CHILD PSYCHOLOGY

Child Psychology

Table of Contents

Introduction1

Discussion1

Stages of language development1

There are three stages of language development.1

First stage (Babbling)1

Second stage (holophase)2

Third stage2

Definition of language3

Animals' capability of acquiring languages3

Theories of language development4

The Learning Theory4

The Nativist Theory5

Conclusion5

Child Psychology

Introduction

The child's process to communicate and understand language during the early period of childhood is called language development. A child pace of developing language is very rapid from birth to five years of age. There are three main stages of language development is same among humans, although, the pace and age of a child reaching a particular phase, may vary (Jill, et al, 2001, pp. 368-376).

Discussion

Stages of language development

There are three stages of language development.

First stage (Babbling)

The first stage of language development is babbling during infancy, also known as pre-linguistic or cooing stage. It is recognized that babies can sense little differentiation between English phonemes, such as “ba” and “pa” or “ga” and “da”. They do not, however, relate it with meanings to the differences until 12 months (Jill, et al, 2001, pp. 368-376).

Crying and vegetative noises are common during infancy. The duration of this stage is 3-9 months, characterized by vowel sounds like “aaaa” or “ooo”. By the age, of four; babies smile and make cooing noises to engage with their caregivers like gurgles. The sounds, however, are not completely speech-like, and there are vowels like open mouth noises and closure like sound of consonant, though it does not make a complete syllable (http://www.livestrong.com). However, between 4-10 months, infants produce canonical babbling or speech like syllables, with a complete resonant vowel and a correct "closure" like consonant. During 6-8 months, the vocalization range grows, though not all attribute to human phonemes. Studies reveal that even congenitally deaf infants babble. During 10-12 months, the sound range narrows and babies babble in reduplicated syllables such as “dadada” or “bababa” etc (http://www.livestrong.com).

Second stage (holophase)

The first words appear during 9-15 months i.e. the sounds that babies produce single words fairly and somewhat resembles to word sounded by adults. This stage is called holophase or one word stage in language development. Infants at this stage are capable of comprehending language almost twice as rapidly as they produce the sound (http://www.livestrong.com).

The characteristic about these words are that they relate to a specific situation. For example, a child would utter “car” on getting a glimpse of car roofs from the balcony (Jill, et al, 2001, pp. 368-376). This is followed by word spurt, i.e. explosion of new words. Studies estimate approximately nine new words per day during 2 to 18 years of age. The first 50 words is almost universally similar in children like names of pets, toys, family members etc. the Child Development Institute suggests that, children between the 18 months to 2 years of age starts understanding pronouns like you and me (to interact with the caregivers) and begins forming short sentences (http://www.livestrong.com).

Third stage

The third stage begins from the age of 18 months. Children start using two word sentences comprising of nouns and verbs like ...