The acquisition of language by children

Abstract

I magine that you are faced with the following challenge. You must discover the internal structure of a system that contains tens of thousands of units, all generated from a small set of materials. These units, in turn, can be assembled into an infinite number of combinations. Although only a subset of those combinations is correct, the subset itself is for all practical purposes infinite. Somehow you must converge on the structure of this system to use it to communicate. And you are a very young child.This system is human language. The units are words, the materials are the small set of sounds from which they are constructed, and the combinations are the sentences into which they can be assembled. Given the complexity of this system, it seems improbable that mere children could discover its underlying structure and use it to communicate. Yet most do so with eagerness and ease, all within the first few years of life.Below we describe three recent lines of research that examine language learning, comprehension, and genesis by children. We begin by asking how infants break into the system, finding the words within the acoustic stream that serves as input to language learning. We then consider how children acquire the ability to rapidly combine linguistic elements to determine the relationships between these elements. Finally, we examine how children impose grammatical structure onto their perceived input, even to the extent of creating a new language when none is available. These investigations provide insight into the ways in which children extract, manipulate, and create the complex structures that exist within natural languages. Discovering the Units of LanguageBefore infants can begin to map words onto objects in the world, they must determine which sound sequences are words. To do so, infants must uncover at least some of the units that belong to their native language from a largely continuous stream of sounds in which words are seldom surrounded by pauses. Despite the difficulty of this reverse-engineering problem, infants successfully segment words from fluent speech from Ϸ7 months of age.How do infants learn the units of their native language so rapidly? One fruitful approach to answering this question has been to present infants with miniature artificial languages that embody specific aspects of natural language structure. Once an infant has been familiarized with a sample of this language, a new sample, or a sample from a different language, is presented to the infant. Subtle measures of surprise (e.g., duration of looking toward the new sounds) are then used to assess whether the infant perceives the new sample as more of the same, or something different. In this fashion, we can ask what the infant extracted from the artificial language, which can lead to insights regarding the learning mechanisms underlying the earliest stages of language acquisition (1).One important discovery using this technique has come from the work of Saffran and colleagues (2-5), who have examined the powerful role that statisti...

From two systems to a multi-systems architecture for mindreading

“…Statistical and causal learning will generate increasingly differentiated representations of these features and relations amongst them. Statistical learning is known to play a powerful role in the segmentation of speech sounds into words (Saffran, Senghas, & Trueswell, 2001), and is likely to play a similar role in segmenting core agentic structure. Causal learning will similarly help to differentiate key features and structures, but as well as pattern it identifies causal properties.…”

Effects of age and practice in sequence learning: A graded account of ageing, learning, and control

“…Does it wane with age, or is it in contrast relatively robust (Reber, 1993)? Many recent studies have explored these issues in the context of cognitive development (Bremner, Mareschal, Destrebecqz, & Cleeremans, 2007;Maybery, Taylor, & O'Brien-Malone, 1995;Meulemans, van der Linden, & Perruchet, 1998;Pacton, Fayol, & Perruchet, 2005;Pacton, Perruchet, Fayol, & Cleeremans, 2001;Saffran, Aslin, & Newport, 1996;Saffran, Senghas, & Trueswell, 2001;Thomas et al, 2004;Thomas & Nelson, 2001;Vinter & Perruchet, 2000, 2002. Likewise, several recent studies have been dedicated to assess implicit learning at the other end of the lifespan (for recent reviews, see Light, Prull, La Voie, & Healy, 2000;Prull, Gabrieli, & Bunge, 2000).…”

Enhancing Young Hispanic Dual Language Learners' Achievement: Exploring Strategies and Addressing Challenges

“…A. Collins, 2014;Hammer et al, 2014;Hoff, Rumiche, Burridge, Ribot, & Welsh, 2014;Isbell, 2002;E. A. Ortiz, 2009;Saffran, Senghas, & Trueswell, 2001).…”

“…A. Collins, 2014;Hammer et al, 2014;Hoff, Rumiche, Burridge, Ribot, & Welsh, 2014;Isbell, 2002;E. A. Ortiz, 2009;Saffran, Senghas, & Trueswell, 2001).Because of the variety of contributors to this process, when a young Hispanic DLL first participates in an early education program, his or her linguistic proficiency may vary from minimal in both languages; fluent in Spanish, but not in English; competent in everyday English social conversations, but not in the type of language used in classrooms to learn different academic subjects (and often referred to as academic language); to fully proficient in both languages (Espinosa, 2008;Genesee, 2010;Grant, 1995;Oades-Sese, Esquivel, Kaliski, & Maniatis, 2011;Páez & Rinaldi, 2006;Place & Hoff, 2011;Tabors & Snow, 2001).Data from national surveys also supports the link between home language environments and uneven Hispanic DLL proficiency in speaking and understanding English upon school entry. In 2000, an estimated 75% of Hispanic children in immigrant families were living with at least one parent who did not speak English exclusively or very well, and half lived with two parents with limited English skills (Hernandez, 2006).…”