COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT -

LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT-

Infancy, Preschool, Middle childhood and

adolescents
 The Fundamental of Language

● Language, the systematic, meaningful arrangement of symbols, provides the

basis for communication.
● It is closely tied to the way we think and how we understand the world.
● It enables us to reflect on people and objects and to convey our thoughts to
others.
PIAGET AND VYGOTSKY ARE ALSO INCLUDED IN COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT SO DON’T FORGET ABOUT THEM.

REFER TO PPT 1 - INTRODUCTION

Components/ Characteristics of Language
1. Phonology -

● Phonology refers to the basic sounds of language, called phonemes, that can
be combined to produce words and sentences.
● For instance, the “a” in “mat” and the “a” in “mate” represent two different
phonemes in English.
● English has 40 phonemes to create every word in the language, other
languages have as many as 85 phonemes—and some as few as 15.
2. Morphemes

● A morpheme is the smallest language unit that has meaning.

● Some morphemes are complete words, while others add information
necessary for interpreting a word, such as the endings “-s” for plural and “-ed”
for past tense.
3. Semantics

● Semantics are the rules that govern the meaning of words and sentences.
● As their knowledge of semantics develops, children are able to understand
the subtle distinction between “Ellie was hit by a ball” (an answer to the
question of why Ellie doesn’t want to play catch) and “A ball hit Ellie” (used to
announce the current situation).
Linguistic Comprehension and Linguistic Production

● Linguistic comprehension ---> the understanding of speech,

● Linguistic production ----> the use of language to communicate.

● Comprehension precedes production. An 18-month-old may be able to

understand a complex series of directions (“Pick up your coat from the floor
and put it on the chair by the fireplace.”) but may not yet have strung more
than two words together when speaking for herself.
● During infancy, comprehension of words expands at a rate of 22 new words a
month, while production of words increases at a rate of about 9 new words a
month, once talking begins
 The Origins of Language Development - How does
proficiency in language come about?
1. Learning theory approaches - Language as a learned skill
● According to the learning theory approach, language acquisition follows the
basic laws of reinforcement and conditioning
● Reinforced for saying words or sounds that have meaning in language.
● Learn by hearing parents talk
● Parents make the child repeat words and praise them
● Children learn to speak by being rewarded for making sounds that
approximate speech.
● Through the process of shaping, language becomes more and more similar to
adult speech.
● Drawback?
1. Doesn’t adequately explain how children acquire the rules of language as
readily as they do.
2. Parents are apt to be just as responsive if their child speaks correctly or
incorrectly - reinforcement is provided for both correct and incorrect language
usage
3. Does not explain how children can speak fluently
4. Children are also able to move beyond specific utterances they have heard
and produce novel phrases, sentences, and constructions, an ability that also
cannot be explained by learning theory.
5. For example children can apply linguistic rules to nonsense words. In one
study, four-year-old children heard the nonsense verb “to pilk” in the sentence
“the bear is pilking the horse.” Later, when asked what was happening to the
horse, they responded by placing the nonsense verb in the correct tense and
voice: “He’s getting pilked by the bear.
2. Nativist Approach - Language as innate skills
● The famous theorist under this perspective was - Noam Chomsky
● The nativist approach argues that there is a genetically determined, innate
mechanism that directs the development of language.
● According to Chomsky, people are born with an innate capacity to use language,
which emerges, more or less automatically, due to maturation
● In other words he means that-
1. Language structure is an innate function of the human brain
2. Children do not need a formal environment to learn language
3. There is an optimal learning age between 3-4 where learning is at the optimal level
4. Chomsky believes that very early in a person's life a critical period of language
development will dictate his ability to develop and comprehend language for the
remainder of his life.
5. As a person continues to age, Chomsky believes, language development enters a
stage of perfecting what has already been learnt by the individual in an effort to
truly "comprehend" a language fully.
6. Children do not need to be corrected because they will learn on their own
7. Language is a unique human accomplishment, etched into the structure of the
brain
● Chomsky’s analysis of different languages suggests that all the world’s
languages share a similar underlying structure, which he calls universal
grammar.
● The universal grammar is the basis upon which all human languages
build.
● In this view, the human brain is wired with a neural system called the
language-acquisition device (LAD) that both permits the understanding of
language structure and provides a set of strategies and techniques for
learning the particular characteristics of the language to which a child is
exposed.
● In this view, language is uniquely human, made possible by a genetic
predisposition to both comprehend and produce words and sentences
For example Nouns, Plurals, Tense , Gender,
Pronouns common in all languages

Structuring sentences to ask question to make a

negative sentence is similar in all languages

All these words are used to represent first person singular.

I = English
मैं = Hindi
मी = Marathi
Je = French
Drawbacks
1. Primates are able to learn at least the basics of language, an ability that calls
into question the uniqueness of the human linguistic capacity.
2. Others point out that although humans may be genetically primed to use
language, its use still requires significant social experience in order for it to be
used effectively
3. There is a lack of evidence to support the theory.
4. The theory offers a hypothetical explanation and we do not know where the
LAD is located.
5. Children do not acquire language as quickly as nativist theory suggests. They
refine and generalize many grammatical forms gradually, engaging in much
piecemeal learning and making errors along the way
6. The model cannot explain why individuals with certain learning disabilities
such as Down’s Syndrome have delayed language.
Genie the Feral Child
3. The Interactionist Approach

● The interactionist approach to language suggests that language development

is produced through a combination of genetically determined predispositions
● and environmental circumstances that help teach language.
● The interactionist perspective accepts that innate factors shape the broad
outlines of language development.
● However, interactionists also argue that the specific course of language
development is determined by the language to which children are exposed
and the reinforcement they receive for using language in particular ways.
● Social factors are considered to be key to development, since the motivation
provided by one’s membership in a society and culture and one’s interactions
with others leads to the use of language and the growth of language skills
LANGUAGE IN INFANTS
 Early Sounds and Communication
● Early speech is made up of - a variety of meaningless sounds: cooing,
crying, gurgling, murmuring, and assorted types of other noises.
● Prelinguistic communication is communication through sounds, facial
expressions, gestures, imitation, and other nonlinguistic means
● For example - When a father responds to his daughter’s “ah” with an “ah” of
his own, and then the daughter repeats the sound, and the father responds
once again, they are engaged in prelinguistic communication.
Babbling

● The most obvious manifestation of prelinguistic communication is babbling.

● Babbling, making speech-like but meaningless sounds, starts at the age of
two or three months and continues until around the age of one year.
● Initially infants repeat the same vowel sound over and over, changing the
pitch from high to low (as in “ee-eeee,” repeated at different pitches).
● After the age of five months, the sounds of babbling begin to expand,
reflecting the addition of consonants (such as “bee-bee-bee-bee”).
● Universal phenomenon ---all cultures.
● While they are babbling, infants spontaneously produce all of the sounds
found in every language, not just the language they hear people around them
speaking.
● Babies everywhere (even those who are deaf) start babbling at about the
same age and produce a similar range of early sounds.
● But for babbling to develop further, infants must be able to hear human
speech.
● In babies with hearing impairments, these speechlike sounds are greatly
delayed and limited in diversity of sounds (Bass-Ringdahl, 2010). And a deaf
infant not exposed to sign language will stop babbling entirely.
● Deaf children and who are exposed to sign language babble with their hands
instead of their voices
● As caregivers respond to infant babbles, older infants become better at
matching the sounds they hear in adult speech.
● By 8 to 10 months, babbling reflects the sound and intonation patterns of the
child’s language community, some of which are transferred to their first words.
● The speed at which infants begin homing in on their own language is related
to the speed of later language development
Nonverbal communication

● Communicating with eyes/ gestures + sound

● Infants use preverbal gestures to direct adults’ attention, influence their
behavior, and convey helpful information
● Crying, holding out hand to indicate things.or needs
● Later on replaced with 1 word communication.
First Words
● Can recognize their own name, can understand instructions
● First recognizable spoken words, around 10 - 14m (1 year) build on the
sensorimotor foundations in Piaget’s theory

● Linguists differ on just how to recognize that a first word has actually been
uttered.
1. Some say it is when an infant clearly understands words and can produce a
sound that is close to a word spoken by adults, such as a child who uses
“mama” for any request she may have.
2. Other linguists use a stricter criterion for the first word; they restrict “first word”
to cases in which children give a clear, consistent name to a person, event, or
object. In this view, “mama” counts as a first word only if it is consistently
applied to the same person, seen in a variety of situations and doing a variety
of things, and is not used to label other people
● The first words in children’s early vocabularies typically regard objects and
things, both animate and inanimate.
● Most often they refer to people or objects who constantly appear and
disappear (“Mama”), to animals (“kitty”), or to temporary states (“wet”).
● When young children first learn words, they sometimes apply them too
narrowly, an error called underextension.

● As vocabulary expands, a more common error is overextension—applying a

word to a wider collection of objects and events than is appropriate.

Infants also show individual differences in the style of language they use.
● Some use a referential style, in which language is used primarily to label
objects.
● Others tend to use an expressive style, in which language is used mainly to
express feelings and needs about oneself and others.
Vocabulary
● By the age of 15 months, the average child has a vocabulary of 10 words
and methodically expands until the one-word stage of language development
ends at around 18 months.

● Once that happens, a sudden spurt in vocabulary occurs.

● In just a short period—a few weeks somewhere between 16 and 24 months
of age—there is an explosion of language, in which a child’s vocabulary
typically increases from 50 to 400 words
● These first words are often holophrases, one-word utterances that stand for
a whole phrase, whose meaning depends on the particular context in which
they are used.
● For example - up, juice, mama, play.
First Sentence
● Develops by 8 - 12m due to an increase in vocabulary
● Involves stringing those two words together.
● For example “Mommy shoe,” “go car,” “more cookie.”
● These two-word utterances are called telegraphic speech because, like a
telegram, they focus on high-content words, omitting smaller, less important
ones (“can,” “the,” “to”).

● This is important because the linkage not only provides labels for things in the
world but also indicates the relations between them.
● For instance, the combination may declare something about possession
(“Mama key”) or recurrent events (“Dog bark”).
● Most early sentences don’t represent demands or even necessarily require a
response.
● Instead, they are often merely comments and observations about events
occurring in the child’s world.
● Follows grammatical rule such as putting Subject first followed by the verb,
and then the object
● For example “Josh threw the ball”.
● Children’s speech most often uses a similar order, although not all the words
are initially included.
● They might say “Josh threw” or “Josh ball” to indicate the same thought.
● But it is rarely said as “threw Josh” or “ball Josh,”
 INFANT DIRECTED SPEECH
● A style of speech that characterizes much of the verbal communication
directed toward infants
● This type of speech pattern used to be called motherese because it was
assumed that it applied only to mothers.
● It is characterized by short, simple sentences.
● Pitch becomes higher, the range of frequencies increases, and intonation is
more varied.
● There is also repetition of words, and topics are restricted to items that are
assumed to be comprehensible to infants, such as concrete objects in the
baby’s environment.
● Adults use amusing sounds that are not even words, imitating the prelinguistic
speech of infants.
● In other cases, telegraphic speech is used.
 ● By 1 year, infant-directed speech takes on more adult-like qualities.
● Sentences become longer and more complex, although individual words are still spoken
slowly and deliberately.
● Research shows that this kind of speech is very useful for the child’s development.
● Research suggests that babies who are exposed to a great deal of infant-directed speech
early in life seem to begin to use words and exhibit other forms of linguistic competence
earlier
● Newborns prefer such speech to regular language and may be particularly receptive to it.

Gender differences

● Research found that by the age of 32 months, girls hear twice as many diminutives (words
such as “kitty” or “dolly” instead of “cat” or “doll”) as boys hear
● When turning down a child’s request, mothers are likely to respond with a firm “no” to a
male child but to soften the blow to a female child by providing a diversionary response
(“Why don’t you do this instead?”) or by somehow making the refusal less direct.
● Boys tend to hear firmer, clearer language, while girls are exposed to warmer phrases,
often referring to inner emotional states - Reflects adult social interactions
Prelinguistic speech to blabbing- https://youtu.be/b9LKb0z7xT4

Milestones - https://youtu.be/zjsb0Xq9WmI

Blabbing in different languages - https://youtu.be/wyBAWp9X3Sw

LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT IN
PRESCHOOL YEARS
● During the preschool years, children’s language skills reach new heights of
sophistication.
● They begin the period with reasonable linguistic capabilities, although with
significant gaps in both comprehension and production.
● However, by the end of the preschool years, children can hold their own with
adults, both comprehending and producing language that has many of the
qualities of adults’ language.
The changes -
1. Sentence length increases
2. Now combine various words and phrases to form a sentence - Syntax
3. Vocabulary increases to 14,000 words. Which means that they acquire vocabulary
at a rate of nearly one new word every 2 hours, 24 hours a day
4. They manage this feat through a process known as fast mapping, in which new
words are associated with their meaning after only a brief encounter.
5. By the age of three, they can use plurals
6. Can use possessive forms of nouns (such as “boys” and “boy’s”),
7. Can switch easily to past tense (adding “-ed” at the end of words),
8. Can use articles (“the” and “a”).
9. They can ask, and answer, complex questions (“Where did you say my book is?”).
10. Can form sentences and use a nonsense word appropriately.
11. Develop a basic understanding of grammar. - can understand when a sentence is
grammatically incorrect.
12. Besides acquiring vocabulary and grammar, children also learn how to engage in
effective and appropriate communication. This practical, social side of language is
called pragmatic
PRIVATE AND SOCIAL SPEECH

● Private - self talk

● Social- interactions with others
● Vygotsky suggested that private speech is used as a guide to behavior and
thought.
● Helps them to solve problems as well
● By communicating with themselves through private speech, children are able
to try out ideas,it helps facilitates children’s thinking and helps them control
their behavior. (Have you ever said to yourself, “Take it easy” or “Calm down”
when trying to control your anger over some situation?)
● Help them practice the practical skills required in conversation, known as
pragmatics.
Social speech - is speech directed toward another person and meant to be
understood by that person.

● Before the age of three, children may seem to be speaking only for their own
entertainment, apparently uncaring as to whether anyone else can
understand.
● However, during the preschool years, children begin to direct their speech to
others, wanting others to listen and becoming frustrated when they cannot
make themselves understood.
● As a result, they begin to adapt their speech to others through pragmatics,
● Piaget said that speech during the preoperational period was egocentric:
● However, more recent experimental evidence suggests that children are
somewhat more adept in taking others into account than Piaget initially
suggested.
● Pragmatics is the aspect of language relating to communicating effectively
and appropriately with others.
● The development of pragmatic abilities permits children to understand the
basics of conversations— turn-taking, sticking to a topic, and what should and
should not be said, according to the conventions of society.
● When children are taught that the appropriate response to receiving a gift is
“thank you,” or that they should use different language in various settings (on
the playground with their friends versus in the classroom with their teacher),
they are learning the pragmatics of language.
LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT IN
MIDDLE CHILDHOOD
Changes that take place in this age-

1. Vocabulary continues to increase. For instance, the average six-year-old has a vocabulary
of 8,000 to 14,000 words, whereas the vocabulary grows by another 5,000 words between
the ages of 9 and 11. Can figure out the meaning of words from the context.
2. Their mastery of grammar also improves
3. They are able to use passive voice.
4. Can use use conditional sentences, such as “If Sarah will set the table, I will wash the
dishes.”
5. In addition, children’s understanding of syntax, the rules that indicate how words and
phrases can be combined to form sentences, grows during middle childhood.
6. Can pronounce words quite accurately. However, certain phonemes, like j, v, th, and zh
sounds develops later.
7. They may have do may have difficulty decoding sentences when the meaning depends on
intonation, or tone of voice
8. Children become more competent in their use of pragmatics, the rules governing the use of
language to communicate in a given social setting.
9. For example, although children are aware of the rules of conversational turn-taking at the
start of the early childhood period, their use of these rules is sometimes primitive.
Metalinguistic awareness
● It is defined as an understanding of one’s own use of language.
● By the time children are five or six, they understand that language is governed
by a set of rules. Whereas in the early years they learn and comprehend
these rules implicitly, during middle childhood children come to understand
them more explicitly.
● Metalinguistic awareness helps children achieve comprehension when
information is fuzzy or incomplete.
● They can ask for clarification because they understand how
miscommunication can take place as well.
● Manipulating language and using it as a form of cognitive control through the
use of “self-talk” helps them to regulate their own behavior. Furthermore, the
effectiveness of their self-control grew as their linguistic capabilities
increased.
BILINGUALISM AND MULTILINGUALISM
● Bilingualism—the use of more than one language
● Multilingualism- more than 2 languages.

● Children can become bilingual in two ways:

(1) by acquiring both languages at the same time in early childhood or
(2) by learning a second language after acquiring the first.

● Children of bilingual parents who teach them both languages in infancy and
early childhood separate the language systems early on and attain early
language milestones according to a typical timetable.
Advantages-

● Children who become fluent in two languages develop denser synaptic

connections in areas of the left hemisphere devoted to language.
● Bilingual children and adults outperform others on tests of inhibition,
sustained and selective attention, flexible shifting, analytical reasoning,
concept formation, and false-belief understanding.
● They show greater cognitive flexibility.
● They can solve problems with greater creativity and versatility.
● They are also advanced in certain aspects of language awareness, such as
detection of errors in grammar, meaning, and conventions of conversation
(responding politely, relevantly, and informatively).
● Furthermore, learning in one’s native tongue is associated with higher
self-esteem in minority students.
Bilingual Education

● One approach to educating non-English speakers is bilingual education, in

which children are initially taught in their native language, while at the
same time learning English. With bilingual instruction, students are able to
develop a strong foundation in basic subject areas using their native
language. The ultimate goal of most bilingual education programs is to
gradually shift instruction into English.

● An alternative approach is to immerse students in English, teaching solely

in that language. To proponents of this approach, initially teaching students in
a language other than English hinders students’ efforts to learn English and
slows their integration into society.
 READING
● Reading involves a significant number of skills, from low-level cognitive skills
(the identification of single letters and associating letters with sounds) to
higher-level skills (matching written words with meanings located in long-term
memory and using context and background knowledge to determine the
meaning of a sentence).
Stages of Reading
How should we teach reading in school?
Two approaches

1. Code-based approaches to reading,

● They believe that reading should be taught by presenting the basic skills that
underlie reading.
● They emphasize the components of reading, such as the sounds of letters
and their combinations—phonics—and how letters and sounds are combined
to make words.
● They suggest that reading consists of processing the individual components
of words, combining them into words, and then using the words to derive the
meaning of written sentences and passages
Code based: refers to the alphabet as a code

- Focus on sounding out words

- Focus alphabet letters, letter groups and distinct speech sounds

- Emphasize learning and combining speech sound units that make up words
and applying them to sounding out unfamiliar words

- Teachers instruct children in learning the connection between spelling of words

and their speech sounds - and learning how to blend sounds together to form
words
2. Whole-language approach to reading-
● In this reading is viewed as a natural process, similar to the acquisition of oral
language.
● According to this view, children should learn to read through exposure to
complete writing—sentences, stories, poems, lists, charts, and other
examples of actual uses of writing.
● Instead of being taught to sound out words, children are encouraged to make
guesses about the meaning of words based on the context in which they
appear.
● Through such a trial-and-error approach, children come to learn whole words
and phrases at a time, gradually becoming proficient readers
For example, they would spend time each day reading real books. Their reading at
this level may rely more on picture cues than letter cues, but they were creating
meaning with print. Activities here would include picture reading, pretend reading,
echo reading, and choral reading.

A growing body of research suggests that the code-based approach to reading

instruction is superior to whole-language approaches. For example, one study
found not only that a group of children tutored in phonics for a year improved
substantially in their reading, compared to a group of good readers, but also that
the neural pathways involved in reading became closer to that of good readers
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT IN
ADOLESCENTS
Cognitive changes
The information processing perspective sees changes in adolescents’ cognitive
abilities as evidence of gradual transformations in the capacity to take in, use, and
store information.
● A number of progressive changes occur in the ways they organize their
thinking about the world, develop strategies for dealing with new situations,
sort facts, and achieve advances in memory capacity and perceptual abilities.
● Adolescents’ general intelligence—as measured by traditional IQ
tests—remains stable.
● Verbal, mathematical, and spatial abilities increase, making many adolescents
quicker with a comeback, impressive sources of information, and
accomplished athletes.
● Memory capacity grows, and adolescents become more adept at effectively
dividing their attention across more than one stimulus at a time—such as
simultaneously studying for a biology test and listening to music.
● Piaget noted, adolescents grow increasingly sophisticated in their understanding of
problems, their ability to grasp abstract concepts and to think hypothetically.
● Adolescents know more about the world, too.
● Their store of knowledge increases as the amount of material to which they are
exposed grows and their memory capacity enlarges. Taken as a whole, the mental
abilities that underlie intelligence show a marked improvement during adolescence.
● Metacognition is the knowledge that people have about their own thinking
processes and their ability to monitor their cognition. Although school-age children
can use some metacognitive strategies, adolescents are much more adept at
understanding their own mental processes.
● For example, as adolescents improve their understanding of their memory capacity,
they get better at gauging how long they need to study a particular kind of material
to memorize it for a test.
● These new abilities also can make adolescents particularly introspective and
self-conscious—two hallmarks of the period, which may produce a high degree of
egocentrism.
EGOCENTRISM IN THINKING
● Adolescents’ ability to reflect on their own thoughts, combined with physical
and psychological changes, leads them to think more about themselves.
● Piaget believed that a new form of egocentrism arises, in which adolescents
again have difficulty distinguishing their own and others’ perspective
● Adolescents’ newly sophisticated metacognitive abilities enable them to
readily imagine that others are thinking about them, and they may construct
elaborate scenarios about others’ thoughts.
● Adolescent egocentrism is a state of self-absorption in which the world is
viewed as focused on oneself. This egocentrism makes adolescents highly
critical of authority figures such as parents and teachers, unwilling to accept
criticism, and quick to find fault with others’ behavior
● The kind of egocentrism we see in adolescence helps explain why
adolescents sometimes perceive that they are the focus of everyone else’s
attention.
● Adolescents may develop what has been called an imaginary audience,
fictitious observers who pay as much attention to the adolescents’ behavior as
adolescents do themselves.
● The imaginary audience is usually perceived as focusing on the one thing that
adolescents think most about: themselves.
● For instance, a student sitting in a class may be sure a teacher is focusing on
her, and a teenager at a basketball game is likely to be convinced that
everyone around is focusing on the pimple on his chin.
● Egocentrism leads to a second distortion in thinking: the notion that one’s
experiences are unique.
● Adolescents develop personal fables, the view that what happens to them is
unique, exceptional, and shared by no one else.
● For instance, teenagers whose romantic relationships have ended may feel
that no one has ever experienced the hurt they feel, that no one has ever
been treated so badly, that no one can understand what they are going
through.
● Personal fables may also make adolescents feel invulnerable to the risks that
threaten others.
● Much of adolescents’ risk-taking may well be traced to the personal fables
they construct for themselves.
● They may think that there is no need to use condoms during sex because, in
the personal fables they construct, pregnancy and sexually transmitted
infections such as AIDS only happen to other kinds of people, not to them.
They may drive after drinking because their personal fables paint them as
careful drivers, always in control