Exploring The Nativist Perspective And Cognitive Development

Children’s language development usually begins in their first three months. They will begin by learning to use their voice and enjoying vocal play. Babies will watch faces and mouths to try and copy movements and sounds.

There are 4 theoretical perspectives. The different theoretical perspectives vary in their focus on the role of nature and nurture as well as the emphasis on one or more of the five aspects of language knowledge. Throughout this chapter, the focus will be on recognizing how nature and nurture interact and can be related. It provides a framework for understanding the complex ways children develop language as they interact with people and objects in their environment, school and home

Nature and nurture both play various roles in children’s language development. Nature is a child’s inherited genetics and characteristics. Nurture is the persuasive influence a child develops from their environmental surroundings. The two have created many debates on whether one has more influence on a child’s language development than the other. In this essay I will discuss, the roles nature and nurture play in children’s language development, how they structure communication and the theoretical debate of their impact.

It is believed that babies develop language when they are in the utero and it continues throughout their lifetime. By twelve weeks old, babies may register the sounds they can hear and at the same time make basic visual, auditory and tactile mind maps (Karen Kearns, 2013, P.105). This allows the infant to turn towards any familiar sounds and noises. Babies begin to communicate with people around them quite quickly. By two months old, babies begin to make ‘cooing’ and other noises; this indicates the phonological component of language development. By six to nine months babies begin to experience with a mixture of sounds, and often you will hear a baby babbling. Babbling development is similar across many different languages and even hearing impaired babies will go through this stage. They may copy the sounds they are introduced too or beginning to recognize familiar

Babies prefer the sound of humans interacting to other sounds and from this, they quickly learn to recognise and identify their mother’s voice. Babies form their first relationship through emotional attachments with their mother or main carer. The first year of a baby’s life is a period of incredible growth, and a baby’s brain goes through critical periods during which stimulation is needed for proper development. During the babies first years, visual stimuli or verbal language is necessary for areas of the brain to grow and without this growth, a child’s vision or speaking abilities might be impaired. Infants tend to have different cries for hunger or pain, as well as making other noises. These abilities show your child is gaining communication and pre-language skills. Infants from birth to 6 months will forget about objects they cannot see however they begin to explore objects they can see and grab by putting them in their mouths. They will also follow moving objects with their eyes and look around at nearby objects. Infants in this stage will turn to look at a source of sound. These developmental milestones show a baby’s brain is developing and they are gaining new skills. From 7 to 12 months, infants also learn the idea of cause and effect, and they might repeat an action that causes a

At around 4-6 months old a baby will have developed an awareness of sound in particularly a person speaking and will turn towards the sound when someone familiar speaks for example their parents. They will start to mimic sounds and start to babble and laugh. Intellectual development is rapid and although they may not be able to speak in more than just babble, their understanding will be greater and they will become much more inquisitive. They will be able to understand simple instructions such as “point to your nose.” By a year old, they’ll be able to say simple words like “Mama” and “Dada” or words with similar sounds. They may start to develop their own language with odd sounding words for common objects that take their interest. Sometimes these words will sound similar to the name of the object particularly if their parents spend time speaking to their child and repeating the names of these objects.

The communication with your child starts way before the youngster can speak. From their cry, smile, and the responses they give you to help you understand his or her needs. Language developments have different stages that children pass through to assist them in the development of speech and languages. There are a plethora of factors which can inhabitants’ a child language development. However, these are amongst the top causes for language development such as a child’s inborn ability to learn language and the language the child hears.

After the first couple of months, infants become more interactive with their surroundings. They are very curious and have the desire to get in touch with the world. In order to engage in such activity, they begin by utilizing their sense of touch by placing numerous objects in their mouth. In the upcoming months, infants start to use different senses such as hearing and sight to get in touch with their surroundings. Before they are even able to speak, their caregivers speak to them in differentiated speech and vocalizations as opposed to adults. The intonation and rhythm in the adult’s voice is usually different around young children, causing them to be able to get their attention. Over the years, speech language pathologists have conducted a large number of studies where it demonstrates children’s’ fascination with speech generated by humans. Levi, as summarized by the ASHA leader, conducted a study where the children successfully recited words after distinguishing the familiar and unfamiliar voices of the speakers.

The debate between many researchers is the argument of whether nature or nurture play a more important role in development. In this essay I will be looking into both aspects of nature and nurture focusing specifically on their influence towards language development in children. A main controversial question I will be looking into is the question of whether are we born already equipped with mechanisms which help us to learn language, or is language learned throughout a child’s environment by, for example, imitation and repetition? Studies done by some opposing researchers claim to show that nature and nurture promote language development

Language is a communicative system of words and symbols unique to humans. The origins of language are still a mystery as fossil remains cannot speak. However, the rudiments of language can be inferred through studying linguistic development in children and the cognitive and communicative abilities of primates as discussed by Bridgeman (2003). This essay illustrates the skills infants have that will eventually help them to acquire language. The topics covered are firstly, the biological aspects, the contribution of the human brain to language development? Secondly, key theories of language development will be considered. Is the development innate? Is there a critical period? Thirdly, what must be learned? What are the rudiments infants must

From a baby 's first word to their first complete sentence, there 's a lot to debate with their language development. The average child has a vocabulary of up to six-thousand words by the time they turn five years old (Brighthubcom, 2016). Language development is one of the most critical roles for an educator in both early childhood and primary settings. It is this ability of language development that is particularly interesting in the nature vs nurture debate. In order for educators to provide effective communication, it is important that they have the knowledge and understanding of the four key concepts of language, such as phonological, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic development and the underlying theoretical perspectives that explain the processes of language acquisition and development.

The developmental stages of language are; pre-linguistic stage, one-word stage, two or three-word utterances, more complex sentences, further development between 3-4, and further development between 4 and 5. In the pre-linguistic stage from birth to 1 year, babies can tell the difference between voices and other sounds, they can start to use sounds such as ‘dadadadada’ or ‘mamamamama’. In the one-word stage from 12 to 18 months young children can have a variety of

However, Pinker (1994) then goes onto note that the particular sub-stage of reduplicated babbling occurs around 7-8 months, and states that the children will exercise phonemes and syllable patterns that are not specific to a singular language, but rather are seen as common across a variety of languages. Yet, Pinker (1994) does also argue that the children are able to distinguish between phonemes of their own mother tongue, which has been seen from birth, and this is seen to be more prominent by the time the child reaches the age of around 10 months. Pinker (1994) refers to this as the children no longer being ‘universal phoneticians’, and states that the children will no longer distinguish foreign phonemes.

Then, cooing appears when the child is between six to eight weeks old, where the infant demonstrates happy vowel like sounds (Hoff, 2006). At age sixteen weeks infants begin to demonstrate laughter and vocal play (Hoff, 2006). Between six and nine month old babies begin to produce babbling sounds, then they utter their first word around age one (Hoff, 2006). When children speak their first word it is usually as an isolated unit (Goldin-Meadow, 2006), and not considered a major step in phonological development (Hoff, 2006). Children then learn that their first spoken word is composed of smaller parts, which is known as morphology, and that the word can be used as a building block for larger sentences called syntax (Goldin-Meadow, 2006). A child’s first word goes farther then communicating a message between the child and communicative partner, the word retains symbolic meaning (Goldin-Meadow, 2006). At age eighteen months phonological processes develop, in which the child’s speech characteristics begin to transform (Hoff, 2006). Subsequent to eighteen months the child’s vocabulary grows and with this growth the child is able to phonemically represent a sound with the mental representation of every word that possesses a sound (Hoff, 2006).

According to Zukowski (2013), language development refers to the process of learning in early life where infants acquire various forms, meaning and word usage. In addition, language refers to the different utterances in regards to linguistic input. Language development in childhood focuses on major arguments in