LANGUAGE ~ SOCIAL

Development

Why Study Development?

“One great blooming, buzzing confusion” – William James

(Learning is amazing!!)

The child is the father of the man

One way to understand human cognition is start at the beginning

Help our understanding of children and the learning process

Themes of Developmental Psych

Themes to keep in mind throughout material Nature vs. Nurture Nativist vs. Empiricist

Models of Development No development (little adults) Maturation Readiness Stages Waves Critical periods

Side note: How do you test infants?

Habituation Procedure: Expose baby to

stimulus until he/she no longer attends at it

Test: Introduce new stimulus

If baby looks longer at new image, it’s perceived as new.

Language

Humans have it (almost ubiquitously), animals don’t

Incredibly difficult to learn Speech sounds are highly variable:

different speakers different rates different genders accents different intonation patterns

Speech stream is continuous: the “segmentation problem”

Incredibly difficult to learn Speech stream is continuous: the “segmentation

problem”

Language

Children develop language fast and effortlessly

1 year: 1 word

2 years: 300 words

3 years: 1000 words

4 years: 5000 words

5 years: 10000 words

18 years: 60000 words

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Age in Months

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Critical Period?

Sometime between age 5 and puberty, language acquisition becomes much more difficult

“Wild Children” (such as Genie) have difficult time acquiring language in adolescence

Congenitally deaf children of hearing parents not exposed to sign language show increased impairments with age

Language capabilities of bilingual adults who acquired their second language at different ages

Critical Period?

Performance on a test of English grammar by adults originally from Korea and China was directly related to the age at which they came to the United States and were exposed to English

The scores of adults who emigrated before the age of 7 are indistinguishable from those of native English speakers

Language Development

Skinner (Behaviorism) – stimulus/response model of language

Noam Chomsky – “Skinner’s work can be regarded, in effect, as a reductio ad absurdum of behaviorist assumptions” Endless new combinations of words Children learn rapidly without formal instruction “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously”

Innateness of Language?

Chomsky’s Solution Universal Grammar: all natural languages share a

common structure that arises from the way our brain is designed to construct and process language.

We have evolved specialized mechanisms for language because communication is advantageous

Problem - “Universal” structure could come from the constraints of the environment and communicative needs

Arguments for Innateness

Fast mapping / mutual exclusivity

Whole object assumption - “GAVAGAI” experiment

Arguments for Innateness

Dedicated brain regions – Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas Damage to Broca’s area, near the motor cortex, is associated

with difficulties in producing speech Damage to Wernicke’s area, which is near the auditory cortex, is

linked to difficulties with meaning

FOXP2 gene Family missing the gene show

severe speech and language impairments

General Mechanisms

We evolved general cognitive/social mechanisms that support the development of language Mechanisms not specific to language Language is the byproduct of genetic traits being selected

for

Word learning constraints – could be result of cognitive constraints

General Mechanisms

Statistical Learning

pre-tty-ba-by~93%

< 5 %

General Mechanisms

How quickly could you pick out a word from a stream of speech like the one shown here?

It takes 8-month-old infants only 2 minutes

Social word learning - That’s a blicket! Wow, a blicket!”

Children only assigned the word “blicket” to a toy if the speaker is looking at the toy

Alternative explanation for brain localization – Interactive Specialization (Mark Johnson) Brain regions become specialized through the

dynamic interplay between between input and systems

Congenitally blind children show language activation in visual areas and not in typical language areas till much later (Rebecca Saxe)

Social Development

Standing on the shoulders of giants

Social Development

“most, if not all, of the species-unique cognitive skills of human beings are not due to a unique biological inheritance directly, but rather result from a variety of historical and ontogenetic processes that are set into motion by the one uniquely human, biologically, inherited, cognitive capacity” - Michael Tomasello

Ratchet Effect – knowledge shared and built upon

Social Development

Vygotsky Children are social beings, intertwined with

other people who are eager to help them gain skills and understanding Humans are seen as unique because of their

inclination to teach each other and to learn from each other

Cognitive development occurs in social interactions

Zone of Proximal Development

Imitation

Blind imitation – mimicked behavior

Imitation proper – imitated behavior with attention to outcome (goal of behavior)

Goal emulation – imitation with the completion of unfulfilled goal

Imitation of use for novel objects (Meltzoff)

Imitation proper – by 14 months – infants repeat action of touching forehead to a box until it lights up (understand the goal of imitated action)

Goal emulation – by 18 months infants are completing the attemptedaction of adults

Theory of Mind – the understanding that we have a mind (intentions, desires, knowledge, beliefs) and that other people have a mind of their own (2-5 yrs)

Evidence for understanding theory of mind/ other’s intentions as early as 5-7 months

Attachment: infant forms a relationship with caregiver and uses them as a secure base to explore the world Ainsworth: Strange situation

Attachment Styles

Secure - Uses caregiver as a secure base for exploration. Upset by departure of parent but easily calmed when they return and can continue to play.

Resistant – Does not use parent as a secure base, often stays close to them. Upset when they leave but not comforted by their return.

Avoidant – Little affect while playing. No visible stress upon parents departure, ignores them on return. Treats the stranger similarly to the caregiver.

Disorganized – no clear attachment patter. Show freezing or repetitive behavior.

Bucharest Early Intervention Project

(Photo credit: Charles Nelson, BEIP UNICEF report)