Language Development

Observation: Chimps will look for a toy or piece of food that

has disappeared.

Knowledge:Children do that at around two years of age.

Thought:Maybe chimps can develop mentally/intellectually at

least as far as a 2 year old.

Question:Can chimps be taught to “talk” or use language?

Washoe

(Gardner, Allen & Beatrice)

at 3 ½ years used 87 signsat 5 years, used more than 160

Steps in Learning a Language:

1.Learn to make signs.

2.Learn the meaning of the signs.

3. Learn grammar to combine signs.

• Crying gradually lessens

• Cooing begins• Coos develop into

babble• Babble begins to

replicate familiar sounds.

• The leap to using sounds as symbols occurs early in the second year.

• First attempts are primitive and only approximate.• The first real words usually refer to things infants can

see or touch. They are often labels or commands.• By the end of the second year, children have a

vocabulary of 500 to 1500 words. They begin to express themselves more clearly by joining words into two-word phrases.

• From 18 months to 5 years, children add roughly 5 to 10 words to their vocabulary each day.

• Grammatically, though, children use telegraphic speech.

Early Grammar Acquisition

Telegraphic Speech: They leave out words or get the verb tense wrong, etc., but they still make themselves understood. Brown, 1973.

Daddy go work?

Where my apple?

Early Grammar Acquisition

Imitation:

Daddy went yesterday.

Overgeneralization:

Daddy goed yesterday.

Rule-governed:

Daddy went yesterday.

Cognitive Development

Jean Piaget1896-1980

How does knowledge grow? How do children learn?

One Way

A Different Way

Schema

A conceptual framework a person uses to make sense of the world.

Operations

Mental transformations or manipulations that occur in the mind.Operations can only develop as the brain develops.

Oh, a block. I know what to do with that…

Assimilation

XAccommodation

Assimilation:

The process of fitting objects and experiences into one’s schemas.

Accommodation:

The process of adjusting one’s schemas to include newly observed events and experiences.

Object Permanence

A child’s realization that an object exists even when he or she can’t see or touch it.

Representational Thought

Wonder where my phone went?

Toy? What toy?

The intellectual ability of a child to picture something in his or her mind.

Conservation

Principle that a given quantity does not change when its appearance is changed.

Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development

Sensorimotor (0 to 2 years)

Behavior consists of simple motor responses to sensory input; lacks concept of object permanence

Preoperational (2 to 7 years)

Lacks operations (reversible mental processes); exhibits egocentric thinking; lacks concept of conservation; uses symbols (words, mental images) to solve simple problems or to talk about things that aren’t present

Concrete Operations (7 to 11 years)

Begins to understand and eventually masters the concept of conservation; still has trouble with abstract ideas; classification abilities improve

Formal Operations (11 years & onward)

Understands abstract ideas and hypothetical situations; capable of logic and deductive reasoning; figurative language