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Children begin to learn about language from a very early age ( [link] ). In fact, it appears that this is occurring even before we are born. Newborns show preference for their mother’s voice and appear to be able to discriminate between the language spoken by their mother and other languages. Babies are also attuned to the languages being used around them and show preferences for videos of faces that are moving in synchrony with the audio of spoken language versus videos that do not synchronize with the audio (Blossom&Morgan, 2006; Pickens, 1994; Spelke&Cortelyou, 1981).
| Stage | Age | Developmental Language and Communication |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0–3 months | Reflexive communication |
| 2 | 3–8 months | Reflexive communication; interest in others |
| 3 | 8–13 months | Intentional communication; sociability |
| 4 | 12–18 months | First words |
| 5 | 18–24 months | Simple sentences of two words |
| 6 | 2–3 years | Sentences of three or more words |
| 7 | 3–5 years | Complex sentences; has conversations |
In the fall of 1970, a social worker in the Los Angeles area found a 13-year-old girl who was being raised in extremely neglectful and abusive conditions. The girl, who came to be known as Genie, had lived most of her life tied to a potty chair or confined to a crib in a small room that was kept closed with the curtains drawn. For a little over a decade, Genie had virtually no social interaction and no access to the outside world. As a result of these conditions, Genie was unable to stand up, chew solid food, or speak (Fromkin, Krashen, Curtiss, Rigler,&Rigler, 1974; Rymer, 1993). The police took Genie into protective custody.
Genie’s abilities improved dramatically following her removal from her abusive environment, and early on, it appeared she was acquiring language—much later than would be predicted by critical period hypotheses that had been posited at the time (Fromkin et al., 1974). Genie managed to amass an impressive vocabulary in a relatively short amount of time. However, she never developed a mastery of the grammatical aspects of language (Curtiss, 1981). Perhaps being deprived of the opportunity to learn language during a critical period impeded Genie’s ability to fully acquire and use language.
You may recall that each language has its own set of phonemes that are used to generate morphemes, words, and so on. Babies can discriminate among the sounds that make up a language (for example, they can tell the difference between the “s” in vision and the “ss” in fission); early on, they can differentiate between the sounds of all human languages, even those that do not occur in the languages that are used in their environments. However, by the time that they are about 1 year old, they can only discriminate among those phonemes that are used in the language or languages in their environments (Jensen, 2011; Werker&Lalonde, 1988; Werker&Tees, 1984).
Visit this website to learn more about how babies lose the ability to discriminate among all possible human phonemes as they age.
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