Thursday, 2 October 2014

How do I think children learn language?


I believe language aquisition to be a cocktail of innate potential and environmental factors. I concur this from various case studies, that I believe to be the most important evidence in studying language aquisition  (as the same amount of generalisability can't be said for studies with pigeons). Genie, is an example of extreme environmental factors stunting growth verbally, although she did later learn a vast lexicon the part of the brain important for forming sentences had not been stimulated at the critical period  and consequently disconnected meaning genie would never reach the expected verbal ability of an individual that hadn't experienced trauma. This study suggests we are a born with innate ability to learn words, however this ability is highly potential based and after all language isn't just words, language is sentences and relies highly on an internal clock with biological programmed critical periods. 
A study that challenges this is the case of the Czech twins, of whom were locked in the basement of their home by their stepmother and subjected to emense traumar which stunted growth cognitively, lexically and physically. Another is the case study of the ukranian ferile child raised by dogs, who upon savour only growled and appeared to have no lexicon or ability of language at all. Despite these cases both went on to develop cognitively and achieve their full potential. This then suggests that environmental factors can be reversed and biological factors are more substantial. However it is to be noted that neither of the arguing cases were as extreme isolation as Genie and both the Czech twins and the Ukrainian dog child had been exposed to some form of language from social interaction before isolation, which may prove to be a contributing factor to their recovery.

1 comment:

  1. Thank you Louise. Your comments are astute. It is clear that you have researched case studies beyond those discussed in class. You take 'critical periods' into consideration. I hope the short videos helped put some quite complex theoretical ideas into context. Next, we shall expand upon our knowledge towards application, using this information to develop our AO2 analysis.

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