Theoretical Perspectives And Children’s Development: Language Development, Gender Roles, Cultural Contexts, Peers, And Media

CHCECE010 Support the Holistic Development of Children in Early Childhood

Language

Language can be defined as the cognitive faculty that helps a child to learn and use the systems of complex communication.

The Nativist perspective

According to the nativist theory Children are biologically preprogrammed for the acquisition of the language (Chomsky, 2012). Noam Chomsky was the founder of this nativist theory and he came up with the concept of the language organ referred to as the language Acquisition device (LAD).

Quotes: “The most striking aspect of linguistic competence is what we may call the ‘creativity of language,’ that is, the speaker’s ability to produce new sentences, sentences that are immediately UNDERSTOOD by other speakers although they bear no physical resemblance to sentences which are ‘familiar”

-Noam Chomsky (Chomsky, 1986). 

The Interactionist perspective

The interactionist approach of the language development emphasizes on the fact that language is developed because of the environmental, biological and cognitive influences. The acquisition of the language is social as well as biological.

Vygotsky’s social interactionist theory emphasizes on the role of social interaction between linguistically knowledgeable adults and developing child.  

Pre-linguistic development

Pre-linguistic development takes place in the time period before the children starts to say their first meaningful words and generally lasts till 0-13 months. In this phase, children generally responds to the higher pitched voices and tones. An infant generally makes vegetative sounds and reflexive crying for communicating. They can identify the various consonant sounds.

According to skinner, children learn language based upon the behaviorist reinforcement principles by the association of the words with the meanings. Correct utterances are reinforced as the child realizes the communicative value of the phrases and the words.

Phonological development

The phonological development occurs during the first year of the child’s life are cooing, babbling. By 2 years a child acquires all the vowels, but only two-third of the consonants. By 4 years children still finds some difficulty with some of the consonants and by 6-7 years, all the consonants are learned.

As per the Theories of Phonological development used by Ferguson and Garnica, most of the children learn to determine and pronounce the sounds of the language in their own speech community such that their perception and pronunciation get reflected as native speakers (Speech Pathology Australia., 2017).  

Semantic development

Semantic development is the gradual acquisition of the words and the meanings that they carry. The first words are normally produced at the timer of birth. It is a slow and gradual process in which a child learns words. Learning of some of the words takes place such as hello, object words and some command words (Leonard, 2014). The learning speeds of the words speed up dramatically after several months after the first word is produced.

Grammatical development

Children harness the expressive power of the languages by acquiring the knowledge of grammar and use it to develop infinite number of messages from a finite sets of words. The different stages of grammatical development are the Holophrastic stage, the two word stage, the telegraphic and the post telegraphic stages (Leonard, 2014).

Pragmatic development

Pragmatic development in a child refers to the understanding of context of the conversation above and beyond the semantic meaning that is being communicated. Children acquire this skills by noticing the adult’s conversation taking turn both by noticing it in adult conversations and how the adults responds to the vocalizations.

Halliday (2014), has identified seven functions of language for the children in the early years of development. The initial four functions helps the child to identify the physical, emotional and the social needs of the children (Instrumental, regulatory, interactional, personal ) and the next three functions are heuristic, imaginative, and representational that assists the child to get adapted to the environment.

Metalinguistic awareness

Metalinguistic awareness can be defined as “the ability to reflect consciously on the nature and the properties of language”. This skill enables a child to deconstruct a language to generate a meaningful sentences. It enables a child to learn a new language, to understand that the meaning of a sentence can be changed by moving the words around (Kamhi & Koenig, 2015).

Gender

As per Kohlberg’s theory of gender identity development, there are three stages that help the children to identify gender in their every day’s life. Initially they do gender labelling followed by a better identification of the gender identity (Martin, 2012). By the early school age most of the children understands that they are one gender and will remain this for the rest of her life.  

Gender stereotypes

Gender stereotypes are generally the widely held beliefs about the characteristics that is deemed appropriate for the males and the females (Berk, 2006). Gender stereotyping can be seen in the children in terms of activities and behaviors. Such as gender stereotyped metaphors like – “bears are for boys” and “butterflies are for girls”. Children often do not want to play with child violating gender stereotypes.

Influences on gender role

Gender roles are the behavioral norms that are considered appropriate in social situations for people of different gender and an understanding of each of this role is important in the development of a child (Berk, 2006). As per the theorists of the social learning, the gender role adoption are influenced by biological influences as well as environmental factors.

Gender identity

This can be referred to as the private face of the gender- view of the self as a relatively masculine or feminine in characteristics.

Gender attributes

Some of the attributes of gender stereotyping is that girls are always related to dolls and boys are always related to dolls. Hence this behavioral attributes helps in developing gender identity in each of the sexes.

Reducing gender stereotyping

Gender stereotyping in children can be reduced by the teaching children to refrain from gender stereotyping as it is from the parents; conversation that the children learn about gender stereotyping. Teacher’s inherent biases are often responsible for gender stereotyping among children and hence teachers should encourage gender equality.

Peer relations

Relation with the peers have an important correlation with the psychological development of the child. Early problems with the peers might have negative consequences in the early years of childhood.

Influences on peer sociability

Peer sociability of a child can be defined as the disposition or the quality of being sociable. It is from the peer sociability skills that attachment in a child develops. Peer sociability skills among the babies can be seen in smiles, touches and babbles that develops gradually in to coordinated interaction in the form of mutual interaction as a child grows up.

As per the psychologist Mary Ainsworth, “attachment may be defined as an affectional tie that one person forms between himself and another specific one – a tie that binds them together in space and endures over time. It is not just a connection between two people; it is a bond that involves desire for a regular contact with that person” (Ainsworth, 1989).

Friendship

Early friendships have powerful influence on the positive and the negative performance of a child and also might assist to encourage or discourage unexpected behaviors (Rutland et al., 2012).

Peer acceptance, peer groups and peer pressure

Peer acceptance, peer grouping and peer pressure influences the cognitive growth of a child. Once a child had established a reputation among the peers, this reputation might affect the way other children perceive the later behavior of the child. Among the school aged children, physical appearance, cultural traits greatly affect the peer acceptance (Beazidou & Botsoglou, 2016).

A peer group might be considered as a group where the members have similar interests (Rutland et al., 2012). The beliefs and the behavioral pattern of children might be influenced by the type of interest of the peer group (Beazidou & Botsoglou, 2016). On the other hand peer pressure might have negative influence on the child such as – other children bullying a child to do harmful acts .

Televisions

Television has the potential to pose both negative and the positive effects. Television poses great corporate social responsibility in the promotion of health personality among the children (Salomon, 2012). On the contrary, children from six to ten years face some difficulties to work out the differences between reality and fantasy on the television, which can have delirious effect on their mental health.  

Phones and internet

Internet and phones are one of the effective means of communication. Children learn language, their own emotions and they learn by watching the conversation of the elders. But screen time takes away time from playing, learning and physical exercises. Children start believing in virtual world other than the reality and can hinder the emotional development of the child.

Regulating media use

Media use should be regulated as it might create dependency among the children and might hinder the emotional development of the children by lessening the time of interaction with the peers and the family. It has been found that media use decreases the time spent in healthy activities. The screen time affects children’s behavior, causes sleep disturbances and also affects brain development.

Schooling

School helps to provide a structured education to children and helps in the promotion of the mental and the psychological growth of the child. Apart from the academics proper schooling also helps in socialization, understanding teamwork, sharing, unity, good manners and also helps in the development of the psychomotor skills.