Discussion: Language and Symbol Weaving - Conflicting or Complementing views?

Families everywhere get excited when their baby begins to talk. As you read in your texts, infants verbal communication skills become increasingly complex in the short span of only a couple of years. "Da-da" or "ma-ma" soon becomes "daddy" or "mommy" and approximately at the end of the second year, young children communicate in short sentences.

This week, you also learned that scientists have developed a number of different theories about how/and for what purpose)children learn to speak. Two seemingly contrasting proposals emerge from these theories:

1. When it comes to language, infants teach themselves, and they do this primarily so they can make sense of the world around them. From this point of view, language acquisition is primarily a cognitive task, emotional, and interactive endeavor through social interaction with peers, and primarily for the purpose of social interaction.

One of your friends is expecting her first child. She is part of a small group of first-time parents who are eager to learn all they can about child development. Knowing that you are currently enrolled in a child development course your friend asks you to provide the group with information about language development.

Considering all that you read this week about children and language development:

Which theory or combination of theories would use for your presentation, and why? Which position or combination of positions about the goals of language learning and use would you incorporate, and why?

Read and cite sources.

The developing child in the 21st century: A Global Perspective on Child Development. Chapter 5, "The Child As Symbol User and Symbol Weaver."

Berger, K.S. (2016). The developing person through childhood (7th ed.). New York N.Y. Worth Publishers. Chapter 6, "The First Two years: Cognitive Development. Review the "Theories of Language Learning" section (pp-193-194).

Groves Gillespie, L., & Hunter, A. (2010). Believe, watch, act!: Promoting pro-social behaviour in infants and toddlers. Young children, 65(1), 42-43.

Hamlin, J.K. Wynn, K., & Bloom, P. (2007, November 22). Social evaluation by pre-verbal infants. Nature, 450 (7169), 557.