There are four key theories to language acquisition:
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Behaviourist
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Cognition Theory
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Innateness Theory
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Social and cultural Theory
All of them describe different theories as to how a child
can pick up and develop language through different means. The first we shall
look at is behaviourist.
Behaviourist Theory
‘Children learn to
speak by copying others and through positive and negative reinforcement’ –
Skinner
This is also known as operant conditioning, where a child is
rewarded for performing an action which encourages the behaviour for the
future, or is punished where the behaviour is seen as negative, not to be done
again. For example, if a child is good or completes a task well, the parent
would reward them, encouraging the behaviour. If a child does not share, or
does something wrong, the parents would punish the child.
Some linguists see language as a behaviour that is shaped by
operant conditioning, as it is a subset of learned behaviours. If a particular
response is reinforced, it should become habitual. This means that children
will pick up the reinforced language and drop the ones that aren’t. Once this behaviour is reinforced once, it
would only need to be occasionally reinforced, meaning that speech sounds that
appear less frequently will be dropped, causing the extinction of the sound.
However children will make errors depending on the context or situation.
The argument for behaviourist theory is that language is
based on learning, imitation, practice and selective reinforcement. However it
does have its limitations or on what it misses out. Firstly, it is highly
dependent on adults to have full control over this developing stage, when
children do not understand the duality property of language. Children speak in
words even adults don’t use, and there is retention of the use of cuss words.
There is no reinforcement on abstracted ideas.
Cognition Theory
‘It involves the
ability of the mind to conceptualise ‘–Piaget
It is a huge contrast to the behaviourist theory, as it
involves putting objects through a schema in order to identify them. However,
it does require an adult to confirm or correct what the child suspects.
For example, a child could learn about a dog through
pictures, and understand that it has four legs, big ears and a tail. However,
if a child was to see a cat, they would most likely call it a dog; this is
where a parent would step in and correct the child, calling it a cat. The child
then conceptualises the idea that a cat is different from a dog.
This theory does make sense to an extent. A child learning
its first language would collect a data base of schemas. For example, if a
child learns about a dog, it would assume that everything with four legs would
be a dog. However, his small sample size when researching, meaning that he
could not make his hypothesis applicable to every child. Recent theory of mind
research has found that 4- and 5-year-old children have a rather sophisticated
understanding of their own mental processes as well as those of other people.
For example, children of this age have some ability to take the perspective of
another person, meaning they are far less egocentric than Piaget believed.
Innateness Theory
‘Humans – and so
children – are born with the capacity for language acquisition’- Chomsky
The key concept of this idea is that there is a critical
period for learning language and that, if passed; a child will be unable to
learn a language. This is in three theories. The first is nativist, where there
is a native capacity to learn language. The second is environmentalist, where
there is an environment where it is easier for a child to learn language. The
last is internationalist, where learning language depends on what the child is
interacting with. This is so a child can naturally develop language without the
need for formal training.
It links with the behaviourist theory, as part of the
innateness theory is how the environment and external interactions shape the
acquisition of language. It also links to the cognitive theory, for the
interactions developing language.
A weakness to the theory is that it does not always apply to
every case, e.g. the child ‘Genie’ was suspected of missing the learning
critical period for language. However, it was unclear whether it was her years
of abuse that prevented her learning, or if she had a mental disability for
learning. This could then apply for other children in similar situations.
Social/Cultural Theory
‘Parents adapt their
speech to allow maximum learning of language to take place’ – Vygotsky
The idea is that the key point of language is to make
meaning. This supports the idea that parents use monosyllabic words and more
nouns in order to create meaning to the child, therefore making the child
semantically remember the words. It contrasts the cognition theory, as learning
should be done on a cultural basis, learning through interactions, rather than
reward and punishment for correct/incorrect language use. It links to the
behaviourist and innateness theory as interactions are key to it in order to
create meaning to the language.
This graph shows a contrast between the cognitive theory and
the social theory.
A weakness for this theory is that the main criticism of
Vygotsky's work concerns the assumption that it is relevant to all cultures.
Rogoff dismisses the idea that Vygotsky's ideas are culturally universal and
instead states the concept of scaffolding - which is heavily dependent on
verbal instruction - may not be equally useful in all cultures for all types of
learning. Indeed, in some instances observation and practice may be more
effective ways of learning certain skills.
