Language And Social Understanding In Children Essay

Discuss the relation between language and social understanding in young children.

A child goes through various stages in language development before they have a complete social understanding. When a child is born, they already have perceptual abilities, and can understand the speech sounds of any language, but, by 12 months the child loses that ability, and their understand of the sounds in their own language increases. Werker and Tees (1984) conducted an experiment and found that infants of 6-8 months could distinguish changes in speech sound, but by the time they were a year old, the could no longer hear the differences. Around 11-12 months, a child will begin to speak their first words, and will begin to apply labels and begin to name things, which stems from their pretend play. By 2 to 3 years old, a child will begin to understand everything that is said to them, and by 3 and a half years, their speech becomes more adult like. By 4 and a half years on, children have a much better understanding of language, and an understanding of metacommunication, such as tone, body language

and facial expressions. They need less cues from others when unsure about their environment, which is lacked in young infants, as they depend mostly on their parents for help.
Joint attention is usually used by infants, due to their lack of speech. Joint attention can be pointing, gaze or social referencing. The use of pointing is usually to make requests or to direct adults attention to something. Brooks and Meltzoff (2008) measured gaze direction in children. They said that the success that infants have in following others gaze predicts their vocabulary development in later life. In the study, the infants sat on their mothers lap with an object placed on either side of them. The experimenter would then turn to look at each object, without expressing any emotion or saying anything to the child, and the gaze direction and duration by the child was measured. Brooks and Metlzoff tested their vocabulary at 2 years using Communicative Developmental Inventory, a standardised measure for vocabulary. It was found that the children who followed the gaze and looked longer at the objects had a significantly faster vocabulary growth than those who looked at the objects for less time. They also measured pointing, and also found that the childs pointing stimulated larger vocabulary growth. Social referencing is the child looking towards their parents when faced with something unknown, and look to them for support. An example of this is the study done by Gibson and Walk in 1960 called the Visual Cliff. A table was constructed, with a pattern on one half of the table, and a piece of glass on the other half, on the floor was the same pattern, showing depth perception. A child would then be placed on the table, and their mother on either side of the table. When the mother would stand on the side where the pattern was, the child would walk about freely, but when the mother stood on the side with the glass, the child wouldn’t step or go onto the class in fear of falling. The study was originally done on animals, but on the first human test, an 18 month old boy, he refused to step on the glass, and when placed on the glass, would hold onto the wooden support and would pull himself towards the experimenter (Walk and Gibson, 1961, p.23). Lev Vygotsky rejects Piaget’s argument the children construct knowledge on their own, which is shown in the study, that the child would not step on the glass because they were not told that they could, and they had no prior knowledge to depth perception. A lack of metacommunication in the child explains how they would not venture onto the glass, as they had no guidance from anyone because they did not display any expressions or guidance.
Theory of Mind refers to the knowledge that thoughts, beliefs and emotions are the backbone of human behaviour.

A good Theory of Mind allows an individual to understand other peoples beliefs, mental states and knowing what other people want. A False Belief task is used to assess a childs Theory of Mind and is concerned with the childs understanding that another person’s mental perspective can be different from theirs. An example of the False Belief Task involves Person A placing an object in Location A. Person B moves the object to Location B, then when Person A returns for the object, the correct answer is that Person A will look in Location A for the object, instead of Location B. Children under the age of four cannot understand how the other person sees the situation i.e. Person A. Children over the age of four are more likely to correctly guess where Person A will look for the

object.