There are a number of theorists who believe in imitation and reinforcement when children are learning language. This includes Skinner, who’s theory relies on positive and negative reinforcement. To define these ideas, positive reinforcement is where a child receives a positive response to their speech which includes; praise, echoing, responding and reformulation. Negative reinforcement contrasts this teaching process, as it is when a child receives negative feedback to their speech including; negatives, ‘telling off’ and in some contexts, reformulation. The following transcripts (A and B) include Tom, aged 2 years and 7 months, and his parents.
In Text A, Tom is fixing bikes with his mother and in one instance says “I sitting on the bike (.) it make noises”. Tom makes an elision of the adjective “make”, where the standard form would be “makes”. The idea that imitation is crucial to language development is enforced when his mother responds “it makes noises”. Echoing not only correlates with Skinner’s idea of positive reinforcement, but it could also be said that Vygotsky’s theory of the Zone of Proximal Development comes into play here. This repetition of the phrase will act as scaffolding to his language, and help Tom to learn. In the two texts, Tom is said to be in the telegraphic stage of language as he is beginning to form utterances, but his grammar is not yet standard. However, it is shown that Tom may be progressing to the post-telegraphic stage when he uses the pronoun “it”. The fact that Tom is using anaphoric referencing in his language shows that his thoughts and ideas could possibly be more complex than he is able to communicate, and therefore could be gradually developing his language. This could also be due to the constant positive reinforcement he is receiving from his mother.
Again in Text A, when discussing his fathers bike Tom shows again that his language is not fully developed in the utterance “the dad bike”. His mother follows this with reformulating his speech with “dad’s bike”, which is again giving him positive reinforcement. The idea of scaffolding from Vygotsky’s theory is supported once again as it is shown that Tom has learnt from his mother when he says “yeah (.) the dad (.) dad’s bike (.) dad’s bike mum (.) dad’s bike”. Tim first corrects himself after repeating the non-standard form “the dad”, and recasts his language to the standard, possessive form “dad’s bike”. This evidence may show that children do, in fact learn from both positive reinforcement and ‘scaffolding’, and would refute Chomsky’s universal grammar theory that children are born with the ability to use and understand language. However, although Tom uses “dad’s bike” correctly further on in the interaction it could be said that he may not have actually retained this information. If we were to accept Piaget’s theory that children learn in stages, it would be likely that Tom would return to using the non-standard form.
In Text B, Tom is shown to be seeking positive reinforcement from his mother when he says “is these drawing Cartoon Network cup of tea mum”. The interrogative followed by the vocative “mum” for clarification shows that he is seeking a positive response, and could also show that he is himself unsure of how to phrase the interrogative and is possibly looking to learn from his mother. Although the utterance is non-standard, the use of the determiner “these” acts as a deictic reference and could suggest that his language is more complex than displayed in this example. However, this could also be Tom expecting his mother to understand his question within their context. Although Tom is in the telegraphic stage at this age, the fact that he uses the vocative “mum” rather than the diminutive “mummy” we would expect from a child of 2 years, this could suggest that his language is developing more quickly than the average child. This could refute Piaget’s theory of the stages of language, if Tom really is learning more rapidly than Piaget’s stages suggest.
When Tom uses the interrogative “did I kill you” in Text B, he is overextending from when his mother said “what you squashed it”. When his mother reformulated his utterance earlier in the interaction, this could act as an example of Vygotsky’s idea of scaffolding his learning. However, we could accept Piaget’s theory of stages here as Tom does not learn from this and continues to use the verb “kill”. This could be because Tom may be in a state of panic after thinking he “killed” the sheep after “squashing” it, and then overextended this panic to his mother after he “stood” on her fingers. However, it is unusual that a 2 year old child would be using the verb “kill”, and this could possibly suggest that his background with his parents is unlike the average background a child would have – as he may be exposed to more mature ideas at a younger age by his parents. Although his mother does respond “um (.) did you kill me”, in this context it could be said that this is negative reinforcement as the filler “um” could suggest that she may not have been paying attention to Tom, and she did not answer his question or offer any helpful response.
To conclude, there are a number of theorists that believe that imitation and reinforcement are crucial for children's language development are highly supported in these transcripts. The parents both use positive reinforcement regularly and it is shown in Tom’s language throughout that he is benefitting from this. In particular, his mother uses imitation as a form of positive reinforcement and it has seemed to encourage Tom to improve his language independently. So, with many respected theorists such as Skinner and Vygotsky supporting this idea, it could be easy to accept the idea that imitation and reinforcement are the most important tools. However, theorists such as Piaget and Chomsky contradict this idea. Although these theories do refute the statement, when analyzing the two transcripts Piaget and Chomsky’s ideas were not heavily supported, which makes it easy to accept the statement.
Some very interesting points.
ReplyDeleteBe more tentative about setting out your protocol for what you are going to include - exploring the ambiguities is better than being straightforward. Check who's/whose. There's no need to repeat contextual information that's given - instead, show an awareness of which features are present because of this.
Check terminology in the following quote: "Tom makes an elision of the adjective “make”, where the standard form would be “makes”." as there is elision but it is of the suffix s which forms the third person inflection on the verb. You also call her utterance "echoing" but she has changed it to the adult standard form so it is reformulation or a repair. He is very unlikely to be entering post-telegraphic at not-yet-three so look more closely at the characteristics of post-telegraphic speech although I agree with your point about increasing complexity and the link to reinforcement. Link this to Bruner and Lenneburg evaluatively - more discussion of the links and contrasts between theories in the light of data needed.
In what way is the reformulation positive reinforcement? You can certainly argue it is but you have to argue it.
He might return to the non-standard form before..? More on how Piaget's theory contrasts with Skinner's with case studies and examples. Your explanation of Chomsky's LAD is a bit superficial - does he mean children will only use accurate grammar?
Piaget's stages only have indicative ages but the general idea is that they won't use language attached to concepts that they haven't yet developed enough to understand. I like the tentativity in this paragraph and it feels a bit more developed but it needs linking to the question more closely.
Why else might she have used "umm"? Would he understand the pragmatics? So would you count it as positive or negative reinforcement?
Your conclusion shows a better overview - during proofreadng and editing, go back over your essay, ensuring a clear throughline where all the points relate to the question. I think Skinner meant the child did the imitating. What about when she positively reinforces a non-standard use e.g. "talker" (this coinage is clearly a support for Chomsky not Skinner). Look for opportunities to argue against the title with the data and ensure you use multiple quotes for the patterns you notice (which you mention in the conclusion but never explored PEE).