WUG test

Jean Berko's Zib Test

What do you think she was trying to show with her experiment? Why did she choose imaginary words?

I think that she was trying to show the difference between an adult and child's response to a new word. Throughout the test it showed that an adult knew how to change a word when there was more then one or what a baby one was. For example the adult learnt the new word 'wug' and instinctively knew from experience that a baby 'wug' was called a 'wugette' which then shows that this adult was likely to have gone threw all of the grammatical development stages successfully, which for a child how has not yet progressed through all of the grammatical development they will not be able to understand what a 'wugette', or a 'wuggy' is. Similarly a new word was introduced which was 'zib'. Jean Berko the experimenter said 'this man is zibbing, so what is he called?' the adult participant rightly said 'zibber' like a man is baking therefore he is a baker. Jean Berko then expressed that a child would be more likely to call the 'zibber' a 'zib man'. This is showing that for those children who have not progress threw all the stages of development yet then they arent likely to be able to define what a 'wugette' or a 'zibber' is. 

Bruner

Bruner 



Social Interactionist theory is t of language development emphasizing social interactions between the child who is developing language and an adult who is linguistically knowledgeable. 

Bruner focused on three areas; the cognitive theory of Jean Piaget, the information processing model of Brian MacWhinney and Elizabeth Bates and the social interactionist approach of Lev Vygotsky. Initially the research was descriptive in an attempt to describe the language development but more recently researchers have attempted to explain more varieties of acqusistion in which the learner learns to socialise towards other people. 

Vygotsky laid the foundations for interactionists view of language acqusistion. According to Vygotsky it plays an important role in learning language he called this the zone of proximal development (ZPD) where the learners construct the new language through social interactions. In contrast the approach to child langauge it emphasizes that language is learned through stimulus response pattern but social interactionist say the emphasis is towards social stimulus to develop child language. 

Essentially social interactionists base an emphasis on the way children interact with adults, and they way the responde to things such as 'good morning'. They believe it is very important to socialise with people otherwise, manners and responses wont be as developed as they have never experienced that type of thing.

Child Language Acquisition

Stage 1  - 15 months

While a child is around 15 months they're in the holophrastic stage which occurs between 12 and 18 months. In this stage a child develops the ability to make a phrase out of one word. This is seen in the example 'allgone' which could act as both a question and a statement to those who understand the child, like the parents and family. This is also seen in the example of 'isee' a parent would understand this as a child wanting to touch something such as 'let me see', not as an adult would understand 'i see' from another adult which would be 'i understand'

20 months

At the age of 20 months the child is in the later stages of the holophrastic stage is this stage can often continue long then 18 months. The child may also begin to show evidence the two word stage in which they will being to put two words together to form a phrase. This is seen in the example of  'more juice' in which a child is asking 'can i have some more juice?' however a parents and close family would understand this from 'more juice'. similarly it is seen when a child may state 'no ball' this could either mean 'i don't want that ball' or it could mean 'I've lost my ball' this meaning would only be clear if you had the context of the conversation.

Stage 2 - 28 months

During the age of 28 months the child has just entered the telegraphic stage of communication, this is when the child will begin to use grammar words and understanding how to use tense in their speech. This is seen when a child uses the verb 'came' this is used in the sentence 'Teddy's hat came off' which is showing their understanding that its happen in the past and they're then informing their parent or family of the situation. Furthermore the child will also begin to use more complex sentence but only gradually and with this will come questions in which they are attempting to seek information.

Stage 3 - 36 months

At 36 months the child is beginning to come to the end of the telegraphic stage because this stage typically ends at around 36 months, but some children this may vary. The child will also begin to enter the post telegraphic stage in which they then begin to use far more advance sentence structures, complex and compound sentences will be evident regularly when then talk. This is seen through sentences such as 'Luke hit me, he did', with this statement there is no need for interpretation, this child is very clearly expressing what has happened in this situation, but are not yet able to produce any particular complex sentence, but are just about able to make sense of complex sentences.

Stage 4 - 40 months

40 months is the age in which most children will have reached the end of the telegraphic stage and have now solidly entered the post telegraphic stage which is mostly progress on top of the telegraphic stage in which they will now be able to explain any circumstances and also have the ability to gain information by asking more complex questions then they would have otherwise been able to during the telegraphic stage. From the post telegraphic stage the child will go on to learn more complex vocabulary and also gain a more in depth understanding of what they're saying to someone.

Piaget

How does Piaget's theory on linguistic development support the type and order of words a child uses? 

Piaget's theory supports language development that they go through at different stages in their life from a very young age continuing on to young teenager, all four stages happen at a similar time for most children. The first stage is called sensorimotor stage. This stage last until the child is about two years old, and is mostly emphasised on movement. Small babies aren't yet away that they have control over their own bodies, they are unaware they they have the ability to complete small activities such as wiggling their fingers, waving their legs, crawl, and eventually nearer the end of the stage, bigger activities once they're aware of their ability to move their own limbs they may begin to walk with support, Piaget believed a similar process happens with the children language development. Learning sounds, experimenting, then with encouragement and support a children will begin to learn more complex language. 

The second stage is called the preoperational stage which begins at the age of two years and finishes nearer the age of six but some children vary until the age of seven. this stage is made up the child's ability to talk all the time, but not always out loud. An example is a child may describe an activity that they're doing, however for adults there was no need for the description of what they're doing because its easy to see, with an activity such as walking.

The third stage the concrete operational stage. The stage begins at the ages of 7 and continues until the child is about eleven or twelve. This stage consists of the child's ability to use logic and be able to solve problems that they face linguistically. However there is evidence that Piaget believed many people remained in this stage for life and never moved on to the forth stage called the formal operational stage.

The final stage begins at the earliest of eleven or twelve, and is where a child begins to use abstract reason to make mental distinctions between self and an idea its considering. A child will also learn the ability to use language to express their opinion and debate. 

Chomsky Vs. Skinner

Chomsky Vs. Skinner

Chomsky

Avram Noam Chomsky proposed in the 1960's that the Language Acquisition Device (LAD) concept is instinctive and enables an infant to acquire and produce language. This theory suggests that humans are bore with the instinct to acquire language. 

The main argument in favour of the LAD in the argument from the poverty of the stimulus, which argues that unless children have significant innate knowledge of grammar they would be unable to learn language as quickly as they do.
The idea of Chomsky's linguistic theory is that the ability to learn language is all biologically determined by every individual human and therefore is genetically transmitted by parents to their child(ren). Because of this he argues that all humans share a very similar linguistic structure despite an cultural differences. In this his theory is very different to that of the behaviourist B.F.Skinner, who instead argued that language is learnt through reinforcement.

Skinner

Skinner proposed the the operant conditioning chamber, which is also nick named the Skinner Box. He believed that a humans free will was actually an illusion and a humans behaviour was a result of certain actions being repeated over and over along with reinforcement, furthermore he also believed that any action a human made was only the result of the consequences of that action. For example, he believed that if the consequences were bad then the action would not be repeated again this is likely to be then cancelled out by negative reinforcement, however if the consequences were good then there would be a high chance of that action being repeated this is because it would likely be encouraged by those around the infant, which lead to positive reinforcement which for an infant would be praise, laughter and attention from their caregiver. This is what Skinner called the principle of reinforcement. This evidence then implied that this is how infants learn language and not through an innate ability.