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Psychology 8310
Language Development
Fall 2007
Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Ph.D
Infants start out with no language. By the end of the first year, they say their first words
and by the end of the second year, they are speaking in full sentences. How do they achieve this?
During this class you will come to appreciate how infants conquer the “seemingly impossible”
task of learning a language. The rules involved in language processing are at least as complex as
those used in a master’s game of chess. Yet, infants raised in a normal environment have no
problem in inducing these rules and in using them correctly from the beginning. This fact puts
language development at the core of cognitive development, for language is, as Chomsky has
said, a “window onto the human mind.” If we can understand how infants coordinate the many
inputs they receive into the words and grammar of language, we will have one model how human
minds learn complex behaviors.
The purpose of this course will be to explore the language acquisition phenomenon by
reading and discussing a wide range of theory and research. As many of you know, the area of
language acquisition is a very active one with debates on the role of nature and nurture that go
back for decades. If I have selected our readings well, you should come to have an appreciation
for some of the recent historical developments in this area, with how the area intersects with
other areas in psychological development, and with how innovative methodologies have
contributed to our growing knowledge of the infant’s burgeoning linguistic capabilities.
The class has been designed not only as an overview of the area of language
development, but also as a kind of position paper on the field. Having written extensively in
both the area of word learning and grammatical development, I offer you a course that takes a
firm position on the issues at hand. Please, please, feel free to disagree with the thesis that will
be presented. Intellectual discussion is the key to this class. You will be provided with all of the
material that you need to either endorse or to refute the arguments presented here.
Books:
Hoff, E. (2005). Language Development, 3rd Edition. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Clark, E.V. (2003). First Language Acquisition. New York, NY: Cambridge University
Press.
Extra readings indicated on syllabus are available on blackboard. Those articles marked with an
asterisk ** are optional.
Please note that throughout the class, the text reading is meant to give you a framework for the
readings that you are doing. You need only skim the textbooks. Please note however, that Hoff
and Clark don’t always see things in the same way. Even textbooks are position papers.
I made every attempt to keep the amount of reading to roughly 50 pages per week on top of the
text reading. In a few classes the reading is lighter and in some it is a bit heavier.
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Class Meetings: The class meets on Thursdays from 1:40 ‘til 4:30 in Room 642 of Weiss Hall.
Blackboard: Students must have a Temple IBM accounts to participate in this course. When
you register for the course, you will immediately become a member of the class listserve account
and will be eligible to look at the class blackboard. You access blackboard by going to
www.blackboard.temple.edu. Once you reach this site, you will need to enter your user name
and your password. This then gives you access to all of your classes on line. The Language
Development class is so marked. Click there. You will find e-copies of the articles on line under
the week the article is required along with links to many of the labs that are conducting relevant
work in the area we will be studying.
Requirements:
1. Attend all classes (your opinion is valued)
2. Do all readings prior to class upon which they are assigned.
3. Post questions for discussion to the class on blackboard by 5:00p.m. on Wednesday
afternoons so that we can all digest the questions prior to coming to class.
4. Take charge of one of the class discussion sessions where you do the readings and work
with me to prepare a short power point presentation that will spark discussion of the main
issues.
5. Write two position papers that branch off of the material presented for a given day. These
papers should be approximately 6 pages in length and should offer an expansion of the
material presented in class. You can use the bibliography of the papers assigned to get
additional readings for the position paper. Please include bibliographic references in your
paper. One paper is due on October 25th which is week 8. The second is due on the last
class.
6. Annotated bibliography: You may use endnote, your own personal journal notation
system or just a notebook and a pen to create an overview of each of the articles that you
read. If you are not going to be a psycholinguist, you may someday be teaching
developmental psychology, this will help you immensely as you will be reading the latest
and the best material out as of today. If you are going on in the psychology of language,
this will be an enormous help when you are desperately trying to find, “that article you
once read and can’t locate.”
Grading criteria:
Class attendance and participation: 20%
Class presentation in class for which you are in charge: 25%
Position paper 1: 20%
Position paper 2: 20%
Annotated bibliography: 15%
Reaching me:
My office hours are from 11:30 – 1:30 in 316 Weiss Hall on Tues and Thurs and by appointment.
I can also be reached by phone at my office phone, 215-204-5243 or at my lab phone in Ambler
215-283-1565. My e-mail address is khirshpa@temple.edu
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Students with disabilities:
Any student who has a need for accommodation based on the impact of a disability should
contact me privately to discuss the specific situation as soon as possible. Contact Disability
Resources and Services at 215-204-1280 in 100 Ritter Annex to coordinate reasonable
accommodations for students with documented
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Syllabus
Introduction
Week 1: Language development: The seemingly impossible task (8/30/07)
To learn a language, children must learn to segment the constant rush of sounds into
language relevant units like phonemes and words. They must carve the world (or projected
world) into conceptually-relevant units like objects, actions, and events. Were all of this not
enough, they must then map the sounds onto the meaning through words and grammar. An
overview of how they accomplish this monumental feat will be the subject of the first class.
Here we introduce you to: a) what must be learned –definitions of language and communication;
b) some sense of how it might be learned, and c) a chronological map of the language learning
landscape. This class sets the stage for what is to come. As you leave, you should feel that
language learning would be impossible were it not for some inherent constraints on development.
You should concur that constraints on development occur across a number of different areas – in
speech perception, word learning, and in grammar. The ways that these constraints interact with
the physical and social environment shape the trajectory for language learning.
As we lay the groundwork for language learning, we will also frame three questions that
are addressed in this literature: 1) Is language processing domain specific or domain general? 2)
Do humans really have representations for language?; 3) Is there a language module?
Readings:
Hoff, E. (2005). Introduction to the study of language development. In E.
Hoff's, Language Development, 3rd Edition (pp.1-33). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth
Publishing.
Clark, E.V. (2003). Acquiring language: Issues and Questions. In E.V. Clark's, First
Language Acquisition (pp.1-21). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Miller, G.A. (1990). The place of language in a scientific psychology. Psychological
Science, 1(1), 7-14.
Week 2: Language: unique among species? (9/6/07)
Children learn language. Our pets, despite being raised in a similar environment do not
(e.g. “Does mister snookuums want to go for a walk?”). Furthermore, as far as we can tell,
language, in the form of a generative, symbolic, arbitrary system, is found nowhere else in the
animal kingdom. Still… language had to come from somewhere and animals do communicate.
In week 2, we explore differences and similarities in language in an attempt to understand how
we would know a human language if we saw one. By the end of this class, you should have
developed a few of your own theories about how language could be so close, and yet, so far away
from the capabilities of other species.
Readings:
General
Hoff, E. (2005). Biological bases of language development. In E. Hoff’s, Language
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Development, 3rd Edition (pp.36-87). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Hauser, M., Chomsky, N, & Fitch, W. (2002). The faculty of language. What is it? Who
has it? And how does evolve? Science, 298, 1569-1579. .
On communication
Blakeslee, S. If you want to know if Spot loves you so, it’s in his tail. New York
Times, April, 17, 2007
Brauer, J., Kaminski, J., Reidel, J., Call, J., & Tomasello, M. (2006) Making inferences
about the location of hidden food,: Social dog, Causal ape. Journal of
Comparative Psychology, 120, 38-47
On word learning
Kaminski, J., Call, J., & Fischer, J. (2004). Science, 304, 1682-1683. On syntax
Kako, E. (1999). Elements of syntax in the systems of three language-trained animals.
Animal Learning and Behavior, 27(1), 1-14.
**Fitch, W. & Hauser, M. (2004). Computational constraints on syntactic processing in a
non-human primate. Science, 303, 377-380
Week 3: 9/13/07 NO CLASS DUE TO JEWISH HOLIDAY: ROSH HASHANNA
Preparing for the first word
Week 4: Communication and production in the first year (9/20/07)
What do infants sound like and look like in the first year of life? Do they communicate in
the first three months or do we just credit them with communication? How do they learn the
rhythms of this arbitrary system called language? And what “language” do they produce on their
way to first words? Here we look at the fledgling speaker (or signer) and try to understand the
stepping-stones that parents record in their diaries. We ask whether babbling is practice for
speech and what happens when early communication gives way to language. We also look at the
panorama of methods that have been used to study development in the first year of life.
Readings:
Hoff, L. (2005). Phonological development: Learning the sounds of language. In E. Hoff’s,
Language Development, 3rd Edition (pp.90-103). Belmont, CA:
Wadsworth Publishers.
Adamson, L. (1995). Communication development during infancy (pp.86-120). Madison,
WI: Brown and Benchmark.
Golinkoff, R.M., & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (1999). How babies talk (pp.39-85). New York, NY:
Penguin Press.
Week 5: Early auditory processing: Behind the scenes: What babies are processing
(9/27/07)
The story of language development in humans actually begins in the womb with early
auditory processing. Infants attend to speech – or at least the melodies of speech --at just 27
weeks after gestation. At just 2 days after birth, they can distinguish French from Russian and
are sensitive to sounds in any of the world’s languages. By 9 months of age, infants are paying
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more attention to the sounds of their native language. They not only can tell the sounds of the
language, but also can note regularities in the ways in which these sounds are arranged. Indeed,
infants are now sophisticated statisticians who operate on the input to generate language –
relevant information. In this unit, we not only examine the latest findings in the area of speech
perception, but look at the methods that have been devised to gather this data. We will also
attempt to better understand how this early ability to process speech bears on later language
learning.
Readings:
Hoff, E. (2005). Phonological development: Learning the sounds of language.
In E. Hoff’s, Language Development, 3rd Edition (pp.103-136). Belmont,
CA: Wadsworth Publishing.
Clark, E. (2003). Starting on language: Perception. In E. Clark’s, First Language
Acquisition (pp. 55-78). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Werker, J. (2003). Baby steps to learning language. Journal of Pediatrics, 143, S62-S69
Saffran, J.R., Aslin, R.N., & Newport, E. (1996). Statistical learning by 8-month-old
infants. Science, 274, 1926-1928.
Kuhl, P., Conboy, B., Padden, D., Nelson, T., Pruitt, J. (2005) Early speech perception
and later language development: Implications for the “critical period.”
Language learning and development. I (3 & 4), 237-264.
Holowka, S., & Petitto, L.A. (2002). Left hemisphere cerebral specialization for babies
while babbling. Science, 297, 1515.
Kuhl, P. (2007) Is speech learning gated by the social brain? Developmental Science,
10, 110-120
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------**Hauser, M., Newport, E.L., & Aslin, R.N. (2001). Segmentation of the speech
stream in a non-human primate: Statistical learning in cotton-top
tamarins. Cognition, 78, B53-B64.
**Petitto, L. A., Holowka, S., Sergio, L. & Ostry, D. (2001). Language rhythms
in babies' hand movements. Nature, 413, 35-36.
Week 6: Early perceptual processing: A world of objects, actions, and events (10/4/07)
Some, like Spelke, argue that infants are very savvy processors of the visual world. In
fact, they are born with a set of constraints or principles that allow them to see a world of
coherent objects. By only three months of age, infants are already able to categorize by
perceptual features, an ability that becomes refined as they develop their statistical abilities at
around 9 months. Research also suggests that infants not only live in a world of objects, but also
of distinct actions. Finally, in the second half of the first year, infants are putting objects and
actions together to form events. In short, infants are noticing the carving joints in the physical
world that will be critical for language content. In this unit we read some primary research and
discuss the methods that researchers have used to explore early competencies in the infant mind.
Readings:
Spelke, E.S. (1994). Initial knowledge: Six suggestions. Cognition, 50, 431-445.
Baillergeon, R. (2004). Infants' physical world. Current Directions in Psychological
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Science, 13(3), 89-93
Hespos, S. J. & Spelke, E. S. (2004). Conceptual precursors to spatial language.
Nature, 430, 453 - 456.
Mandler, J.M. (2004). Kinds of representation & perceptual meaning analysis and image
schemas. In J.M Mandler’s, The Foundations of Mind: Origins of Conceptual Thought
(pp. 41-91). New York: Oxford University Press.
**Smith, L. (2000). From knowledge to knowing: Real progress in the study of infant
categorization. Infancy, 1(1), 91-99.
Week 7: The Infant in a Social World (10/11/07)
Form (the sounds of words) and meanings (objects, actions and events) are connected in
the context of social events. Many would argue that social discourse is the reason that language
was invented in the first place. Language enables us to talk about the past and the future, about
events that will never occur and even about imaginary objects like unicorns. As Lois Bloom
argues, language allows us to share the contents of our minds with others.
Readings:
Hoff, E. (2005). Communication and language in development. In E. Hoff’s, Language
Development, 3rd Edition (pp.241-293). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Gergely, G. (2003). What should a robot learn from an infant? Mechanisms of action
interpretation and observational learning in infancy. Connection Science:
Journal of Neural Computing, Artificial Intelligence & Cognitive
Research,15,191-209.
Woodward, A.L., (2005) Infant origins of intentional understanding. Advances in
Child Development Behavior, New York: Elsevier
Baldwin, D. & Tomasello, M. (1998) Word learning: A window on early pragmatic
understanding. In E.V. Clark (Ed.) Proceedings of the Stanford Child Language Research
Forum (pp.3-23) Stanford, CA: Center for the Study of Language and Information.
**Woodward, A.L., Sommerville, J.A., & Guajardo, J.J. (2001). How infants make sense of
intentional action. In B.F. Malle. &L. Moses (Eds.) Intentions and intentionality:
Foundations of social cognition (pp.149-169). Cambridge, MA, US: The MIT Press.
Week 8: Gesture: The undercurrent for communication and language (10/18/07)
In recent years, researchers have been fascinated by the power of gesture. Could gesture
be the link between language and communication? Could first words emerge in gesture before
they do in speech? These debates have not only been within the province of scientific discovery,
but have also filtered into popular debate on whether children should be taught to “sign” before
they learn real words and on whether teachers in schools might look to gesture as a clue to what
children really mean when they respond to our questions. In this class we read a little about
gesture and witness a recent debate on the role of gesture in language.
Iverson, J., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2005) Gesture paves the way for language
development. Psychological Science, 16, 367-371.
Tomasello, M., Carpenter, M., & Liszkowski, U. (2007). A new look at infant pointing. Child
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Development, 78, 705-722.
Goldin-Meadow, S. (2007). Pointing sets the stage for learning language -- and creating
language. Child Development, 78, 741-745.
Southgate, V., Maanen, C., & Csibra, G. (2007). Infant pointing: Communication to cooperate or
communication to learn? Child Development, 78, 735-740.
Gomez, J.-C. (2007). Pointing behaviors in apes and human infants: A balanced interpretation.
Child Development, 78, 729-734.
First words:
Week 9: The Mapping Problem: Infants move towards their first words (10/25/07)
FIRST POSITION PAPER IS DUE HERE
When the first word appears it seems like a miraculous moment. To reach this hallmark,
infants not only have to have forms and meanings, but must figure out which forms go with
which meanings. This latter hurdle has been referred to as the mapping problem a problem well
illustrated through the Quinean conundrum, In this class we watch the child as he breaks the
word barrier. What does early word learning look like? What allows children to reach this
pinnacle? How do psychologists explain this achievement? These questions form the bedrock
for our discussions this week as we not only describe development but ask how the processes
discussed in the past three weeks converge to enable word acquisition. We also begin our debate
over theories of word learning by focusing on one family of theories that explains away the
mapping problem through appeal to social input.
Readings:
Hoff, E. (2005). Lexical development: Learning words. In E. Hoff’s, Language
Development, 3rd Edition (pp.139-181). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Clark, E. (2003). First Language Acquisition (pp.131-158). New York, NY: Cambridge
University Press.
Pruden, S., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Golinkoff, R., & Hennon, E. (2006). The Birth of Words: TenMonth-Olds Learn Words Though Perceptual Salience. Child Development, 77, 266-280.
Smith, L.B. (2000). Learning how to learn words: An associative crane. In R.M. Golinkoff et al's
(Eds.) Becoming a Word Learner: A Debate on Lexical Acquisition (pp. 51-80). New
York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Akhtar, N., & Tomasello, M. (2000). The social nature of words and word learning. In
R.M. Golinkoff et al's (Eds.) Becoming a Word Learner: A Debate on Lexical Acquisition
(pp. 115-135). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
**Werker, J. F., Cohen, L., Lloyd, V., Casasola, M. & Stager, C. (1998). Acquisition of wordobject associations by 14-month-old infants. Developmental Psychology, 34 (6), 12891310.
Week 10: Beyond names for things (11/1/07)
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As you have now seen, researchers are not only fractionated by theoretical views, but tend
to maintain a focus on nouns or object words to the exclusion of verbs or action words. This
problem in the literature has not gone unnoticed. In recent years there has a been a groundswell
of concern about how to account for the full range of words that young children encounter. In
this class, we examine the research that has been conducted on both verbs and adjectives. Do the
theories that were discussed for the acquisition of nouns make sense when generalized to the
acquisition of verbs? Perchance, the discussion of verbs will also put us squarely into a
discussion of grammar – the hallmark of the second year of life. I have also added some very
current work suggesting a direct link between the words you learn and the grammar you acquire.
Are word learning and grammatical development yoked? See what you think!
Readings:
Bornstein, M.H., Cote, L.R., Maital, S., Painter, K., Park, S.Y., Pascual, L., Pecheux,
M.G., Ruel, J., Venuti, P., & Vyt, A. (2004). Cross-linguistic analysis of vocabulary in
young children: Spanish, Dutch, French, Hebrew, Italian, Korean, and American English.
Child Development, 75(4), 1115-1139. (Blackboard - .pdf)
Hirsh-Pasek, K. & Golinkoff, R. (2007) King Solomon’s Take on Word Learning:
An Integrative Account from the Radical Middle. Advances in Child Development and
Behavior, Volume 36
Marchman, V. A., Martínez-Sussmann, C. & Dale, P. S. (2004). The
language-specific nature of grammatical development: Evidence from
bilingual language learners. Developmental Science, 7, 212-224.
**Choi, S. (2006). Preverbal spatial cognition and language-specific input: Categories of
containment and support. In K. Hirsh-Pasek & R.M. Golinkoff (Eds.), Action Meets
Word: How Children Learn Verbs. New York: Oxford University Press
** Tardif, T. (2006). But are they really verbs? In K. Hirsh-Pasek & R.M.
Golinkoff (Eds.), Action Meets Word: How Children Learn Verbs. New York: Oxford
University Press
On the road to grammar
Week 11: Grammar: The sina qua non of language development (11/08/07)
What is language grammar and why is it so important to the study of the human mind?
This week we look at the intricate structure of this thing we call grammar. Going well beyond the
dreaded diagramming of the 8th grade English class, we will expose you to the complex system of
rules that all master by the age of three or four and that all take for granted. We will see how the
development of grammar in the child became a central focus not only for linguistics but also for
cognitive science and psychology. We will also look at the development of language in the child
– examining the milestones and achievements that psychologists will have to explain. It was
these milestones that dovetailed with linguistic theory in the 1950s taking us to a staunch nativist
position for language acquisition. Chomsky, the leading linguist of our time, suggested that
language grammar could not be learned were it not for the presence of an innate and universal
language acquisition device. For the past 30 years, researchers have looked hard for evidence to
support Chomsky’s contention – and some impressive findings now dot the psycholinguistic
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landscape. In this class, we look at the case that can be made for an innate language module.
This case will come from theoretical assertions about the evolution of language, findings about a
critical period for development, and findings about grammatical development in the absence of
language input.
Readings:
Hoff, E. (2005). The development of syntax and morphology: Learning the structure of
language. In E. Hoff’s, Language Development, 3rd Edition (pp.184-239). Belmont, CA:
Wadsworth.
Marcus, G. F., Vijayan, S., Bandi Rao, S. and Vishton, P. M (1999). Rule learning by
seven-month-old infants, Science, 283, 77-80.
Pinker, S. (1999). Out of the minds of babes. Science, 1, 40-41.
Senghas, A (2003). Intergenerational influence and ontogenetic development in the
emergence of spatial grammar in Nicaraguan Sign Language. Cognitive Development, 18,
511-531.
Russo, T., & Volterra, V. (2005) Comment on “Children creating core properties of language:
Evidence from an emerging sign language in Nicaragua. Science, 309, 56
Goldin-Meadow, S. (2004). Lexical development without a language model: Are nouns,
verbs and adjectives essential to the lexicon? In D.Geoffrey Hall & S.R. Waxman (Eds.),
Weaving a Lexicon (pp.225-256). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Gertner, Y., Fisher, C., & Eisengart, J. (2006). Learning words and rules:
Abstract knowledge of word order in early sentence comprehension. Psychological
Science, 17, 684-691.
Saffran, J. R., A. Senghas, and J. C. Trueswell (2001).The acquisition of language by
children Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98 (23), 12874-12875.
Week 12: The interactionists and the radical middle or language from the outside in.
(November 15, 2007)
French children speak French and German children speak German. Thus, it is obvious
that nativism cannot be the entire explanation of language development. Indeed, even Chomsky,
himself, recognized the importance of computational analysis of the input for language learning.
This week, we look at several different proposals for language development that focus on the
input to the child. Is there a special language register – infant directed speech – that softens the
language learning burden? Could children learn language by performing computational analyses
of the input without recourse to innate learning devices? How far can the input take the child?
Might the field be better served by a hybrid model that embraces both nativistic and input
perspectives for early grammatical development?
Readings:
Hirsh-Pasek, K. & Golinkoff, R (1996). Theories of language acquisition. In K. Hirsh
Pasek & R.M. Golinkoff’s, The Origins of Grammar (pp.11-51). Boston, MA: MIT Press
Tamis-LeMonda, C.S. & Bornstein, M.H. (2002). Maternal responsiveness and early
language acquisition. Advances in Child Development and Behavior, 29, 89-127.
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Hoff, E. (2006). How social contexts support and shape language development. Developmental
Review, 26. 55-88.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------**Landry, S.H., Smith, K.E., Swank, P.R., Assel, M.A. & Vellet, S. (2001). Does early
responsive parenting have a special importance for children's development or is
consistency across early childhood necessary? Developmental Psychology, 37(3), 387403. (Blackboard - .pdf)
Week 13: ENJOY THE TURKEY. THANKGIVING BREAK (November 22, 2007)
Beyond Grammar to Discourse and Narrative: The Stories of Our Lives
Week 14: Narrative (11/29/07 alternative 1)
Narrative or the ways in which we connect language into discourse, has increasingly
become a central topic in language acquisition. Our world is communicated not by our single
sentences, but by the ways in which we connect these sentences and propositions into stories of
our lives. These stories and the ways in which they develop, then become the foundation for
literacy and for text interpretation. When do children first tell stories and what is the structure of
these stories? How have researchers dissected this process? And how might narrative inform the
reading process?
Readings:
Hoff, E. (2005). Language in the school years. In E. Hoff’s, Language Development, 3rd
Edition (pp.365-409). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Nicolopoulou, A. (1997). Children and narratives: Towards an interpretive and sociocultural
approach. In M. Bamberg (Ed.), Narrative development (pp. 179-217). Mahwah, NJ:
Erlbaum
Dickinson, D.K., McCabe, A., & Anastasopoulos, L. (2003). The comprehensive language
approach to early literacy: The interrelationships among vocabulary, phonological
sensitivity, and print knowledge among preschool-aged children. Journal of Educational
Psychology, 95(3), 465-481.
**Storch, S.A. & Whitehurst, G.J. (2002). Oral language and code-related precursors to
reading: Evidence from a longitudinal model. Developmental Psychology, 38, 934-947.
Week 14: Bilingualism (11/29/07 alternative 2)
In a semester, it is impossible to give justice to the full range of what language
development has to offer. Yet, even the work reviewed thus far offers directions for applied
research. In this class, we examine one area in which application has “taken off” from theoretical
beginnings. We look the question of bilingualism or when and why should children learn more
than one language? Our discussion can then take us to many other areas of potential study and to
policy implications.
Readings:
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Clark, E. (2003). Language and dialect. In E. Clark’s, First Language Acquisition (pp. 363382). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Werker, J. Weikum, W. M., & Yoshida, K.A. (2006), Bilingual speech processing in infants and
adults. In P. D. McCardle & E. Hoff (Eds.), Childhood bilingualism: Research on infancy
through school age. UK: Cromwell Press.
Genesee, F., Nicoladis, E. (2007). Bilingual first language acquisition. In E. Hoff and M. Shatz
(Eds.), Blackwell handbook of language development. UK: Blackwell.
Petitto, L. A. & Kovelman, I. (2003). The Bilingual Paradox: How signing-speaking bilingual
children help us to resolve it and teach us about the brain’s mechanisms underlying all
language acquisition. Learning Languages, Spring Vol.8, No.3, pp.5-18.
Week 15: Putting it all together: The rise of the radical middle (12/06/07)
FINAL POSITION PAPER IS DUE HERE
Throughout the course, you were exposed to research and theory that held staunch
reductionist positions – arguing persuasively for one view over the other – for theories that retain
the skeletons of the nature/nurture debate. Throughout the course, you have been exposed to a
syllabus and to research that attempts to reconcile these polarizing theories by offering a more
complex systems approach to the study of early language that embraces each of the alternative
views. This new wave in developmental psychology goes under varied names; sometimes
referred to as dynamic systems theory, as the radical middle or as rationalist constructivist
approaches. Under any name, the perspective is gaining favor within the field. In some ways, it
challenges the kind of parsimony that is offered by the one-sided theories. In other ways, it offers
a refreshing theoretical approach that accepts the complexity of the system under study.
Different theories might be the products of one continuous model that focuses on change rather
than on the static snapshots of development that occur along the way. One challenge for
developmental psychology in the future is to figure out how to study change while at the same
time preserving the findings that have been the backbone of our discovery thus far. Let’s talk
about the benefits and weaknesses of polarized theories and how the research in language
acquisition might inform development and cognition more broadly.
In this class we also revisit the themes with which we started: 1) Is language processing
domain specific or domain general? 2) Do humans really have representations for language? 3) Is
there a language module?