How do infants come to understand and produce their first words?

AS and A Level English

Andrea K Lait V0049493

ED209: CHILD DEVELOPMENT

TMA 05

Option 2

How do infants come to understand and produce their first words?

The development of language is one of a child’s most natural and impressive undertakings. Our communication skills set us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom, and they’re also what bring us together with each other. Babies are born without language, but all children learn the rules of language fairly early on and without formal teaching, how does this happen? In the first years of life, most children learn speech and language, the uniquely human skills they will use to communicate with other people. The developments of speech and language skills are two different, yet linked processes. Speech is producing the sounds that make up words the physical act of talking. Language is the understanding of the words and sounds we hear and also a means of expressing ourselves though the use of both words and gestures. There are many theories regarding language development in human beings. Language acquisition theories are centred on the nature and nurture discussion. The pace at which children learn language has caused many to believe that language must be in-built into the brain. Others believe that language is learned from all around us. My essay will give and account of the fundamental stages of language development/acquisition in children, and consider the two theories of nativism and cognitive in relation to language attainment.

Andrea K Lait V0049493

Initial perception of speech sounds develops even before the child is born. Researchers (Richards et al., 1992) have discovered that unborn babies can hear while still in the womb and experiments shown that the heart rate will decrease at the sound of their mother’s voice (DeCasper and Spence, 1986). It is therefore reasonable to assume that infants begin to learn language before the child has learned to manipulate his own speech. Mehler et al. 1994 has shown that newborn infants can also differentiate the language they have heard in the womb from different languages. Experiments carried out with babies have demonstrated that they prefer their native language. The speech that babies hear while still in the womb biases their later language perception; newborns prefer their own mothers’ voice, (Mehler and Dupoux, 1994) their native language, and perhaps even familiar voices from television shows, and all because of a few weeks of muffled language experience in the womb. But while pre-natal experience is concerned with the more universal musical quality of speech, the pitch intonation and stress patterns of the mother’s voice have a greater effect of the child after birth. Now every vowel and consonant is crucial to the eventual understanding and production of language. By approximately 4 to 6months babies start to make many more sounds. At this stage prosodic cues are used to identify word boundaries. This is what enables infants to separate word beginnings and ends and also different voices and languages. Syllable stress is a prosodic cue that is used; English words have most stress on the first syllable also a concept known as transitional probability is used, this being the probability of certain syllables appearing together. A study by Johnson and Jusczyk (2001) showed that infants spent more time listening to “part-words” less familiar sounds thus reiterating the preference children have for novel experiences. Before actually speaking words they go through a period of babbling, in which they are practicing the sounds, and rhythms of language. Babbling take place in stages these being cooing at 3 months, vocal play at 4 months recognizable syllables at 6 months, reduplicated babbling at 8 months, sounds such as ma-ma, da-da, and at 8 months variegated babbling when different sounds follow each other. At this stage they learn how moving their tongue and lips will change the sound they make, and eventually use this to react to stimuli around them and use the sound they make to express needs and wants.

Andrea K Lait V0049493

Development of the vocal tract takes place and changes in the anatomy of the vocal tract aid the child to produce more complicated sounds thus by 9 – 12 months most children can produce most of the vowels and nearly all consonant sounds in the language. This is helped by the amount of attention adult’s pay to the child during this time. Parents who imitate and respond to their infant’ vocalisations are in fact helping the young child to understand the words they are using. Before the child speaks themselves this interaction ...

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Andrea K Lait V0049493

Development of the vocal tract takes place and changes in the anatomy of the vocal tract aid the child to produce more complicated sounds thus by 9 – 12 months most children can produce most of the vowels and nearly all consonant sounds in the language. This is helped by the amount of attention adult’s pay to the child during this time. Parents who imitate and respond to their infant’ vocalisations are in fact helping the young child to understand the words they are using. Before the child speaks themselves this interaction helps them to build up a formation of categories, Children use the mental structures they have about objects to link with similar objects, this is when children will often ‘over-generalize and use the same word for all subjects within a certain category. For example using the word ‘doggy’ for all small animals with four legs, suggest they have established a categorical cue of an object with four legs. Bruner (1975, 1983) points out that children are helped to form categories, in that the language they encounter at this stage is very much in a social context and parents are constantly talking about objects activities around the child, so enabling the child to link what is being said with an object or event that is happening. Baldwin (1995) studied the learning of new words by examining the implication of pointing which infants carried out with objects while interacting with adults and found that they spent longer looking at objects that adults were looking at as well. Thus, reinforcing the idea about social context assisting language acquisition.

The above discussion as to how language develops in infants and the speed at which it progresses has prompted many theorists to believe that language must be in build into the brain, and that we are born with this in built device which predisposes us to acquire language. Children’s ability to pick up language so rapidly and to continue to develop and communicate effectively in their environment suggests that both nature and nurture play an important role for language development and help to mature and strengthen an infant’s language skills. Language development also follows a similar pattern across cultures predisposes the probability that it is somehow ´wired in’ to the human brain.

Andrea K Lait V0049493

Noam Chomsky (1965) is undoubtedly associated with the nativist approach to language acquisition, and his views have influenced many psychologists studying language. He claimed that a child could not learn everything about language from the environment alone, but that we are all born with genetically determined language ability. Infants are born with possession of a universal grammar that determines possible language rules and language structures. He also believed that language could not be dependent on intelligence or experience as put forward by Skinner (1957) in his imitation and reinforcement theory, as language acquisition occurs at a time when the infant is incapable of complex cognitions. Chomsky believed that children learn language as quickly as they do because they are biologically equipped to do so and have an innate mechanism, which is programmed to recognise grammatical structure. The thinking behind Chomsky’s theories lie in his arguments that children are exposed to very little in the way of correct language spoken around them by carers etc. Generally there are interruptions, people change what they are going to say, make slips of the tongue etc, yet children still manage to learn their complicated language. Chomsky’s ideas although very plausible do have certain flaws in that they seem to underestimate the role played by the environment in language acquisition and the social context in which language learning takes place, it also defines language mainly in terms of the acquisition of grammatical competence rather than look at the practical aspects of language.

Pinker (1994) supports the idea that language is indeed an innate capacity as argues that children who grow up in a community where there is a lack of non-grammatical communication (pidgin-speaking society) finish off speaking a grammatical language (Creole). This as Pinker points out reveals the there is a reinvention of language, because of the inbuilt innate nature to create a language. Pinker also suggests that there are specific areas of the brain dedicated to language. This is related to the area of cognitive neuroscience in which studies have shown that in certain cases where damage to the cortex has occurred which control the language processing; eventually over a course of time other unharmed areas of the cortex take over the function of the damaged area. (Reilly et al., 1998) Pinker as said that “children cannot help but develop language”, a reference to the study by Reilly signifying that the child’s brain is self-organising and malleable enough to get around the problem and use other unaffected areas.

Andrea K Lait V0049493

According to Piaget however he saw language as dependent on other cognitive and perceptual processes and that language follow the stages of cognitive development. His view of the growth of language is that it occurs through the construction of knowledge by the child through various experiences. Children then use their mental schema to interpret the experience and incorporate it within their mental structure. Knowledge is something that is gained from one’s own experience and active engagement is necessary for cognitive growth to occur. Children only learn those languages to which they are exposed, and to ensure the learning of the rules of those languages, the infant must be taught within their own environment. Harris et al 1988 conducted a study to find out the degree of word learning that occurred from the experience the child had with their mothers, and found that there was a close similarity between the child’s first words ant those that had been used by the mother. A later study conducted with children with slower language development showed that in general these mothers did not use specific object names but used general names such as “one” or “thing” to refer to an object. This illustrates the importance of maternal speech and interaction with the child in order to stimulate cognitive development and aid early language development.

In conclusion it is apparent that children in all cultures follow the same progression when learning their native language. Innate theories argue that it is an inbuilt system and its acquisition is independent of social and cognitive development. Cognitive theories argue for the role of experience, and child directed learning with regards speech and general cognitive development. The environment obviously has an affect in shaping language development but there must be an innate beginning at which the processing starts. The nature/nurture debate here is whether genes or environment play the initial role in language acquisition. It appears that both have a significant contribution to a child’s cognitive/language development, enabling infants to understand and produce their first words at the speed and with the efficiency as they do, and continuing research and investigation will help to establish which theory is the more convincing within the sphere of language development.

1856 Words

Andrea K Lait V0049493

References

Richards et al., (1992) cited in Margaret Harris ( 2004) Chapter 2 First Words p.65. in Cognitive and Language Development in Children (2004) ed John Oates and Andrew Grayson. Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes.

DeCasper and Spence, (1986) ‘Prenatal maternal speech influences newborns’ perception of speech sounds’, cited in Margaret Harris (2004) Chapter 2 First Words p. 66 in Cognitive and Language Development in Children (2004) ed John Oates and Andrew Grayson. Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes.

Mehler et al (1994) cited in Margaret Harris (2004) Chapter 2 First Words p.67 in Cognitive and Language Development in Children (2004) ed John Oates and Andrew Grayson. Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes.

Mehler and Dupoux (1994) What Infants Know, Oxford, Blackwall, cited in Margaret Harris (2004) Chapter 2 First Words, Cognitive and Language Development in Children (2004) ed John Oates and Andrew Grayson. Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes.

Johnson and Jusczyk (2001) ‘Word segmentation by 8 –month-olds; when speech cues count for more than statistics’. Journal of Memory and Language Vol44 pp 548 –67, cited in Margaret Harris (2004) Chapter 2 First Words, p 70 – 71, Cognitive and language Development in Children (2004) ed John Oates and Andrew Grayson. Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes.

Andrea K Lait V0049493

Bruner (1975, 1983) cited in Margaret Harris (2004) Chapter 2, First Words, p 73 – 74 , Cognitive and Language Development in Children (2004) ed John Oates and Andrew Grayson. Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes.

Baldwin (1995) ‘Understanding the link between joint attention and language’, in Moore, C. and Dunham, P. J. cited in Margaret Harris (2004) Chapter 2, First Words, p 77, Cognitive and Language Development in Children (2004) ed John Oates and Andrew Grayson. Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes.

Noam Chomsky (1965) Psychology for A2 Level, ed Mike Cardwell, Liz Clark and Clair Meldrum, cited in Chapter 17 Language and Thought p 231 –234, Collins 2001.

Skinner ( 1957) Psychology for A2 Level, ed Mike Cardwell, Liz Clark and Clair Meldurm, cited in Chapter 17 Language and Thought p 219, Collins 2001.

Pinker (1994) The Language Instinct; the new science of language and mind, London, Penquin, cited in Denis Mareschal, Mark H Johnson and Andrew Grayson (2004) Chapter 3, Brain and cognitive development, p 135 – 138, Cognitive and Language Development in Children (2004) ed John Oates and Andrew Grayson. Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes.

Reilly et al., (1998) cited in Denis Mareschal, Mark H Hohnson and Andew Grayson (2004) Chapter 3, Brain and cognitive development, p 140 – 142, Cognitive and language Development in Children (2004) ed John Oates and Andrew Grayson. Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes.

Harris et al ( 1988) ‘Journal of Child Language, vol. 15 pp 77 – 94, cited in Margaret Harris, Chapter 2, First Words, pp 89 – 90 , Cognitive and language Development in Children, ed John Oates and Andrew Grayson, 2004. Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes.