AMITY INSTITUTE OF PSYCHOLOGY AND ALLIED

SCIENCES (AIPS)

M.A. CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY

LIFE SPAN DEVELOPMENT ; PROJECT
Name of Student : Prerna Mittal
Enrolment Number : A0403423439
Section : D
Batch : 2023-2025
Semester – 2
Faculty: DR. RITU RAJ

Discuss language development in infancy and early childhood

with the help of supporting researches…..

Language Development
A child’s vocabulary expands between the ages of two to six from about 200 words
to over 10,000 words through a process called fast-mapping. Words are easily
learned by making connections between new words and concepts already
known. The parts of speech that are learned depend on the language and what is
emphasized. Children speaking verb-friendly languages such as Chinese and
Japanese tend to learn verbs more readily, but those learning less verb-friendly
languages such as English seem to need assistance in grammar to master the use of
verbs (Imai, et als, 2008). Children are also very creative in creating their own
words to use as labels such as a “take-care-of” when referring to John, the
character on the cartoon Garfield, who takes care of the cat.

According to Jean Piaget, thought as a prerequisite to speak, continues to grow

progressively, and occurs at every stage of development because of the experience
and reasoning. Children’s development in general and at early language is closely
related to a variety of children's activities, attractions, and events they experience;
and touch, hear, see, feel, and smell. Vygotsky argued that children’s cognitive
development and language is closely related to the culture and the communities in
which children live. Vygotsky used the term Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD
= Zone of Proximal Development) for tasks that are difficult to understand for
children. ZPD has a lower limit for the level of the problem being solved by
children themselves and a higher threshold for the level of extra responsibility can
be accepted children with the help of adults.
Early Childhood
Early childhood is a child in the age of 0-6 years (UUSPN No.20 / 2003, Article
28, paragraph 1). At the age of 0-2 years of physical and brain growth is done
through ‘yandu’ (pelayanan terpadu) from the Ministry of Health, Depsosial,
BKKBN and the Ministry of Education. In the early childhood program, the
Ministry of Education is expected to be the "Leading Sector". At the age of 2-4
years children are in TPA or Play Group. At the age of 4- 6 years is done through
kindergarten (TK A and B). Early childhood education (PAUD) is an effort that is
intended to provide educational stimuli to assist the growth and development of
children physically and mentally in order to have the readiness to enter further
education.
II. Discussion
Language Development Period
Language development of children is divided in three periods, as follows:

1) Prelingual Period (age 0-1 years)

At this period children cannot pronounce 'spoken language' as spoken by adults, in
the sense of not following the rules of the applicable language. In this period the
child has a language of its own, such as babbling instead of communication with
others. For example, baba, mama, tata, which may be a reaction to a particular
situation or a particular person as a symbol for the beginning of a mental process
maturity at the age of 9-10 months. Early Lingual Period (1 to 3 years) In this
period, children began to speak the first words, though not yet complete. For
example: akit (sakit), agi (lagi), itut (ikut), atoh (jatuh). Currently some
combinations of letters is still difficult to say, and few letters are still difficult to
pronounce like r, s, k, j, and t. The proficiency improvement is quickly developed
and can be divided into three periods, namely:

a. One word sentence period

According to the rules of grammar, sentence of one word is not a sentence,

because it consists of only one word, but experts of language development of
children thought that the first words spoken by children can mean more than
just a 'word' for the word is an expression of complex ideas, which in the
adult is expressed in complete sentences. For example: the words "mother"
can mean: Mom here! Mom where? Mother, help me! That is mother’s
dress, Mother I am hungry, and so on.

b. Two words sentence period.

Generally, the second sentence appears when children begin to understand a

theme and try to express it. This happened at about the age of 18 months,
 where the child determines that the combination of these two words have a
certain relationship that has different meanings, for example, the meaning of
belonging (mommy dress), and adjective (blue crayon), so on.

c. More than two words sentence period.

The period of sentence of more than two words shows the ability of children
in the field of morphology. Skills form the sentence increased. It can be seen
from the length of the sentence, the sentence of three words, four words, and
so on. In this period the use of language is no longer egocentric, but the child
had used for communication with others, so they started a real relationship
between children and adults.

2) Differentiation Period (3 – 6 years)

In this period children's skills in organizing the differentiation of words and
sentences are more appropriate. Broadly, the general characteristics of language
development in this period are as follows:
a. Phonological development may be said to have ended. There may still be
difficulty in pronouncing pluralistic and complex consonants.
b. Vocabulary gradually began to grow. Nouns and verbs are more
differentiated in its use, it is characterized by the use of prepositions, pronouns
and auxiliary verbs.
c. Language for communication functions properly - really starts to work.
Children want to share their perception and experience of the outside world to
other people, by providing feedback, ask, order, tell and others.
d. Start the development of morphology, characterized by the emergence of a
plural word, change the suffix, change verbs, and others.
Factors Affecting Language Development

1) Health
Healthy children learn faster than children who do not speak well, because
motivation is stronger for being a member of social groups and communicating
with others. If the first two years of age, children experience constant pain,
children consider experience slowness or difficulty in the development of their
discussion.

2) Intelligence
Children who have high intelligence to learn, speak more quickly and demonstrate
mastery of the language than children who’s in low level of intelligence.

3) Social-Economic of the Family

Several studies on the relationship between language development and family’s
social status show that children who come from poor families lacks in language
development than children from richer families. This condition is probably caused
by learning differences or opportunities (poor families allegedly less attention) to
second child language development – or both.

4) Family Relations
Healthy relationships between parents and children will be an opportunity for the
development of children's language, whereas an unhealthy relationship will result
in the children to experience difficulties or delays in language development.

5) Family Size
Single child or children from small families usually speak earlier and better than
children from large families. Because parents can set aside more time to teach their
children to speak.

6) Relationships with Peer

The more the children's relationship with their peers, the more they want to be
accepted as a peer group member, and the more powerful their motivation to learn
to speak.
7) Personality
Children who can adapt well tend to have better speaking ability, both
quantitatively and qualitatively.

RESEARCH….
The Critical Period Hypothesis in Second Language Acquisition: A
Statistical Critique and a Reanalysis
According to the critical period hypothesis (CPH), there is a non-linear relationship
between learners' age and their ability to learn a second language. This paper
addresses the lack of clarity in the literature about the scope and predictions of this
hypothesis. Even when its scope is clearly defined and its predictions are spelt out.

Typically, empirical studies use analytical (statistical) tools that are not relevant to
their predictions. This paper addresses common statistical flaws in CPH research
and presents an alternative analytical method (piecewise regression) through a
reanalysis of two datasets from a 2010 paper that claimed to find crosslinguistic
evidence in favor of the CPH.
This reanalysis shows that the CPH's predicted age patterns are not robust across
languages. According to the principle of parsimony, age patterns in second
language acquisition do not follow a critical period. This paper emphasises the
importance of confirmation bias in scientific research and encourages second
language acquisition researchers to re-analyze their old datasets using the methods
presented. Supplementary materials include the reanalyzed data and R commands.

Does Language Acquisition have a critical period?

The critical period hypothesis is derived from the concept of a critical period in the
biological sciences, which refers to a set period in which an organism must acquire
a skill or ability or said organism will not be able to acquire it later in life. Strictly
speaking, the experimentally verified critical period relates to a time span during
which damage to the development of the visual system can occur, for example if
animals are deprived of the necessary binocular input for developing stereopsis.
Preliminary research into the critical period hypothesis investigated brain
lateralization as a possible neurological cause; however, this theoretical cause was
largely discredited since lateralization does not necessarily increase with age, and
no definitive link between language learning ability and lateralization was ever
determined. A more general hypothesis holds that the critical period for language
acquisition is linked to the interaction of the prolonged development of the human
brain after birth and rearing in a socio-linguistic environment. Based on studies of
the critical period for development of the visual system, this hypothesis holds that
language-specific neural networks in the brain are constructed by the functional
validation of synapses that are specifically activated by exposure to a linguistic
environment early in life. Humans are uniquely capable of language due to the
genetically determined size and complexity of the brain and the long period of
postnatal development, during which the environment can select neuronal circuits
that facilitate language. Recently, it has been suggested that if a critical period does
exist, it may be due at least partially to the delayed development of the prefrontal
cortex in human children. Researchers have suggested that delayed development of
the prefrontal cortex and an associated delay in the development of cognitive
control may facilitate convention learning, allowing young children to learn
language far more easily than cognitively mature adults and older children. This
pattern of prefrontal development is unique to humans among similar mammalian
(and primate) species and may explain why humans—and not chimpanzees—are
so adept at learning language.

Conclusion
For first language acquisition, the critical period is generally recognized to be in
early childhood, with some researchers suggesting that the window may begin to
close around puberty. During this time, the brain is thought to be particularly
plastic or adaptable to language learning. Second language acquisition also seems
to be influenced by a critical period, though the specifics can vary. Some
researchers propose that there is a sensitive period for acquiring a second language
that extends into adolescence, while others argue that the critical period may
continue into early adulthood. It's important to note that the critical period
hypothesis is a theoretical concept and not an absolute rule. There are individuals
who can successfully learn languages outside of these proposed critical periods.
Factors such as motivation, exposure, and individual differences also play
significant roles in language acquisition.