Language And Social Understanding In Children Essay

810 Words2 Pages

Discuss the relation between language and social understanding in young children.

A child goes through various stages in language development before they have a complete social understanding. When a child is born, they already have perceptual abilities, and can understand the speech sounds of any language, but, by 12 months the child loses that ability, and their understand of the sounds in their own language increases. Werker and Tees (1984) conducted an experiment and found that infants of 6-8 months could distinguish changes in speech sound, but by the time they were a year old, the could no longer hear the differences. Around 11-12 months, a child will begin to speak their first words, and will begin to apply labels and begin to name things, which stems from their pretend play. By 2 to 3 years old, a child will begin to understand everything that is said to them, and by 3 and a half years, their speech becomes more adult like. By 4 and a half years on, children have a much better understanding of language, and an understanding of metacommunication, such as tone, body language …show more content…

A good Theory of Mind allows an individual to understand other peoples beliefs, mental states and knowing what other people want. A False Belief task is used to assess a childs Theory of Mind and is concerned with the childs understanding that another person’s mental perspective can be different from theirs. An example of the False Belief Task involves Person A placing an object in Location A. Person B moves the object to Location B, then when Person A returns for the object, the correct answer is that Person A will look in Location A for the object, instead of Location B. Children under the age of four cannot understand how the other person sees the situation i.e. Person A. Children over the age of four are more likely to correctly guess where Person A will look for the

Show More
Related

  • Oral Development Case Study

    1032 Words  | 3 Pages

    The child is at stage three linguistic speech in oral development (Fellows & Oakley, 2014). They show evidence of this in both their receptive and expressive language meeting the criteria for this stage (Fellows & Oakley, 2014). They show evidence of their receptive language by their ability in being able to understand opposites (Fellows & Oakley, 2014). While they had some issues with the differences between soft and scratchy they were able to demonstrate the differences between big and little several times during the dialogue. They showed evidence of their expressive language by their use of telegraphic speech, expanding vocabulary and in the ability to take in turns of speaking and listening (Fellows & Oakley, 2014). Telegraphic

    Read More

  • Blind Faith and False Belief: An Examination of the Development of Theory of Mind in Children with Congenital Profound Visual Impairment

    1735 Words  | 4 Pages

    In the article entitled, “An investigation of first-order false belief understanding of children with congenital profound visual impairment,” a detailed look at the development of ToM was performed. Theory of mind (ToM) is defined “as the ability to impute mental states to others and to interpret and predict behavior in terms of those mental states” (Green 1). In order to examine ToM, the study performed a series of false belief tests. False belief can also be explained as misunderstanding which connected to false reasoning. In the case of the children in this study, the false belief would be if they can correctly identify how another person would respond to a specific task, if that person had limited information that the children were previously made privy too. These tests are important because, as they article explains; the testing false belief is the most direct way to access if a person has a fully developed theory of mind (Dennett c...

    Read More

  • Compare and Contrast Two Theories of Gender Role Development

    1366 Words  | 3 Pages

    Björklund, D. F. (2000). Children‘s thinking: Developmental function and individual differences (3rd. Ed.). Belmont: Wadsworth.

    Read More

  • The Process of Language Acquisition in Childhood

    2939 Words  | 6 Pages

    In the first years of life children transcend from infancy, in which they cannot speak nor comprehend language, to age four in which they begin to be able to express themselves in their own language (Hoff, 2006). Overall, the language acquisition process has the same endpoint for all capable children. The only difference in the language acquisition process between children is the different languages they learn, which is completely dependent upon the language the child hears. If the child were to only hear Klingon, the child would in theory learn Klingon, but the child would later reject this language because of the lack of acceptance of the fictional language in society (Clark, 1987). The first process of acquiring language is known as phonological development. In natural lan...

    Read More

  • Causes Of Hearing Loss, And Identification Of Hearing Loss

    1066 Words  | 3 Pages

    The babbling that usually takes places around 6 months of age may be nonexistent, minimized or may only take place later than typical infants. Babbling may also not expand at the same rate or may not show sign of association to actual words. At the age of five to seventeen months comprehension of the baby’s sounds imitating vowels becomes challenging when the baby is dead or hard of hearing. The level of hearing impairment may affect the child’s ability to associate that specific sounds are coming from a specific direction, allowing make the connection to for instance look at someone when being spoken to. The same issue occurs between the ages of eight to nine months, the difference being that at this point the child should be turning his or her head towards the sound instead of the whole body as in younger months. Around twelve months of age a deaf or hearing impaired infant will understand verbals directions that are given along with visual ones, because of the visual cue the infant is able to understand the message, but not without it. By sixteen months of age such child may not respond to instructions that are given with the use of words only and that are not associated with any visuals or gestures causing the child to not understand or follow

    Read More

  • Communication In Oral Communication

    1505 Words  | 4 Pages

    The development onto ‘stage 2’, should occur between 12 - 24 months (Fellowes & Oakley, 2014). Stage 2 consists of the linguistic stage, this is where children’s language can be deciphered into utterances of singular words. This is around the time children will be able to say one syllable common words, such as mum or dad (Miller & Gildea, 1994). This supports Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. It supports this as language is being developed through an activity of mimicking their caregiver’s words (Fellows & Oakley, 2014). Between the ages of 24-36 months young children develop most of their basic language skills that will assist them in school life and beyond. It is during this period that children enter ‘stage 3’. Stage 3 is still the linguistic stage however this is where children create phrases from their common word vocabulary (Fellow & Oakley, 2014). This is when children are at their most rapid period of learning words. They possess the ability to learn an excess of 10,000 words per day (Miller & Gildea, 1994). While a child’s vocabulary is drastically expanding during this time, children are still learning to speak in sentences. This can mean they may omit the function words from their sentence’s, for example “dog big” rather than “the dog is big”(Fellow & Oakley, 2014). These stages of a child’s language development are crucial. It is this time period

    Read More

  • Infant-Directed Speech and Its Effect on Language Acquisition

    1651 Words  | 4 Pages

    When infants are acquiring their first language, adults speak to them differently than they would speak to other adults. This kind of speech is formally named “Infant-Directed speech”, but is also referred to as “baby talk” and “motherese”. Infant-Directed (ID) speech has several properties that distinguish it from Adult-Directed (AD) speech. There is a debate over whether or not ID speech helps infants acquire language or is a hindrance in their language acquisition process Several experiments have been performed to test the effect of ID speech on infants’ language learning. These experiments all used different properties of ID speech. Overall, the experiments have proved that ID speech helps infants acquire language better than AD speech for different reasons. Further studies can be performed on ID speech to learn more about its effects on second language acquisition and on different ages.

    Read More

  • Child Psychology

    524 Words  | 2 Pages

    a child hears by the age of two years the larger their language skills will

    Read More

  • Children Language Acquisition

    693 Words  | 2 Pages

    Consequently, usually around the sixth month, the infant begins to babble. A large variety of sounds are produced in this period, many of them do not considered occur in the language of the household. During this period, children are learning to distinguish between the sound that are part of their language, and the one which does not. In the stage of babbling, children are learnt to maintain the correct sounds and suppressed the one which are incorrect.

    Read More

  • Language Acquisition

    3235 Words  | 7 Pages

    How do children acquire language? What are the processes of language acquisition? How do infants respond to speech? Language acquisition is the process of learning a native or a second language. Although how children learn to speak is not perfectly understood, most explanations involve both the observations that children copy what they hear and the inference that human beings have a natural aptitude for understanding grammar. Children usually learn the sounds and vocabulary of their native language through imitation, (which helps them learn to pronounce words correctly), and grammar is seldom taught to them, but instead that they rapidly acquire the ability to speak grammatically. Though, not all children learn by imitation alone. Children will produce forms of language that adults never say. For example, “I spilled milk on hisself” or “Debbie wants a cookie”. This demonstrates that children have the desire to speak correctly and have self-motivating traits to communicate. This supports the theory of Noam Chomsky (1972)-that children are able to learn grammar of a particular language because all intelligible languages are founded on a deep structure of universal grammatical rules that corresponds to an innate capacity of the human brain. Adults learning a second language pass through some of the same stages, as do children learning their native language. In the first part of this paper I will describe the process of language acquisition. The second part will review how infants respond to speech.

    Read More

  • Cognitive Child Development

    1004 Words  | 3 Pages

    “The development of representational thought provides the means for children to understand that words can stand for people, objects, actions, places, feelings, and ideas” (Nicolson & Shipstead, 1998, p. 28). At this age a child’s language is expended to the point that he/she is able to communicate his/her desired or ideas, rather than pointing toward an object or saying separate words in order for their caregiver to understand what he/she wants. Child’s language ability is increasing rapidly at this age, by talking to his/her parents, siblings or peers. Even Though child knows many words and can talk in a sentence, their pronunciation and grammar is yet to come. “Proponents argue that children’s mental representations of words closely resemble adult surface forms, in contrast to their pronunciation which is characterized by errors that are governed by rules that change during phonological acquisition” (Dodd & Mcintosh, 2009, p.1028). The pronunciation is acquiring through child’s practice by talking to parents and peers. Also, child is not able to apply grammar to their language, rather they learn as they hear how other people use the language and repeat after them but maybe switching words around or missing some of them as they

    Read More

  • Language Acquisition

    7590 Words  | 16 Pages

    Children’s acquisition of language has long been considered one of the uniquely defining characteristics of human behaviour.

    Read More

  • Essay On Child Language

    1916 Words  | 4 Pages

    Typically, the first year of a child’s life focuses on motor skills. It is not until the second year, that language development begins to take the main focus on the child’s life. Language is an innate feature that we are all born with, however if a child’s environment is not a loving, positive, safe or happy environment, the development of language may become flawed or disrupted (Shiver, 2016). For this reason, it is essential to provide children with an environment they can trust, and feel safe and secure. This process can be referred to as the nature nurture theory. Research shows us that there are windows of opportunity throughout one’s life to be able to acquire and develop language. The development of syntax and grammar takes place during the preschool years and can end at ages five to six (Shiver, 2016). However, in saying this, the ability to learn new words is always possible and for this reason, new words can be learnt all throughout life. Piaget, the Swiss psychologist, has been extremely influential in the studies of child development. Piaget claimed that there are four stages where children can cognitively function. His studies show that children are born into the Sensorimotor Stage. This stage lasts until the child is around two years old. It is towards the end of this stage that the development of language starts becoming the focus of the child’s life, and up until the age of two, the acquired language is basically cooing or other sounds made by the mouth, until the age of two where language can consist of basic words or sentences. The child’s acquired language is mimicked and copied from their parents and those around them, learning the sound patterns of words and conversations and also the skill of taking turns, which is essential for conversation (Shiver, 2016). The next stage of development defined by Piaget is the Preoperational Stage. This stage lasts

    Read More

  • First and Second Language Acquisition

    1349 Words  | 3 Pages

    In our everyday lives, the origin of our ability to communicate is usually not often taken into consideration. One doesn't think about how every person has, or rather had at one time, an innate ability to learn a language to total fluency without a conscious effort – a feat that is seen by the scientific community "as one of the many utterly unexplainable mysteries that beset us in our daily lives" (3).. Other such mysteries include our body's ability to pump blood and take in oxygen constantly seemingly without thought, and a new mother's ability to unconsciously raise her body temperature when her infant is placed on her chest. But a child's first language acquisition is different from these phenomena; different because it cannot be repeated. No matter how many languages are learned later in life, the rapidity and accuracy of the first acquisition can simply not be repeated. This mystery is most definitely why first language acquisition, and subsequently second language acquisition, is such a highly researched topic.

    Read More

  • Language Development

    2087 Words  | 5 Pages

    Ever walk past a child who is engaged in an activity while talking to themselves out loud? If so, do not worry, after reading this research paper you will understand it is perfectly normal. Language has many dynamics including: words, private speech, inner speech, syntagmatics, paradigmatics and much more. According to Craig and Dunn (2010) by age three, most children can use 900 to 1,000 words; by age 6, most children have a productive vocabulary of 2,600 words and can understand more than 20,000 (pg. 161). Some children I work with who are in the toddler room are able to talk, but leave out the pronouns a sentence. For example a child would say, “Us go on walk?” Language and cognitive development go hand in hand, as children learn about their world they also learn how to talk and communicate with themselves as well as others.

    Read More

More about Language And Social Understanding In Children Essay

Open Document