Family Socioeconomic Status And Language Development

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.

Nature and nurture both play a significant role in language development. Language development refers to how children understand, organise, speak and use words in order to communicate at an effective, age-appropriate level (Karen Kearns, 2013, P.105). For centuries, theorists have been debating the roles of nature versus nurture. Although, each child’s language will develop at their own pace and there will be many individual differences based on culture, ethnicity, health and ability. As well as physical, social, emotional and cognitive development in which will contribute to a child’s language development.

Language is a social cognitive function that developed out of our need to share ourselves with others. From their earliest days, infants feel this same need to express themselves. The mother, who is one of the first and most prominent people the infant interacts with, helps to create a bond with the child. Now the child is growing with someone whom they feel safe with and trust to share his or her inner self with. This is particularly true when the child is securely attached to his or her mother. Despite the lack of studies that directly connect attachment theory and language development, there are substantial similarities between the two ideas.Both secure attachment and infant language development flourish in mother-infant relationships that

Language is a code made up of rules that include what words mean, how to make words, how to put them together, and what word combinations are best in what situations. Speech is the oral form of language. The purpose of this study is to find out the developmental stages the child goes through in the acquisition of language from birth to 5 years.

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.

How do both nature and nurture interact in the promotion of language development in young children?

At the age of 3 months we see early signs of phonology; children will turn their heads, and stop crying once hearing parent’s voices. They indicate contentment and amusement by smiling, and repeating sounds (e.g. cooing). (Berk, 2003). In addition babies 4-7 months notice new sounds such as the telephone. They also respond to “no” and changes in tone of voice. Early sound discrimination skills are beginning to emerge. At 6 months of age, long before they are ready to talk, babies start to organise speech into the phonemic categories of their own language. (Berk, 2003). Semantics develops at the age from 8months-1 year old as they respond to sounds such as doorbells and telephones. And begin to babble repeated consonants and vowels. The Nativist theory states that language acquisition is a biological phenomenon such as the child’s ‘inner clock’ theory and any role play between child and carer and by the environment is something less important, which theoretically means that nature will take its course and the child will develop its own

The study solidified the theory that social interaction is key to a toddler developing his language. This study proved that children with mothers who talk and text frequently, or disengage from their children, are less likely to learn the new words. This disengagement distracts the toddler and thus interrupts the important cognitive processes occurring in the brain to map the new words. This study was effective because of the intention and concern in its design. The researchers did an amazing job explaining the material and taking great pains to control as many

Everyday we are developing no matter our age, but it is how we develop children that will tell a tremendous amount an individual. How a child developments is fundamentally important at a young age as it affects all aspect of their lives once the child matures. Throughout the class, we looked at many theorists during the course of the semester as well as looked at many articles pertaining to the concepts of the development of children. The theorists and articles opened up our minds to a world that we have never seen before and concepts about child development we have never been taught but have seen in the practical work we do every week. What makes humans unique is the ability that we have to interpret the language being used, as Lois Bloom

There are several theories regarding language development. Work by Chomsky, Piaget and Kuhl are critical. Studies by Chomsky, as examined by Albery, Chandler, Field, Jones, Messer, Moore and Sterling (2009); Deloache, Eisenberg & Siegler (2003) argued for the innateness of language acquisition due to its complexity. Development is assisted by a language acquisition device (LAD) and universal grammar both of which holding the propensity for commonalities throughout all languages. LAD is the key to the Syntax rule. The knowledge to master the rules is held unconsciously. Chomsky concludes exposure through auditory channels as being the only requirement for learning. Arguably Kuhl (2010) writes infantile exposure to language through auditory channels only, does not contribute effectively to learning indicating the importance of human interaction. Piaget, as discussed by Ault (1977) postulated language as not being part of the earliest stages of development. Signifying within sensorimotor stage, between birth and two years, the child’s development is too reflexive. Gleitman, Fridlund and Reisberg (2004) discuss the critical period hypothesis and suggest the young brain being more suited to acquisition than the adult brain. Lenneberg (1967) (as cited in Gleitman et al 2004) advocates, brain maturation closes language acquisition capacity window. Kuhl (2010) identified, within the critical period babies develop

Should the language competence of children from low-SES backgrounds be considered deficient or different? Evaluate the evidence for and against each claim.

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.

Early language development predicts the amount of vocabulary knowledge as the child develops and is a key factor that is linked with later academic achievement (Pungello et al., 2009; Weisleder & Fernald, 2013). Also, background factors must be analyzed and assessed, in order to understand how language growth differs from one child to the next. Exposure to speech is very important and helps influence early development of language and the processing speed (Fernald, Marchman, & Wielder, 2013 as cited by Weisleder & Fernald, 2009). A study done by Kwon et al., (2013), found that play has a significant effect on the language complexity for children’s language use pertaining to the structure of play or activity setting (free play), however the gender of the parent did not influence the language growth for the child. Furthermore, children are able to identify familiar words when speech is directed towards the child and not over heard, facilitated vocabulary learning at the age of 24 months (Weislder & Fernald, 2013). For example, over hearing adult conversation is not as beneficial towards the child’s vocabulary learning.

Nearly every theory of language development recognizes that there is a critical period for learning language. During this critical period a child must receive environmental input for normal development. Parents and caregivers are an extremely important piece of this environmental input and the best way for caregivers to teach their children language is to simply talk to them—a lot. We know that children often say their first word between the ages of 11 and 14 months, and there continues to be a lot of variability in language development; is this a result of nature or nurture? Zimmerman, Christakis, and Meltzoff (2007) studied the effects of media viewing on language

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