Theories of language acquisition

Prior to the advent of generative grammar, theoretical approaches to language development relied heavily upon the concepts ofdifferential reinforcement andimitation. Current studies of linguistic acquisition are largely dominated by the hypothesis that the child constructs his language on the basis of a primitive grammar which gradually evolves into a more complex grammar. This approach presupposes that the investigator does not impose his own grammatical rules on the utterances of the child; that the sound system of the child and the rules he employs to form sentences are to be described in their own terms, independently of the model provided by the adult linguistic community; and that there is a series of steps or stages through which the child passes on his way toward mastery of the adult grammar in his linguistic environment. This paper attempts to trace the development of human vocalization through prelinguistic stages to the development of what can be clearly recognized as language behavior, and then progresses to transitional phases in which the language of the child begins to approximate that of the adult model. In the view of the authors, the most challenging problems which confront theories of linguistic acquisition arise in seeking to account for structure of sound sequences, in the rules that enable the speaker to go from meaning to sound and which enable the listener to go from sound to meaning. The principal area of concern for the investigator, according to the authors, is the discovery of those rules at various stages of the learning process. The paper concludes with a return to the question of what constitutes an adequate theory of language ontogenesis. It is suggested that such a theory will have to be keyed to theories of cognitive development and will have to include and go beyond a theory which accounts for adult language competence and performance, since these represent only the terminal stage of linguistic ontogenesis.     

Updating the Baldwin effect : The biological levels behind Piaget's new theory

In 1964, Conrad Waddington (1905–1975) presented a paper in Geneva that led to an internal reassessment of the biological underpinnings of Jean Piaget's (1896–1980) theory. This in turn resulted in an overhaul of the theoretical framework upon which his stage theory of child development had been based, including his appeals to James Mark Baldwin's (1861–1934) “circular reaction.” In addition to leading to the emergence of what has elsewhere been called “Piaget's new theory,” this renovation also resulted in the update of the famous “Baldwin Effect.” Because aspects of the subsequent framework are of contemporary significance, this essay will review some of the work leading up to those updates. In reaching behind the translations to trace the sources of the arguments to which Piaget appealed, the resulting examination fills some of the gaps found in the secondary literature without quibbling over the “correct” English interpretation of translated French terms. We also go beyond how Piaget's writings have been understood in English and extract some useful additional ideas from his sources, including how to conceive of the social context in which development takes place. We see as a result how Waddington and his colleagues, including Paul Weiss (1898–1989), provided a constructive “existence proof” for the formal hierarchy of levels that Piaget had come to by other means.     

Holding the Baby in Mind: Discussion of Joseph Lichtenberg's “Communication in Infancy”

Joseph Lichtenberg suggests that infants are held in their caregivers' symbolic world before they create one of their own. This idea is addressed from the perspective of parental reflective functioning. This construct offers a means of further understanding how a caregiver's capacity to elaborate upon the mental life of her child sets the stage for the child's internal experiences becoming known and developed or distorted and stunted within the context of the relationship. These ideas both complement and expand upon the research and theoretical work described by Lichtenberg in his consideration of the development of communication with self and other in infancy.     

Ghostbusting Transgenerational Processes

Transgenerational processes contribute to organizing and disorganizing attachment. The past (in all its forms and potentialities) lives on in the present, influencing the affective field of the parent–child intersubjective matrix. In a child's construction of self, he or she may run up against the confounding presence of ghosts: the dissociated, and thereby unreflected upon past of their parents. This implicitly felt, yet explicitly unknown transmission interferes in the processing of emergent experience and impedes the child's development.

Attachment theory, informed by psychoanalysis, and nonlinear dynamic systems theory, is the main theoretical underpinning of this paper's examination of the mechanisms involved in the transfer of dissociated dynamics from parent to child. The child's symptoms grow out of an incoherent affective field that defies representational mapping into a flexible usable theory of mind. Through play a child therapist finds openings to enter the attachment system, reflecting on how a child's experience is being felt, yet unthought about by both child and parents. A parent's recognition process, thereby making what was implicitly felt explicit and consequently more coherent, supports the child in his or her efforts to reorganize aspects of the attachment relationship. Both clinical experience and quotations from literary works are woven into this paper in an attempt to convey the texture, emotional depth, and universality of the subject under discussion.     

A Child Therapist at Work: Playing,Talking, and the Therapist’s Inner Dialogue

The author reflects on his work with a child patient struggling with affect regulation, loss, and his adoption through a detailed process account of the treatment with a focus on the therapist’s inner dialogue in relation to the child’s play and words—how each affects the other. Drawing from his personal use of clinical theory stemming from multiple theoretical influences, the author shows how his associations, identifications, and tentative formulations inform his work and how the various transference/countertransference matrices influence his inner dialogue. Attention is paid to the movement from the therapist as an object within the patient’s closed system to a system that gradually becomes more open, in which the patient is able to take in the therapist’s own person as they come upon various ways to communicate and build a narrative together.     

Sartre,Developmental Psychology and Burgeoning Self-Awareness: Ricocheting from Being to Nothingness

While the genesis of self-awareness at approximately 18 months old is a dramatic landmark in human development, there is at this stage no explicit awareness on the toddler's part of his/her truly standing apart from others. Only much later does a distinct sense of self shift into focus, and here Sartre provides us with a compelling theory of a first reflective experience of self-awareness. He explains this phenomenon by emphasizing a violent shift in ontological status, one in which the pre-adolescent child is precipitated from functional unity with a primary caregiver to an individuated state involving self-awareness as privative, i.e. where the child becomes aware of existing only in the form of not-being-the-adult. For Sartre this new experience of self is not therefore positive but rather formal or empty; there has in fact been a psychic transition, from being to nothingness. In addition, Sartre also states that all children first explicitly experience themselves in this fashion. These claims find support in the work of developmental psychologist Margaret Mahler. In fact, in spite of the vast developmental discrepancies between toddler and pre-adolescent child, given the appropriate environmental triggers privative subjectivity will be shown to involve a regression to the much earlier rapprochement stage of development described by Mahler.     

Operating principles in repetitive babbling: A cognitive continuity approach

A case study of the period of repetitive babbling in one child (Dutch) is reported. A cognitive continuity theory is presented, which views repetitive babbling as a systematic, continuous and largely self-directed process of exploration, during which the child uses certain operating principles in the construction of his own ‘springboard’ to speech.Two operating principles identified are: a combination principle, consisting of the combining of articulatory acts which previously have been exercised separately, and a variation principle, consisting of the trying out of the same type of articulatory act in different articulatory contexts.Four stages are distinguished in the development of repetitive babbling. In the first stage no combinations occur, in the second stage combination mainly takes the form of repetition and in the third stage it takes the form of concatenating different babbling types as well. In the fourth stage the concatenations grow more varied and less repetitive in character. The subsequent stages of jargon babbling and first words are discussed shortly and their continuity with repetitive babbling is pointed out.     

Career education in france: New objectives and new methods

The objective of French vocational counselling services has changed in recent years from that of matching young people with the occupation to which they are best suited, to that of teaching individuals how to construct career goals. This paper presents a historical overview of career education techniques in France. In particular, it outlines the ADVP (Activation of Personal and Vocational Development) method, the first to have a major impact. Among the other techniques discussed are the PPPP (Psychopedagogy of Personal and Career Planning) and the DAPP (Discovery of Employment Activities and Personal Plans): the former closely resembles the ADVP but is founded on the work of Wallon; the second - based on cognitive dissonance theory - aims at encouraging students to reflect upon and involve themselves in the process of increasing their chances of acquiring the necessary qualifications for the professional activities to which they aspire. The principles underlying these three methods are examined, as is the research conducted to assess their effectiveness.     

Role adjustment as the unit of analysis for researching child development during the transition to school

While child development is well-recognized as a complex process which could hardly be decomposed into separate lines or domains in contemporary psychological theories, the decomposition approach is widely used in empirical studies. Based on the cultural-historical theory, this study argues for adopting the unit of analysis as a way to bridge this gap, and finds “role adjustment” as a suitable unit to analyse child development during the transition to school. The case of a 5-year-old second-generation Chinese Australian child's transition to school (with a total of 34 h of observation and 5 h of interview) is presented to verify its feasibility and to illustrate how it could be achieved in a research practice. The case study demonstrates that a child's role adjustment is in essence a process of transforming his/her role system, during which his/her major roles, the relation of the major roles, as well as his/her role-taking patterns change as a whole, and by tracing a child's role adjustment trajectory, how the child is learning and developing, what difficulties he/she encounter, and why these difficulties appear become clear.     

“Polarity,Paradox and the Organizing Process in Development”; Parent-Infant Psychotherapy and Child Analytic Technique: In Honor of Louis Sander

ABSTRACT

A child analysis and a subsequent family therapy are presented and discussed in terms of Sander’s monumental contributions to infant-parent development and clinical theory. I draw on earlier discussions with Sander on these topics and note how his insights validate a certain kind of child analytic technique I practice.     

RECOVERING THE FATHER IN MIND AND FLESH: HISTORY,TRIADIC FUNCTIONING,AND DEVELOPMENTAL IMPLICATIONS

This paper aims to restore the father and paternal function to their rightful place alongside the mother and maternity in order to counter the prevailing matricentric, dyadic bias in psychoanalytic theory and technique. The author contends that both the symbolic and the actual, flesh‐and‐blood father are necessary to optimize his child's development. The paternal function inevitably operates in a triadic matrix; thirdness is always psychically in existence—with the father ever present in the mother's unconscious mind—and the paternal third is necessary to open up symbolic space. As an embodied other, the actual father, both as a separating agent and an attracting object, is called upon to recognize his child's otherness throughout the inescapable father–child rivalries, neglect, and desire.     

Rigorous Experiments on Monkey Love: An Account of Harry F. Harlow’s Role in the History of Attachment Theory

On the basis of personal reminiscences an account is given of Harlow’s role in the development of attachment theory and key notions of attachment theory are being discussed. Among other things, it is related how Harlow arrived at his famous research with rhesus monkeys and how this made Harlow a highly relevant figure for attachment theorist Bowlby.

Language in the two-year old

Two stages in the vocabulary development of two-year-olds are reported. In the earlier Receptive stage, the child says many fewer nouns than he understands and says no verbs at all although he understands many. The child then begins to close the comprehension/production gap, entering a Productive stage in which he says virtually all the nouns he understands plus his first verbs. Frequency and length of word combinations correlate with these vocabulary stages.     

威廉·斯特恩的儿童人格发展观及其历史效应

威廉·斯特恩是被历史遮蔽的现代儿童发展心理学的重要创建者,对儿童人格发展理论作出了原创性卓越贡献。他以批判人格主义为哲学基础提出了人文科学取向的儿童人格发展观,主要表现在整体论、过程论和情境论三个维面。他认为儿童人格发展是多元统一的整合性发展,是主动、动力、辩证、独特和开放的过程性发展,是内在于生活世界的情境性发展。他的观点为奥尔波特和勒温、维果茨基、皮亚杰、彪勒及里格尔等人的儿童发展理论提供了直接或间接思想来源。     

对皮亚杰理论忽视社会因素作用的不同认识

皮亚杰关于社会因素对儿童认知发展的作用问题,长期受到一些心理学家的批评。针对这些批评,本文首先简要叙述了批评者批评皮亚杰忽视社会因素作用的理论依据。接着,对皮亚杰有关社会因素的主要论述进行了分析。最后,对社会因素在皮亚杰儿童认知发展理论中的作用作出了与批评者不同的评价。