Nativist Perspective (Theories of Language Development)
- Language acquisition device (LAD)
- Children are primed to learn language (only need to start hearing it)
Interactionist Perspective (Theories of Language Development)
Information processing theorists
- Children are endowed with general cognitive capacities that allow them to begin to make sense of their world
- Some interactionist theorists emphasize the cognitive contributions, others emphasize the social interaction component
First Speech Sounds (Getting Ready to Talk)
- Cooing
- Babbling
Becoming a Communicator
Getting Ready to Talk
- Joint attention
- Give- and-take
- Preverbal gestures
First Words (Starting to Talk)
- Underextension
- Overextension
Two-Word Utterances (Starting to Talk)
Telegraphic Speech (Toddlers’ two-word utterances that, like a telegram, focus on high-content words while omitting smaller, less important words)
Individual Differences in Language Development
- Environment (Child-Directed Speech (CDS)
- Gender
- Personality
- Language Style (Referential, Expressive)
- Language Delay
Joint Attention (Becoming a Communicator)
A state in which the child attends to the same object or event as the caregiver, who often labels it. Contributes to early language development
Give and Take (Becoming a Communicator)
Infants and mothers mutually imitate the pitch, loudness, and duration of each other’s sounds. Mothers take the lead, imitating about twice as often as 3-month-olds
Preverbal Gestures (Becoming a Communicator)
Indicating wants and needs through actions (arms up to be picked up)
Language Acquisition Device (Nativist Perspective)
An innate system that contains a universal grammar, or set of rules common to all languages. It enables children, no matter which language they hear, to understand and speak in a rule-oriented fashion as soon as they pick up enough words.
