Critical Thinking
Language Acquisition: Nature vs. Nurture
8. Whenever 8 month old Juwan wants his mother, he calls out “mama” and she comes running. Consequently, Juwan utters “mama” much more frequently now than he did at 7 months of age. Position Supported: Nurture
Advocates for ‘nurture’ theories of language acquisition present the argument that children acquire language through their experiences and usage (Bates 2002). When young Juwan calls out the word ‘mama’ and his mother comes running, he is able to associate the uttering of the word and the action of his mother coming. This is evidently a learning process where the understanding of a language is acquired through interaction with the environment. According to the nature theory children acquire the language skills that are widely practiced around them and become better at this language through practicing and their experiences in using the language. Juwan is able to learn from his experience with his mother that the word ‘mama’ has something to do with his mother coming. Proponents of the nurture theory also emphasize on the importance of parents or caregivers to the child’s process of language acquisition (Bates 2002). Parents and especially the mothers are the first people children get to know and interact with. This may explain why the world ‘mama’ may be the first learned word for most children like Juwan.
9. Position supported: Interaction between Nature and Nurture
Proponent of the theory that language is an interaction between nature and nurture argue that there are aspect of language acquisition that demonstrate existence of learning process while there are other skills that cannot be acquire through learning (Bates 2002). When Melissa sees her mother returning home from work she says ‘mommy home’. Through her learning experience, she is able to connect the relationship between thee words ‘mommy’ and “home’ and the act of her mother coming home. However, 21 month Melissa is able to get the correct orders of the words. It is very unlikely that Melissa may have learnt the order of these words from here experience or usage of words and therefore nurture cannot account for the acquisition of this skills. This therefore indicates that a child has certain genetic makeup that gives him or her the ability to acquire language skills. However, this genetic ability is also dependent on a learning process and it must be in a context.
10. Position supported: Nature
The nature theories of language acquisition present that argument that children have an inborn device that gives the capability to understand languages (Bates 2002). Proponents of nature theory belief that children have a “module for language” in the brain that make them understand any language they are exposed when they are young. This may explain why Michelle was able to perceive differences in sound of spoken languages as an infant while this capability was lost when she became a teenager. Proponent of nature theory presents the argument that the innate language ability has a age window within which the child has the ability to learn any language. This window is closed after the child reaches a certain age and the language(s) the child would have a acquired by then becomes the widely utilized language by the child. This argument may explain why Michelle may have lost the ability to perceive sounds of different languages when he reached adolescent stage. The same argument also explain why adult are not as good as children in the process of acquiring languages.
Research Design
13. The research design used in this study is the longitudinal research design. Longitudinal research design is an approach to a study that involves making repeated observation over the same the item for a long period of time (Rajulton, 2001). Longitudinal studies take a long period of time and are common in studying human issues. This design entails tracking the progress of the same participants over a long period of time. In the study provided for this question, behavioral observation are made on children when they are between the ages of 3 and 5 years, while the same children are traced and observation are again made when the children between the ages of 9 and 11 years. The study that derived the mentioned conclusion must have taken a long time and involved making follow up on the same individual as they grow. This design has both its strength and weaknesses. The greatest strength is that the design make track of developmental changes that take place in the participants enhancing the validity of the research. The greatest disadvantage of this design is that it requires a lot of time and consequently a lot of resources. Unlike experimental research this study also lacks internal validity as there is no control group to determine whether the observation may have been as a result of other elements besides the tested one (early behavioral attributes) (Trochim, 2006).
14. Based on their finding the research present the argument that behavioral problems at later stages of life may be predicted by early behavioral temperaments of an individual. According to the study, children that were negative temperaments when young were found to have developed into antisocial, less confident or less mature when they reach adolescence. The research have used this finding to arrive at the conclusion that children with early behavioral problem are more likely to develop behavioral disorder when the become teenagers or at later stages of their lives. This explanation makes sense in relation to the evidence they present. However, the validity of this evidence may be questioned as the study did not include a control group which would prove that children without early behavioral problems do not have equal chances of developing behavioral disorders when they reach adolescence as the tested group of children (Trochim, 2006).
15. The observed behavioral disorder in the participants during adolescence may have been as a result of other factors that are not related to the children’s early behaviors. This may be such as the children upbringing and researchers bias. The factor on how the children were brought up was not factored and yet it may have contributed to these disorders. The researches also had an expected outcome when they began the study and this expectation may have influenced their observations and consequently the results of the study. To eliminate bias the study would have introduced internal validity measures such an introducing a control group. The study does not also indicate the size of the sample used in the study and therefore the results may be unique to the studied sample and not an actual representation of the entire population. The study would have been specific about the population being studied and indicate the sample used. Then the trend, frequency and distribution of outcome would have been compared in order to test the significant of the derived relationship.
References
Bates E. (2002). On the Nature and Nurture of Language. University of California.
Rajulton F. (2001). The Fundamentals of Longitudinal Research: An Overview. Journal of Canadian Studies in Population. 28 (2), 169- 185
Trochin W. (2006). Internal Validity. May 25, 2011. Retrieved from http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/intval.php
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