Foreign Perspectives

The development of children’s understanding of grammar kicks off with a run-through of the definitions of some linguistic terminology before moving on to look at the development of spoken language, learning word endings and finally learning word order. Obviously this whole chapter is very much English-specific.

There’s not a whole lot of terminology but I suspect it would be quite confusing if you weren’t from a linguistic background. Phonology is the structure of speech sounds. Grammar is broken into morphology (how words are formed eg through compounding) and syntax (the structure of sentences). The chapter on first words looked at studies that showed when children recognised the specific phonology structure of their own language. Inflections (word endings) aren’t used a whole lot in English outside the likes of “-ed” and “-ing” endings.

Chomsky is the main researcher in this area and has the view that children have an inate understanding (his language acquisition device). They can understand all languages because their is a universal grammar which they adapt to their native language. Pinker on the other hand feels that children deduce the rules for themselves.

The development of spoken language proceeds through a number of phases. One word utterances are common early in the second year with two-word utterances coming around 21 months (just before the vocabulary spurt). In the early stages they speak in telegraphic speech ie with no elements of grammar such as link words. By the age of 4 the various elements of grammar have been learnt.

Learning about word endings has two basic theories. The dual route theory of Pinker & Prince considers that there is both a rule system (eg “add S for plural”) and a memory system (for irregularities). The single route theory of Rumelhart & McClelland comes from the neural network studies. There seems to be more evidence in support of the single route model through examination of the types of errors which children make (eg the occasional production of irregular inflections for regular words supports the single route model) and how they explain generalisation of inflections to new words. Marchman looked at this. Studies of the acquisition of German which has lots of regular inflections by Szagun tend to support the single route model. Studies by Pinker of deveopmental disorders could support the dual route model but then they also support the single route one.

Learning about word order seems quite an interesting field. As Brown & Hanlon found, parents rarely correct their children’s grammatical mistakes. Chomsky argued from this that they needed to rely on inate linguistic knowledge (his universal grammar). Tomasello felt that children gradually built up grammatical knowledge through learning (eg about nouns and verbs). Studies in this area are extremely time consuming as most diary studies are. Elman looking at computer simulations found that starting with simpler grammatical structures and working up worked well which implies that using “motherese” (child directed speech) is a good thing (but note that this isn’t used universally).

Quite a nice chapter to revise though that simplicity might mean more complex questions. Only two more chapters to go: executive functions and understanding minds which, hopefully, I’ll get to over the course of today. So far, it looks like I’m going to be close to achieving my target of getting the revision chapters down to ten pages (which’ll be appearing as a PDF on the site when I’ve completed them all).

Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.

First words covers quite literally the first words as grammar is considered by a separate chapter. This might sound a little odd at first but considering that children only deal with isolated words to begin with and add the various bits of grammar around them later it’s not as un-natural a split as you might think.

Recognising speech is the first stage of acquiring language. Recognition and memory of speech sounds whilst still in the womb has been looked at via experiments by DeCasper & Spence among others who looked at the pre-birth understanding of words through having the mother read stories or rhymes before the birth and checking through dummies containing sensors and heart monitors that they remembered the words. That they still recognised these when someone else read the text suggests that they recognised the words. Distinguishing of languages by newborns has been looked at by Mehler et al and Christophe & Morton. Babies use of prosodic cues to identify word boundaries has also been looked by Johnson & Jusczyk who considered transitional probability (via nonsense words) and syllable stress.

Harris et al found that understanding first words is facilitied by mothers referred and especially when they pointed to the objects and that the age at which children point is strongly correlated with the age at which they show understanding of object names. Comprehension starts around 7 or 8 months and continues nicely to 12 months when there’s usually a vocabulary spurt. The possible reasons behind this spurt include naming insight, change in cognitive development and simply that it gets easier when you’ve reached a critical mass of words (eg the child can then ask).

Learning to say words occurs in parallel with neural maturation which enables the fine motor control required. Macarthur found that children couldn’t accurately reproduce all the sounds in their language until around age 5 or 6. The discrepancy between comprehension and production varies.

The meaning of children’s first words can be context bound (eg “cup” being used when asking for a drink) although some are contextually flexible; Harris et al found that this varied. Goldfield & Reznick and Nelson found that some children focused on gaining vocabulary whilst others went for verbs. Harris weighs in again in finding that usually the first use of a word is close to the mother’s use but later uses moved away from this. All this is highly dependant on the structure of the language obviously thus whilst in English the concentration is usually on nouns, in Korean it’s on verbs.

I felt that this chapter is possibly the closest to “where it’s at” in terms of child development for me. The downside is that it’s relatively short and doesn’t strike me as an easy chapter to answer a question from. I suspect that it’s easier to follow for those of us with a linguistic background.

Luckily the brain and cognitive development chapter isn’t on my list so it’s on to the companion to this chapter next: the development of children’s understanding of grammar which is, of course, another one for the linguists.

Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.

Early category representation and concepts is a dreadful chapter as it’s all over the place but here goes…

We tend to group items into categories which eventually leads to developing concepts. The question is: how do children do this?

Using the familiarisation/novelty approach Younger & Gotlieb found that 3 to 7 month olds had developed a category representation through familiarisation of distorted exemplars. They went on to consider whether the children stored the information through holding every exemplar in their head or whether they used protype extraction and found, as you’d expect, that for small numbers they remembered all the exemplars whereas for large numbers they used prototype extraction. BUT, this used dot patterns and thus is outside the everyday experience. Other studies used more familiar items and went on to consider hierarchies eg furniture, chair, deckchair. How do they do it? Rakison & Butterworth looked at animals and found that the legs were a salient cue.

Developing the categorisations into concepts goes down either the single process route (essentially the categories are elaborated more and more) or the dual process one (perceptual schemas are initially developed but a separate deeper analysis is going on at the same time looking at things like movement, function and so on).

Levels of category were looked at by Quinn et al who looked at the above/below experiment (dots above/below a line). They found that 3 or 4 month olds couldn’t form the abstract concept but that by 6 or 7 months they could. These guys also found that bottom up processing was being used.

Gopnik & Meltzoff looked at the development of categorisation and the vocabulary spurt and found a strong link.

Overall, a dreadful chapter to revise as it seems all over the place with loads of different researchers working in this field. Anyway, it’s on to first words next.

Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.

The Open University has a very neat little facility on its student pages called Qualification Planner which is probably one of the most time wasting things that you can play with on their site.

After being told about this facility some four years ago now I found myself suddenly transported from simply “learning a bit more French” to embarking on a modern languages degree. The sheer number of combinations of degrees and diplomas that this little tool comes up with is frightening for sure. Even with just four or five courses entered in you can be talking in terms of dozens of potential degrees and diplomas if you only do one more course…

Even now, I still have that last English course nagging at me. If I do just one more English course I get a Diploma in English. Naturally, if I do that one more course it will open up even more options and would move me that little bit closer to tipping over into seeing an English degree on the horizon. Still, I have finally (after two years) removed the Diploma in English from my “Qualifications that I am working towards” list so perhaps there’s hope for me yet!

However, I’m currently at the silly stage of doing a Diploma in Health Sciences. As it happens I need to do three of the four courses from this for my psychology degree and the fourth one (Infectious Diseases) sounds really interesting. The problem with that is that if I do just one more course then I’ve just about all the bases covered for a Life Sciences degree which I’d not initially thought about but which does seem to have a whole lot of courses that look really interesting and which have fantastic comments against them too.

The additional problem in the case of the Life Science degree is that it’s looking quite likely that the OU will be phasing out the named sciences degrees over the next couple of years and dropping all the corresponding summer schools. Thus if I don’t do those courses over the next two or three years, I’d never be able to do the LS degree. In fact, if I’m going to do it at all I’ll need to do the two level 3 courses in 2011 and 2012 which diverts me from the psychology somewhat but it does seem a shame to miss doing two fantastic courses.

Young consumers seems a rather short chapter in terms of actual content if you go by the Erika Cox notes. It’s the third of the identity chapters that I plan to go over for the revision and links back to the other two extensively in parts.

The chapter kicks off with what seems basically waffle to the effect that younger children value objects that give comfort and security, older ones value things that can be used in activities and the adolescents valued things associated with identity such as music and jewellery [Kamptner]. Common themes across cultures were control, emotional attachment and utility. The possibility of generational and historical differences makes cross-sectional studies difficult.

Constructing identities through consumption runs through a number of different aspects of identity:

• maintaining status eg through dress and music (Milner)
• using brands as symbols of high-status identities (Anderson)
• solidarity & conflict in consumption and identities eg need to change style constantly to exclude others (Milner)
• societal differences and style identities: gender, ethnicity & class

Theories of identity & young people’s consumption:

• Erikson’s ego identity theory: over identification with groups to avoid losing their identity
• social identity theory (SIT) and self-categorisation theory (SCT): group membership is part of the self-concept (see national identity)
• positioning theory: social constructivist approach (Davies & Harre)

Not too bad a chapter to revise but it seems a bit thin on the ground to me as you’ll have gathered by the length of these notes. Next up is book 3 and early category representation. In theory the chapters of the final book that I’m doing should be easy for me as I covered some of that in the Exploring English course last year.

Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.