/tbody>\r\n<\/table>\r\n
\r\n

The Case of Genie<\/h3>\r\nIn the fall of 1970, a social worker in the Los Angeles area found a 13-year-old girl who was being raised in extremely neglectful and abusive conditions. The girl, who came to be known as Genie, had lived most of her life tied to a potty chair or confined to a crib in a small room that was kept closed with the curtains drawn. For a little over a decade, Genie had virtually no social interaction and no access to the outside world. As a result of these conditions, Genie was unable to stand up, chew solid food, or speak (Fromkin, Krashen, Curtiss, Rigler, & Rigler, 1974; Rymer, 1993). The police took Genie into protective custody.\r\n\r\nGenie\u2019s abilities improved dramatically following her removal from her abusive environment, and early on, it appeared she was acquiring language\u2014much later than would be predicted by critical period hypotheses that had been posited at the time (Fromkin et al., 1974). Genie managed to amass an impressive vocabulary in a relatively short amount of time. However, she never developed a mastery of the grammatical aspects of language (Curtiss, 1981). Perhaps being deprived of the opportunity to learn language during a critical period impeded Genie\u2019s ability to fully acquire and use language.\r\n\r\n<\/section><\/div>\r\nYou may recall that each language has its own set of phonemes<\/strong> that are used to generate morphemes<\/strong>, words, and so on. Babies can discriminate among the sounds that make up a language (for example, they can tell the difference between the \u201cs\u201d in vision and the \u201css\u201d in fission); early on, they can differentiate between the sounds of all human languages, even those that do not occur in the languages that are used in their environments. However, by the time they are about 1 year old, they can only discriminate among those phonemes that are used in the language or languages in their environments (Jensen, 2011; Werker & Lalonde, 1988; Werker & Tees, 1984).\r\n\r\n
Watch this video about infant speech discrimination<\/a> to learn more about how babies lose the ability to discriminate among all possible human phonemes as they age. You can view the transcript for \u201cInfant Speech Discrimination\u201d here (opens in new window).<\/span><\/a>\r\n\r\n<\/section>Children communicate information through gesturing long before they speak, and there is some evidence that gesture usage predicts subsequent language development (Iverson & Goldin-Meadow, 2005). In terms of producing spoken language, babies begin to coo almost immediately. Cooing is a one-syllable combination of a consonant and a vowel sound (e.g., coo or ba). Interestingly, babies replicate sounds from their own languages. A baby whose parents speak French will coo in a different tone than a baby whose parents speak Spanish or Urdu. After cooing, the baby starts to babble. Babbling begins with repeating a syllable, such as ma-ma, da-da, or ba-ba. During this time, it is unlikely that the babies are trying to communicate; they are just as likely to babble when they are alone as when they are with their caregivers (Fern\u00e1ndez & Cairns, 2011). Interestingly, babies who are raised in environments in which sign language is used will also begin to show babbling in the gestures of their hands during this stage (Petitto, Holowka, Sergio, Levy, & Ostry, 2004).\r\n\r\nGenerally, a child\u2019s first word is uttered sometime between the ages of 1 year to 18 months, and for the next few months, the child will remain in the \u201cone word\u201d stage of language development. During this time, children know a number of words, but they only produce one-word utterances. The child\u2019s early vocabulary is limited to familiar objects or events, often nouns. Although children in this stage only make one-word utterances, these words often carry larger meaning (Fern\u00e1ndez & Cairns, 2011). So, for example, a child saying \u201ccookie\u201d could be identifying a cookie or asking for a cookie.\r\n\r\nIn addition, children begin to demonstrate a clear understanding of the specific rules that apply to their language(s). Even the mistakes that children sometimes make provide evidence of just how much they understand about those rules. This is sometimes seen in the form of overgeneralization<\/strong>. In this context, overgeneralization refers to an extension of a language rule to an exception to the rule. For example, in English, it is usually the case that an \u201cs\u201d is added to the end of a word to indicate plurality. For example, we speak of one dog versus two dogs. Young children will overgeneralize this rule to cases that are exceptions to the \u201cadd an s to the end of the word\u201d rule and say things like \u201cthose two gooses\u201d or \u201cthree mouses.\u201d Clearly, the rules of the language are understood, even if the exceptions to the rules are still being learned (Moskowitz, 1978).\r\n\r\nAs a child\u2019s lexicon grows, they begin to utter simple sentences and acquire new vocabulary at a very rapid pace.\u00a0At about 2 years old, a toddler uses between 50 and 200 words; by 3 years old they have a vocabulary of up to 1,000 words and can speak in sentences. During the early childhood years, children's vocabulary increases at a rapid pace. This is sometimes referred to as the \u201cvocabulary spurt\u201d and has been claimed to involve an expansion in vocabulary at a rate of 10\u201320 new words per week. Recent research may indicate that while some children experience these spurts, it is far from universal (as discussed in Ganger & Brent, 2004). It has been estimated that, 5-year-olds understand about 6,000 words, speak 2,000 words, and can define words and question their meanings. They can rhyme and name the days of the week. Seven-year-olds speak fluently and use slang and clich\u00e9s (Stork & Widdowson, 1974).\r\n\r\n
[ohm2_question height=\"300\"]4201[\/ohm2_question]<\/section>","rendered":"

Language Development<\/h2>\n

Given the remarkable complexity of a language, one might expect that mastering a language would be an especially arduous task; indeed, for those of us trying to learn a second language as adults, this might seem to be true. However, young children master language very quickly with relative ease. B. F. Skinner (1957) proposed that language is learned through reinforcement. He\u00a0thought that we learn language in response to reinforcement<\/strong>, such as through parental approval or through being understood. For example, when a two-year-old child asks for juice, he might say, \u201cme juice,\u201d to which his mother might respond by giving him a cup of apple juice.<\/p>\n

Noam Chomsky (1965) criticized this behaviorist approach, asserting instead that the mechanisms underlying language acquisition are biologically determined. The use of language develops in the absence of formal instruction and appears to follow a very similar pattern in children from vastly different cultures and backgrounds. It would seem, therefore, that we are born with a biological predisposition to acquire a language (Chomsky, 1965; Fern\u00e1ndez & Cairns, 2011). Moreover, it appears that there is a critical period for language acquisition, such that this proficiency at acquiring language is maximal early in life; generally, as people age, the ease with which they acquire and master new languages diminishes (Johnson & Newport, 1989; Lenneberg, 1967; Singleton, 1995).\u00a0Noam Chomsky called this innate capacity to learn language a language acquisition device (LAD). So, which researcher is correct? Both Chomsky and Skinner are right. Remember that we are a product of both nature and nurture. Researchers now believe that language acquisition is partially inborn and partially learned through our interactions with our linguistic environment (Gleitman & Newport, 1995; Stork & Widdowson, 1974).<\/p>\n

Children begin to learn about language from a very early age (Table 1). In fact, it appears that this is occurring even before we are born. Newborns show preference for their mother\u2019s voice and appear to be able to discriminate between the language spoken by their mother and other languages. Babies are also attuned to the languages being used around them and show preferences for videos of faces that are moving in synchrony with the audio of spoken language versus videos that do not synchronize with the audio (Blossom & Morgan, 2006; Pickens, 1994; Spelke & Cortelyou, 1981).<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Table 1. Stages of Language and Communication Development<\/caption>\n
Stage<\/th>\nAge<\/th>\nDevelopmental Language and Communication<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
1<\/td>\n0\u20133 months<\/td>\nReflexive communication<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2<\/td>\n3\u20138 months<\/td>\nReflexive communication; interest in others<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
3<\/td>\n8\u201313 months<\/td>\nIntentional communication; sociability<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
4<\/td>\n12\u201318 months<\/td>\nFirst words<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
5<\/td>\n18\u201324 months<\/td>\nSimple sentences of two words<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
6<\/td>\n2\u20133 years<\/td>\nSentences of three or more words<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
7<\/td>\n3\u20135 years<\/td>\nComplex sentences; has conversations<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\n
\n

The Case of Genie<\/h3>\n

In the fall of 1970, a social worker in the Los Angeles area found a 13-year-old girl who was being raised in extremely neglectful and abusive conditions. The girl, who came to be known as Genie, had lived most of her life tied to a potty chair or confined to a crib in a small room that was kept closed with the curtains drawn. For a little over a decade, Genie had virtually no social interaction and no access to the outside world. As a result of these conditions, Genie was unable to stand up, chew solid food, or speak (Fromkin, Krashen, Curtiss, Rigler, & Rigler, 1974; Rymer, 1993). The police took Genie into protective custody.<\/p>\n

Genie\u2019s abilities improved dramatically following her removal from her abusive environment, and early on, it appeared she was acquiring language\u2014much later than would be predicted by critical period hypotheses that had been posited at the time (Fromkin et al., 1974). Genie managed to amass an impressive vocabulary in a relatively short amount of time. However, she never developed a mastery of the grammatical aspects of language (Curtiss, 1981). Perhaps being deprived of the opportunity to learn language during a critical period impeded Genie\u2019s ability to fully acquire and use language.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

You may recall that each language has its own set of phonemes<\/strong> that are used to generate morphemes<\/strong>, words, and so on. Babies can discriminate among the sounds that make up a language (for example, they can tell the difference between the \u201cs\u201d in vision and the \u201css\u201d in fission); early on, they can differentiate between the sounds of all human languages, even those that do not occur in the languages that are used in their environments. However, by the time they are about 1 year old, they can only discriminate among those phonemes that are used in the language or languages in their environments (Jensen, 2011; Werker & Lalonde, 1988; Werker & Tees, 1984).<\/p>\n

Watch this video about infant speech discrimination<\/a> to learn more about how babies lose the ability to discriminate among all possible human phonemes as they age. You can view the transcript for \u201cInfant Speech Discrimination\u201d here (opens in new window).<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n

Children communicate information through gesturing long before they speak, and there is some evidence that gesture usage predicts subsequent language development (Iverson & Goldin-Meadow, 2005). In terms of producing spoken language, babies begin to coo almost immediately. Cooing is a one-syllable combination of a consonant and a vowel sound (e.g., coo or ba). Interestingly, babies replicate sounds from their own languages. A baby whose parents speak French will coo in a different tone than a baby whose parents speak Spanish or Urdu. After cooing, the baby starts to babble. Babbling begins with repeating a syllable, such as ma-ma, da-da, or ba-ba. During this time, it is unlikely that the babies are trying to communicate; they are just as likely to babble when they are alone as when they are with their caregivers (Fern\u00e1ndez & Cairns, 2011). Interestingly, babies who are raised in environments in which sign language is used will also begin to show babbling in the gestures of their hands during this stage (Petitto, Holowka, Sergio, Levy, & Ostry, 2004).<\/p>\n

Generally, a child\u2019s first word is uttered sometime between the ages of 1 year to 18 months, and for the next few months, the child will remain in the \u201cone word\u201d stage of language development. During this time, children know a number of words, but they only produce one-word utterances. The child\u2019s early vocabulary is limited to familiar objects or events, often nouns. Although children in this stage only make one-word utterances, these words often carry larger meaning (Fern\u00e1ndez & Cairns, 2011). So, for example, a child saying \u201ccookie\u201d could be identifying a cookie or asking for a cookie.<\/p>\n

In addition, children begin to demonstrate a clear understanding of the specific rules that apply to their language(s). Even the mistakes that children sometimes make provide evidence of just how much they understand about those rules. This is sometimes seen in the form of overgeneralization<\/strong>. In this context, overgeneralization refers to an extension of a language rule to an exception to the rule. For example, in English, it is usually the case that an \u201cs\u201d is added to the end of a word to indicate plurality. For example, we speak of one dog versus two dogs. Young children will overgeneralize this rule to cases that are exceptions to the \u201cadd an s to the end of the word\u201d rule and say things like \u201cthose two gooses\u201d or \u201cthree mouses.\u201d Clearly, the rules of the language are understood, even if the exceptions to the rules are still being learned (Moskowitz, 1978).<\/p>\n

As a child\u2019s lexicon grows, they begin to utter simple sentences and acquire new vocabulary at a very rapid pace.\u00a0At about 2 years old, a toddler uses between 50 and 200 words; by 3 years old they have a vocabulary of up to 1,000 words and can speak in sentences. During the early childhood years, children’s vocabulary increases at a rapid pace. This is sometimes referred to as the \u201cvocabulary spurt\u201d and has been claimed to involve an expansion in vocabulary at a rate of 10\u201320 new words per week. Recent research may indicate that while some children experience these spurts, it is far from universal (as discussed in Ganger & Brent, 2004). It has been estimated that, 5-year-olds understand about 6,000 words, speak 2,000 words, and can define words and question their meanings. They can rhyme and name the days of the week. Seven-year-olds speak fluently and use slang and clich\u00e9s (Stork & Widdowson, 1974).<\/p>\n