Developmental psychology/Chapter 3/Language

>> Previous page: Infant Cognition

>> Next page: Surviving and Thriving

You'd be surprised to know that this begns developing before birth! The ability for infants to grasp language so well at the age of 2 compared to adults is insane. They are learning languages before they even speak! Now, how are they able to do this?

Listening and Responding

Babies prefer to learn the language of their mothers. They also like repetitions, rythms and melodies. If parents want their child to speak 2 languages, they need to speak with them with 2 languages from birth. They prefer singing (melodies) over general talking and their ability to listen and their preferences for listening is a sign of functionality of the brain.

Despite some cultural differences, it is crucial for effective communication to take place during the early years of a human being. Verbal proficiency is a must during the infant's developing period. It improves cognition and speaking ability.

Range of Speaking Based on Time

Newborn - cries, facial expressions
2 months - range of expressions, from crying to laughing
3-6 months - new sounds: growling and squealing
6-10 months - babbling (consonant & vowel sounds)
10-12 months - using gestures to talk, knowledge of simple words, speechlike intonations
1 year - speaking words first recognizible to the baby in their native tongue
13-18 months - steady growth of vocab up to 50 words
18 months - 3+ words learned per day
21 months - First two-word sentences
24 months - Sentences with multiple words

Babbling and Gestures

Between 6-9 months, babbies start babbling (ba-ba, ma-ma, da-da). Babbling is an infant's repetition of specific sylabbles and is experience-expected (all babies do this, despite cultural differences). Babbling leads to vocabulary and is encouraged by the caregivers.

Babies use hand gestures before they use words, which proves the notion that babies are learning before they speak. Since this is true, caregivers teach their infants (about 6-12 months) gestures (such as the signal for "more" if they want more food). One of the earliest gestures that babies will learn is pointing, as most 10 month olds can interpret pointing and respond when prompted by pointing (pointing to a cat and saying "look at that!").

First Words

About a year, babies will utter words. Then, as time goes on, vocabulary exponentially increases. Babies will convert their single words ("Dada") into a holophrase ("Dada!"), conveying meaning in only one single word. These words may be different for us humans vs. the babies, as "mama" may not mean "mother", but "pick me up" (as whenever the word "mama" was mentioned, picking up was followed by it).

Naming Explosion

The language spurt between 18 months and 21 months is known as the naming explosion. This is a sudden increase in words, especially nouns.

Grammar

Grammar consists of word order and conjugations of verb which also convey meaning. This becomes important at about 18-24 months, when the baby's vocabulary starts to dramatically improve. Toddlers get the idea of grammar as their vocabulary unit increases, as babies usually don't say "give mommy food" as they understand this conveys a totally different meaning. They would say, "Mommy, give food". Language development for babies is measured using the mean length of utterance, or MLU, test.

Theories of Language Learning

Many theories exist to try and explain how infants are so easily able to study and grasp language so greatly. Here, we will review three theories.

Infants need to be taught - Through association and reinforcement, behaviorists believe that infants are directly taught to speak. B. F. Skinner noticed that when a baby says "ma-ma", immediately the baby is greeted with a loving mother and is showered with attention or food. Repitition is key for babies to learn (association --> reinforcement). Parents must encourage their toddler to speak and use language by speaking to them. Even mispronounciations should be encouraged, as that invokes the baby to continue trying and speaking.
Social impulses trigger language [socioculture theory] - In this theory, since the world is a social place and humans are social beings, infants aspire to join the social world by learning and mastering their speech. It is the social aspect of speech (active talking), not words, that encourage language-learning in babies. This is why videos teaching words is harmful. Children are able to learn words in both book-learning and video-learning, but the former children actually use the new words in context. The pivoting factor in these scenarios is parental interaction, as this encourages the infants to talk vs. watching a video (less talking).
Infants are their own teachers - This deals more with genetics. Here, this perspective believes that language comes from the FOXP2 gene, brain maturation and the humanic urge to copy other people. Noam Chomskey, the vocal leader of this perspective, studied the similarities in language acquiring (the evolution behind it). Chomskey believed that babies had a language acquisition device (LAD), a mental structure in the brain that allowed humans to learn language (grammar, vocabulary, etc) [this is theorized]. Here, language is experience-expected as the brain develops and neurons connect to each other to accomadate the baby in understanding what language they hear. The experience-dependant part of this is each brain adjusting to that specific language. Even deaf infants subscribe to this theory as they prefer sign language over no communication.