Support Interactionism In Children

actionism
Interactionism is a combination of behaviourism and innatism. It involves both sides of the nature vs nurture debate. The theory of interactionism explains that both behaviourism and innatism are responsible for children to acquire language.
Behaviourism involves children learning through imitation and developing language from outsider sources such as parents and the living environment around them. Behaviourism is seen as the nurture side.
Innatism: Explains that children only learn whatever language is spoken around them and there is a part of the brain that contains knowledge of what is and isn’t possible when acquiring language from birth and that the human mind must be predisposed to learning language.
Interactionism is supported

by many forms of evidence such as the Child direct theory.
Children are born with an instinctive ability to solve linguistic puzzles and they have a natural ability to extract linguistic features from their surrounding environment. All of this is supported by general cognitive ability and to some parent/caregiver speech.

I support interactionism as it combines both aspects of behaviourism and innatism.

I believe that children need to interact with other native language speakers to be able to learn and develop important linguistic abilities but I also believe that children have an instinctive ability to solve problems and learn from birth. Many feral children studies have such as ‘Genie’ have shown that children have a critical period for learning language and many other functions. Genie was locked up in her room for 11 years from ages 2-13. When she was released from her parents care she demonstrated no understanding of language. Although nobody knows if Genies difficulties in language suggests that she was born with a deficiency or if her nurturing turned her into the person she

is.

Halliday’s 7 functions of language:
- instrumental: language used to fulfil a need on the part of a speaker. Directly concerned in gaining food, drink and comfort.
- Regulatory: language used to influence the behaviour of others.
- Interactional: language used to develop social relationships and ease the process of interaction
- Personal: Language used to express the personal preferences and identity of the speaker. Sometimes
- referred to as the ‘Here I am!’ function announcing oneself to the world.
- Representational: Language used to exchange information. Concerned with relaying or requesting information
- Heuristic: Language used to learn and explore the environment. Child uses language to learn
- Imaginative: Language used to explore the imagination. May also accompany play as children create imaginary worlds, or may arise from storytelling.

Language acquisition stages

Stage Age Features
Pre-verbal 0-5 Months No language is spoken
Babbling 5 Months Babbling is a stage in child development and a stage in language acquisition when a child is experimenting with sounds, but is unable to produce any proper words.
One-word stage 12-18 Months The one word stage is the second stage of language acquisition. This is when toddlers begin to imitate sounds and put sounds to meaning.

Two-word stage 18-24 Months The two word stage is the third stage. This is when toddlers combine new words together to make sentences however they are only two words. These fragments only contain content words. E.g. mama food
Telegraphic stage
(Multi Word Stage) 24-30 Months The telegraphic stage is the final stage of language acquisition. At this stage children are able to piece together a few words together. It still won’t make sense grammatically but you will be able to understand what they are trying to say.

Acquisition of different subsystems
Phonology: Children learn sounds in a systematic way. They identify patterns in words but don’t use the correct phonemes. They usually pronounce words that are very similar the same such as a study case named Nadia. Nadia pronounces ‘Pat’ (pæt) as bæt, and goat and coat as goʊ̯t.
Lexicon and semantics: When children are learning language they tend to overgeneralise objects for example.

They may call all circular objects soccer because they all have the shape of a soccer ball in common. Children may under generalise in situations such as calling all things that you read books for instance. As a child’s awareness increases their vocabulary grows and they will start to label objects correctly and understand that words are related.
Morphology and syntax: one of the most common tests for testing grammar is called the wug test. It was created by a psycholinguist named Jean Berko Gleason. The test consisted of a made up creature that she named a ‘wug’ and she has 2 more wugs next to it. She asked the children what two wugs are called and they came up with the word WUGZ.
The rule of plurals for young children can be quite difficult. Children do not simply memorise what each plural sound is but they have created a rule by themselves of plural use which they can use on words that they have never heard before. This shows that children don’t necessarily imitate others in every

situation.

Learning Language Children vs adults.
The ability to learn a second language is only accomplishable after establishing a first language. There is a difference between second language learning and second language acquisition, learning a second language occurs in the conscious state of the brain and acquiring language happens in the subconscious system according to Stephen Krashen from the University of Southern California.

Adults have different ways to understand unknown languages. Dr Paul Thompson from UCLA conducted a study about this topic. His findings showed that children use an area in their brain called the deep motor area, this area processes activity that occurs without thinking consciously such as breathing, blinking and reading a sentence. The deep motor area makes learning language for a child a natural occurrence. This means that children acquire language instinctively. Adults, on the other hand have to think about the processes when they are learning a second language as when you turn 18 the deep motor area contracts in size. This means that adults have to use information that is sourced from an active area.

Another difference is that adults are able to understand thinking cognitively wheras children haven’t developed cognative abilities to a standard of an adult. This means that children cannot develop their formal operational thought. Formal operational though is when you can combine and analyse objects or speech in a more detailed way. Adults use this ability to understand metalanguage, this means that adults can determine the sentences implied meaning and distinguish key information and children may find these skills difficult such as if somebody said “this light is very bright”, the child may have difficulty understanding that the lights may be too bright and the person would like them to be turned off or dimmed.

The final major difference between children and adults is that children are not aware of social attitudes that they put on language. They produce utterances easily compared to adults that are usually very self conscious about learning a second language as they analyse it too much and are mainly focused on correcting their own grammar and making sure their pronunciation is correct. Whereas children almost naturally absorb a second language from their environment which is a great example of behaviourism.

One thing that children and adults commonly do though is learn through imitation, adults may do this by watching movies or tv shows in the language they are learning or other sources that derive from nature speakers and children often learn from their environment such as their parents, teachers or family members.

To summarise, children and adults both learn language in two very different ways but they do have their commonalities. They both learn through imitation as their main method of acquiring and learning language.