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Nativism
Orientation: 1960's-1970's
Orientation: 1960's-1970's
Scientists/Theorists: Noam Chomsky (1965)
Description: The nativist/nativism theory is based on the idea that children are naturally born with an ability to learn, organize and understand language. Chomsky also believed that as part of their language learning, children also innately have what is called the language acquisition device (LAD). Through this device, children learn the grammar and syntax of their language and begin to understand the rules that their language follows. The learning of these rules is not something that is explicitly taught to children, which follows the basis of this theory.
Compatibility to another theory:
The nativist theory is compatible with the semantic view as it acknowledges the innate aspects of language acquisition similar to nativism, however, the semantic view also takes into consideration the importance of education, exposure, and practice (nurture) on the development of language.
Contributions to approaching assessment/intervention with children 0-5:
The nativist theory explains why children seem to acquire language rapidly without having to be taught the explicit rules of grammar as nativists emphasize the importance of exposure. Theorists believe that babies and children do not need to be taught the rules of language because they are prewired to learn them. However, rich exposure to their native language is key to early language acquisition and development.
The nativist theory would suggest that assessment for young children should focus on their comprehension and development of syntax since theorists believe children are born with the natural ability to understand the rules of language.
As for intervention, this theory leads to intervention approaches that revolve around providing a child with exposure to language such as parallel talk, self-talk, labeling. modeling, and expansions.
Concerns the theory raises to approaching assessment/intervention with children 0-5:
Nativists believe in the idea of a sensitive period for language development, meaning that there is an ideal window of time in early development to acquire a language during which exposure to a native language is critical. This idea implies that if a child lacks exposure to language during this critical period, language development will be negatively affected. The idea of a critical period could have an impact on assessment by putting a strong emphasis on age equivalents.
Pictured: Noam Chomsky
Behaviorism
When behaviorism originated:
Early 1900's
Scientists/Theorists:
Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)
Edward Thorndike (1874-1949)
John B. Watson (1878-1958)
Burrhus Frederic (B.F.) Skinner (1904-1990)
Nature? Nurture? Or Both:
Behaviorism is based on the idea that language is something we do, not something we have. It suggests children come into the world as a blank slate with no innate ability. This means Behaviorism is a nurture theory; according to the theory language is learned through teaching or nurturing by caregivers and subsequent reinforcement from their environment. Behaviorism draws on Skinner’s operant conditioning as it acknowledges the importance of reinforcement in order to encourage or discourage certain aspects of language acquisition.
Compatibility to Another Theory
Social Interactionist Theory is compatible with Behaviorism as they both suggest language is learned through caregivers and pragmatics. They highlight the importance of child-directed speech as a reinforcer for language learning.
Contributions Behaviorism makes to Approaching Assessment/Intervention with Children Ages 0-5
Intervention according to behaviorism is based on reinforcements and punishments. If a behavior is reinforced, then it is seen as increasing the behavior, and if it is punished, then it is seen to decrease the behavior. Behaviorist intervention acknowledges that language models aid in language development through reinforcement. Behaviorist- based interventions are commonly seen in ABA.
Behaviorism contributes to assessments based on the theory of behavorism are meant to observe and analyze specific behaviors. By using these assessments, the individual is able to view what caused the specific behavior, and the consequences that arose because of it. Two types of assessments based on behaviorism are functional and ecobehavioral assessments.
Functional assessment: the process of observing and collecting information to view the connection between environmental variables and a child’s behavior.
Ecobehavioral assessment: Viewing moment-to-moment effects of different environments on a child’s behavior.
One assessment based on components of behaviorism is the Verbal Behavior Milestones Assessment and Placement Program (VB-MAPP)- (0-48 months), which uses subtests to analyze language skills based on Skinner’s verbal operants.
Concerns Behaviorism makes to Approaching Assessment/Intervention with Children Ages 0-5
Behaviorism instills the idea that in order for language to develop it must be consistently reinforced. Therefore if a child is not exposed to a language rich environment that explicitly instructs appropriate use and discourages inappropriate use language will not develop.
Ivan Pavlov
Edward Thorndike
John B. Watson
Burrhus Frederic (B.F.) Skinner
Semantic View
Orientation: Late 1960's-70's
Scientists/Theorists:
Quine (1970)
Fillmore (1968)
Bloom and Haley (1970's)
Description: The semantic view of language is an interactionist theory, meaning that it takes into consideration the generative nature of language. This view incorporates both nature-based and nurture-based aspects of language development. There are parts of language that are intuitive (nature), for example the basic rules about structure, use, and meaning of language. With practice, education, and further exposure to language, those innate skills continue to develop through that exposure (interaction).
Compatible with: This view is compatible with Cognitive-Interactionists and Social-Interactionists, because both of those views also believe that both nurture and nature contribute to language development.
Contributions (to assessment/intervention of birth-5):
Bloom and Lahey Developmental Expressive Language Taxonomy (assessment)
This chart identifies the typical developmental sequence of utterances that a child learning language (English) expresses.
Semantic mapping during reading or other tasks (intervention)
Semantic mapping is a visual display of the connections between a word or phrase and related words or concepts.
Semantic maps can help students to better recognize, understand, and remember the definition of words that they read in different texts.
Concerns (of assessment/intervention of birth-5):
Many other areas of language (syntax, pragmatics, morphology) that all affect overall language skills that may need to be assessed/developed in this age group.
Assessment of semantics is often limited to expressive and receptive vocabulary.
This can be problematic because early deficits in vocabulary size are not strong predictors of language abilities later on.
Cognitive-Interactionist
Who are the prominent cognitive interactionist theorists and how did they explain language development?
Jean Piaget (1954) theorized that language is learned in a series of stages and that children grow from being ego-centric to social individuals.
(Please refer to Bases of Language section for an in-depth view of Piaget's stages)
He believed that children learn language by adopting mental representations called schemas upon interacting with their world. They do this through two processes:
Assimilation is when we add information to schemas that have already been formed.
Accommodation is when we modify schemas based on experience.
Charles Osgood's (1963) mediation theory holds that language is symbolic because words represent objects. He posited that there are 3 levels to how we process information:
Projection: Information from the environment is first perceived at the immediate sensory level (vision, hearing, etc.). There is no interpretation at this level.
Integration: Information is sorted based on past experiences and knowledge. It is here that the sensory information is assembled and a person provides a framework of meaning for the information received. It is important to note how perception may reflect the meaning we retain for words.
Mediation: Information is processed and translated into words to apply meaning and create a verbal representation.
Bates and MacWhinney (1982) utilized a competition model (CM) which theorized that children innately have parallel distributed processing (PDP) in order to take in different types of information at the same time. This model proposes that:
Language processing system consists of a direct mapping between form and function of a new word
A listener relies heavily on cues that correlate with other previously associated word meanings
Is this theory nature, nurture, or both?
Cognitive-interactionists view both nature and nurture as important for developing language. Children's cognitive processes are innate, but they must interact with the world to make the connections needed to learn language.
What other theories are compatible?
The social-interactionist theory is compatible because both theories emphasize that nature and nurture play a role! Also, both emphasize the importance of bottom-up processing.
Contributions:
This theory adequately explains how children make meaning out of the information they learn. Interventions like play therapy employ cognitive techniques, such as learning to categorize objects. Play also allows children a multitude of opportunities to integrate new information into pre-existing schemas and to be active participants in language development.
Language does not have a unique place in development. Stages of development are not solely defined by age but by discrete, qualitative differences. Children's ability to acquire language is not linear and gradual but discontinuous; it stops and starts as children interact with their environments and incorporate these into their schemas This means that interactionist assessments focus less on age equivalents and more on functional behaviors.
Concerns:
This theory suggests that children are born with parallel distributed processing (PDP) in order to engage with the competition model, but if they are too rigid with their associations, certain information will not surface effectively during competition.
Piaget has been criticized for his stages of development. It is argued that there is bias due to his reliance on data from observations and interviews rather than securing direct or factual assessment. This may lead to incorrectly pathologizing children.
Assimilation
A child realizes that the pug is another type of dog even though her family dog is a yellow lab.
Accommodation
A child sees a lamb and thinks its a dog. The parent corrects her. She learns that having four legs is not the only way to describe a dog.
Social-Interactionist
Orientation: Late 1970's
Orientation: Late 1970's
Scientists/Theorists: Lev Vygotsky (1978)
Description:
The social-interactionist theory states that language development is acquired through social interaction between a developing child and an adult who has matured linguistically. This theory adopts principles from both nativism and behaviorism. It suggests children are active participants in their language development with an innate linguistic mechanism (nativism) and they learn language through modeling and social interactions with adults (behaviorism). Children learn language within what Vygotsky defines as the "zone of proximal development" (ZPD). The ZPD is the difference between what a child can accomplish independently and what a child can accomplish with external support. Children learn best when they have social support that can guide their development until they are able to engage in an activity or task independently.
Other theory it is compatible with:
The Semantic View and Cognitive-Interactionist Theory are compatible with the social-interactionist theory because they all support the idea that both nature and nurture play a role in language development.
Assessment:
Since the social-interactionist theory focuses on the environment and the engagement of another individual, the best assessment approach for this theory is through observational play. Vygotsky’s social interactionist theory focuses on the idea that children have the desire to communicate with the support of an adult. Children might not have the desire to communicate with the clinician during the first therapy session and this does not mean the child isn’t capable of joint attention. Vygotsky’s theory puts emphasis on the child engaging with an adult, therefore you can always include a familiar face to the session! Furthermore, it can be beneficial to assess Vygotsky’s theory in an environment that is comfortable and familiar to the child. Adopting to the child can be beneficial to assessing a child's ability to socially interact.
Contributions to approaching assessment/intervention with children 0-5:
Teaching Parental Scaffolding Strategies: Scaffolding is support from an adult given to a child to foster their development of new concepts. As the child becomes more competent in the concept, additional scaffolding (support) is removed.
Child-Directed Speech: adults use of simplified speech with exaggerated pitch and enunciation
Concerns when approaching assessment/intervention with children 0-5:
The social-interactionist theory is largely rooted in the idea that in order to learn language, a child must be motivated to engage in the social environment. This means, a child's language is dependent on who the child wishes to communicate with. This is important to consider when assessing and treating children. For example, if a child produces more language talking with their parent than the therapist, incorporate them into the session to encourage more language output!
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