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Chapter 3: Psychosocial Aspects of Language Acquisition

I. Aims

In this chapter, we will examine the nature-nurture controversy, we will

discuss briefly about psychosocial aspects of language acquisition, and we will
analyze the relationship between language acquisition and cognition.

II. Development
As Hickman, Maya (1992: 9) points out, language acquisition does not
take place in a vacuum. As children acquire language, they acquire a sign
system which bears important relationships to both cognitive and social aspects
of their life.

Important questions:

- What is the status of language in developmental theories?

- How different theories define language and interpret its development?
- How language, thought, and social interaction interrelate in the child’s
life?

Different units of analysis are used to evaluate child’s cognitive skills; as a

result; researchers have explained in a different way the interrelationship
between language, cognitive development, and social interaction. Bellow, you will
find a brief summary of the main assumptions of Piaget and Vytsky theories, as
they were presented by Hickman (1992). As the author explains (ibidem: 10),
both theories relate social interaction and cognitive development and they also
relate social interaction and language. The two theories are compatible in relation

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to sensorimotor period (early child development), but diverge with regards to later
developments.

Piaget
Piaget observed children playing in various situations with objects of
various kinds and evaluated their cognitive skills in those circumstances. Some
of his main conclusions were:

- Child development before the emergence of language is characterized

by a gradually more complex organization of means and ends in sensorimotor
activity;
- Individual cognitive processes are primary in development; a child goes
through different stages of development: St1 → St2→St3→ …→Stn
- Child’s cognitive development results from the internalization of the
means and ends organization of sensorimotor activity; first cognitive
representations are “internal imitations” of external actions;
- Cognitive development is autonomous from language development and
prior to it; in earlier stages of development (pre-operational thought and concrete
operations language is neither necessary nor sufficient); in higher stages (formal
operations language may be necessary for some forms of reasoning);
- Children’s use of language is one among many behaviours following
from autonomous principles of organization and mechanisms of development;
- The dynamic mechanisms that move cognitive development are the
processes of adaptation (assimilation and accommodation); these mechanisms
help the child to interact with his environment by adjusting reality to his cognitive
organization and adjusting his cognitive organization to reality. In other words,
the child continuously assimilates new structures and accommodates her

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previous structures to integrate the new ones. Assimilation and accommodation

are central processes of acquisition and learning.

Vygotsky

Vygotsky interpreted children’s cognitive skills in terms of the notion of the

“zone of the proximal development,” that is the relation between two types of
children’s problem-solving behaviours: (1) their behaviours when they solve a
problem in social interactions, particularly those in which they receive some
adult’s guidance (interpsychological behaviours); (2) their behaviours when they
can solve the problem on their own (intrapsychological behaviours). Some of his
most important observations were:

- Child development before the emergence of language is characterized

by a gradually more complex organization of means and ends in sensorimotor
activity;
- Social interaction is primary in development; children’s participation in
social life interaction is a primary factor for cognitive development;
- Language development is the principal motor of development; it
mediates the child’s participation in both the intellectual and social life (principles
and mechanisms of cognitive development are not independent from the signs);
language development is at the center of the “social line of development” which
interacts with “the natural line of development” in ontogenesis and in
phylogenesis;
- As children mature, the relationship between interpsychological and
intrapsychological behaviours change for a given task; so that they gradually
come to solve on their own problems that they could earlier solve only partially,
or not at all, except through interaction with adults; gradually, the regulative

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behaviour of adults in interactive contexts becomes part of children’s own

behaviour.

Other researchers (e.g. Klima and Belugi 1966; Slobin 1970, Brown 1973)
have explored the issue of language acquisition. In general, all theories of
language acquisition claim that:
- There are similarities in language learning behavior of young children, no
matter what language they are learning, all children go through similar
stages of language development, such as:

Age Stage of Language Development

Birth Crying
6 weeks Cooing
6 months Babbling
8 months Intonation patterns
1 year One-word utterances
18 months Two-word utterances
2 years Word inflections
2 years and 3 months Questions, negatives
5 years Complex constructions

Those stages are not language-specific; no matter what language children

learn, they go through those same stages.
Comparative language acquisition studies have also shown that there is
an universal order of acquisition of language structures. For instance, in the
years 70s, Roger Brown conducted a number of morpheme studies and
concluded that children acquire grammatical morphemes in the fixed order,
although the rate at which they learn those morphemes may vary. In regards to

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negation, for example, children all over the world not only acquire negatives
around the same age, they also mark the negative in similar ways in all
languages: first, they attach some negative marker to the outside of the sentence
(e.g. no go to bed), then, they move the negative marker to inside the sentence
(eg. There no cats; You can´t dance). Those studies have shown that child
language is governed by rules; even if initially the rules children create do not
correspond to the adult ones; children think and develop hypotheses about
language. They follow rules and this explains their resistance to correction.

III. Summary

In this chapter, we examined the nature-nurture controversy, we briefly

discussed some issues regarding psychosocial aspects of language acquisition,
and we analyzed the relationship between language acquisition and cognition.

IV. References

Campbell, Robin N. “Language Acquisition and Cognition.” Fletcher, Paul and

Michael Garman Eds. Language Acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1992, 30-48.
Hickmann, Maia. “Psychosocial Aspects of Language Acquisition.” Fletcher, Paul
and Michael Garman Eds. Language Acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1992, 9-29.

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V. Questions and Activities

1. Do a library and internet research and write a brief essay (no more than
30 lines) explaining the meaning of cognition and its relationship with
language acquisition.
2. On the basis of your previous knowledge, summarize and contrast the
ideas of Skinner and Chomsky about the process of first language
acquisition in regards to: vision of language; role of environment; role of
mind; role of imitation.
3. Observe a verbal interaction between a young child (2-3 years old) and
an adult. Record it, if you can. Then, describe it, and analyze it on the
basis of Skinner, Chomsky, Piaget, and Vygostsky´s theories.

Compiled by Carla M.A. Maciel