Parent Responsiveness and Early Language Development

“Oral language is a skill that is acquired naturally by the young. The importance of its development in early childhood cannot be overemphasised. It underpins the whole scope of learning and is employed to question, to seek information and to proffer ideas. A child who has a well – grounded ability in oral language will usually be nicely poised to cope with reading and writing. Anyone who lacks this will be at a disadvantage.” (J.Fellowes & G.Oakley, 2010, pp4) It is a vital component of every human beings life as it is a means of communication and interaction with their family, friends and

They consider a child’s daily routine and activities highly influence an important role in their language development. Their theories focus on exploring how children socially interact within environments. They explain how children start to explore how language and communication works by inevitably adapting themselves to environments (Orfano F, 2015). This process confirms children are socially persuaded to be pragmatic. Depending on the context of the situation children listen to sounds and look at symbols movements and expressions from things around them. It acknowledges the importance of the environment in that it purports that children learn language as a result of communicative needs, in social contexts, and with social support. This evidence persuades them to deem nurture as the dominant

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

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

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.

Three practices that support the language development of all children is that of “communicating and Sharing” (Lally, 2006, p.32) in which a caregiver is observant of the infant and follows the infant's cues in that “Babies show us from the beginning that soothing words and lullabies can calm them.” (Lally, 2006, p.32) thus forming a bond of communicating what the infant's emotions are and sharing them in their reaction to a caregiver.

However, it can be argued with (Bruner 1964) that social interaction doesn’t explain all the complexities of language acquisition. Almost every day the language we hear is often incorrect, poorly defined, incomplete and full of hesitations, mispronunciations and other errors, and yet despite this we still learn to talk following the correct grammatical rules. Again this indicates the idea of Chomsky’s (1968) LAD model that children are born ‘hard-wired’ with the innate knowledge of linguistic rules and so these rules help the baby make estimations and presumptions about the language it is hearing. From these estimations and presumption the child can work out grammatical sets of rules and when more language is exposed to them, the more their language develops. Even within Chomsky’s (1968) LAD theory, undoubtedly he believed the role and promotion of the ‘nature’ aspect is the core foundation on which language can develop. But his theory also requires the role of nurture

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

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

In the other hand, behaviorists view language as complex and leaned skill, much like playing piano and dancing. B.F. Skinner argued that language represents nothing more than chains of responses acquired through reinforcement. Putting differently, children learn though process of reinforcement. For example, baby babbles “mama” the mother happily reward the baby with a hug and kisses and eventually will push the baby to say “mama” more and more; due to these reward children are motivated to repeat the behavior, thereby shaping their language and ensuring their development. Children’s language is being built up, this describe a way in which children environmental experiences influence and improve their language skills. Also that’s why parents

At 18 months, the virtual child had over 50 words at her command that she was able to use to make two-word sentences such as “Mama up” and “Doggie outside.” In their effort to further encourage the child’s development of her language skills, the parents applied B.F. Skinner’s operant conditioning theory (Berk, 2012). They would respond, using slightly longer sentences such as “Yes, the doggie is outside” before introducing descriptive and useful new words. The parents would encourage imitation and respond with positive reinforcement, which would further enthuse the child to develop her language skills (Berk, 2012). When the child was 2 years old, the parents would converse with the child at any given opportunity and would read books of her choice which further influenced her language development. Research has found that when mothers are more responsive during the first few years of a child’s life enable their children to achieve language development milestones at an earlier stage than children whose mothers were less responsive (Leigh, Nathans & Nievar, 2011). The mother had a more influential role in the virtual child’s language development as she would allow the child to explore the surrounding environment through daily walks and teach the child new words as they did. It was due to parental involvement and an encouraging, safe environment, the virtual child developed her language skills not only due to influence but to a desire to learn new

Children rely heavily on the input of their surrounding environments to develop these skills further (Eileen Allen & Marotz, 2003). The communication strategy used by children over the first year of life is predominately non-verbal before development progresses to include verbal communication (Rodnick & Wood, 1973). McDevitt and Ormrod (2010) suggest social emotional, physical and cognitive development is facilitated by the experiences children have in their “family, school and community” (p. 5). This raises the idea that the level of communicative development may differ greatly between children depending on experiential exposure. Rodnick and Wood (1973) expand on this further suggesting children will actually develop a level of grammatical and language understanding which is essential to communication, long before they commence schooling. In research conducted by Rodnick and Wood (1973) it was noted in their findings that the children subject to their research demonstrated a lower level of communication than expected at around the age of seven and suggest it may be due to environmental factors. This then draws some attention to the educator and their ability to teach a developing child not only the importance of communication, but also the skills of appropriate and effective communication.

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.

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