Individual Differences in First Language Acquisition
by Professor: Dr. Birjandi and M-Hashamdar, Islamic Azad University, Science & Research Branch
Abstract
The present paper is intended to search for individual differences in first language
acquisition. It identifies differences in social, cognitive, cultural, and linguistic dimensions.
What the researcher has found out so far is that bulk of research on individual differences has been conducted in the realm of second language acquisition and few studies could be detected dealing with this topic in first language acquisition. Therefore, for the purpose of conducting research in this area, the researcher is partly to focus on individual differences in second language acquisition and see whether they can be seen in first language acquisition and partly to try to find the differences which are just influential in first language acquisition regardless of second language acquisition.
Keywords: motivation, input, intelligence, admiration, exposure, referential strategy, expressive strategy.
Introduction
Background
The origins of ID research in psychology go back to the end of the 19th century. Darwin’s cousin, Sir Galton, is usually considered to be the first to investigate individual differences scientifically. Later, Alfred Binet became interested in individual differences by looking at his daughter solving her problems. He coauthored with Victor Henri on ‘individual psychology’.
This article was the first systematic description of the goals, procedures, and methods of individual differences in psychology. In the process of studying individual differences, Binet devised an intelligence scale to separate slow and fast learners in French schools.
With ongoing developments in the study of personality, motivation, and other cognitive abilities, ID research is still considered a powerful area within psychology. However, it has not been that intriguing for researchers of First Language Acquisition. This might be due to different reasons. The most important one appears to be due to the fact that nearly all children acquire the language sooner or later. That’s why the researchers preferred not to put much emphasis on individual differences in FLA.
It was once thought that all children acquire language in pretty much the same way (Lenneberg, 1964). Although some children develop a little quicker than others, the stages of development and strategies used to acquire language are nearly similar. Research studies over 30 years have showed evidence for ID in language styles and strategies.
Nelson (1973) has mentioned two different strategies for acquiring first language; (1) referential strategy, and (2) expressive strategy. She asserts that most children approach language using a referential strategy. That is, they refer to aspects of their immediate environment. In contrast, some children use expressive strategy in which they emphasize social interaction.
Referential children seem to regard language as a process of naming objects whereas expressive children are believed to have more diverse vocabularies such as social routines which are learnt holistically as units. They can also utter whole sentences rather than putting words together one by one and then making sentences.
The differences might have linguistic, social, cognitive, and cultural dimensions.
Linguistic Dimension
Languages differ in what is easier and what harder to learn and master. Slobin (1985) distinguished two sources of complexity for learning: conceptual and formal complexity.
Conceptual complexity belongs to the complexity of the ideas being expressed in language. Formal complexity refers to the forms different concepts get. For example, the concept of plural may take different forms in different languages. In English, it takes -s ending for plural and in other languages the other forms. Although no one language appears to be easier to learn and master, there are some forms which are easier to learn than in other languages. Children growing up in that language find that aspect of language easier and therefore learn it much sooner than children of other languages the same form.
Social Dimensions
Exposure
Many scholars believe that the way children learn language follows a specific pattern and is inherently systematic in its nature. It is definite that children must be exposed to some language in order to start acquisition, but how that exposure and later interaction occur is to some extent variable. The evidence made by feral children (those who have grown up in the wild) and isolated children (those who have grown up with extremely limited human contact) proved the importance of language input and child exposure to language. Exposure to language is out of the control of the child whereas the interaction made in following months and years of childhood is determined more or less by the child and the caretaker. His interest in experiencing and interaction with others give him an active role in the process of language acquisition. Clark (2003) stated that a stimulating and rich linguistic environment will support language development in children. How often and how well caregiver communicate with the child is a strong indicator of how rapidly children expand their language learning. McLaughlin (1984) asserted that engaging the children and encouraging them to express themselves interactively is an effective way to build language experience.
It seems that the amount and quality of the exposure to language experienced by the children of last generation is considerably different from children of new generation. This generation of children is experiencing more exposure to language. In past the source of exposure to language was limited to parents and caregivers’ language. That is, children could not experience a variety of vocabulary and grammar in the language used by people around. It is believed that each individual has got his or her style of speech. When the language exposure is experienced from a limited number of people around, then the language acquired cannot have variety. Child in this situation might acquire the language but the quality and even the rate of learning and mastering the language might be affected.
Goldfield (1987) found that children’s lexical preferences were influenced by both child and caregiver variables. He saw that children who more often used objects to elicit maternal attention and whose mothers more often labeled and described toys and surrounding objects were more likely to use referential language.
Language acquisition takes place while the child is involved in interaction and conversation with caregivers. Conversation demands that its participants attend to each other and to whatever is being talked about. Clark (2003) argues that both joint attention and the updating of common ground play a role in acquisition. By common ground, she means what others know at each point in the conversation. Through this language socialization, children learn the behaviors that are culturally and linguistically appropriate in their community. Interaction with a child by a caregiver can have two patterns: child-centered and situation-centered (Park & King, 2003).
In child-centered context, caretakers consider children as potential conversational partner. That’s why in these families children are involved in daily conversation of the family; sometimes as short as a greeting or question and answer from birth. In this context, family members are to lower their speech pace, and even use simple utterances in their interaction with the child.
In situation-centered context, caregivers tend not to simplify their speech in interaction with the child. Children are expected to understand adult-like utterances. In these families, children have to build up their own language construction, make themselves understood, and interpret other’s responses.
The social aspect of language acquisition was also emphasized by Vygotsky. He regarded language as a critical bridge between the socio-cultural world and individual mental functioning.
He viewed the acquisition of language as the most significant milestone in children’s cognitive development.
Motivation or admiration?
It is generally believed that motivation plays an important role in language learning. Wood (1998) believes that the child’s view of himself as a social being, as an object of other people’s regard, can be a crucial determinant of his motivation. And if you accept this, then you come up with thenotion that motivation and de-motivation for learning are not simply manifestations of individual cognition but they are of social ones. Heckhausen (1982) argues that young children do not entertain a very clear distinction between effort and ability. The fact that some children do things faster than others does not seem to overly concern them. In this regard, what is prominent and important to be considered is the fact that in FLA the child is too young to understand the notion of motivation. What stimulates or persuades the child to acquire the language seems to be due to the admiration he receives from parents or caregivers when he utters a word or phrase.
This admiration is sometimes accompanied with a prize given by others to the child. It might even be the smile of satisfaction the caretaker gives when the child opens his mouth and articulates the first sounds and words.
Cognitive Dimension
There has been a long debate regarding the question whether language acquisition is a process associated with a cognitive system derived from general human intelligence or whether it is a genetically determined system. The supporters of each idea give their own reasons for their support. The fact that the attempts to teach language to other primates failed emphasizes once again that the human brain seems to be suited for the acquisition of language in a way in which no other species can be. However, there is evidence that language is independent of general cognitive abilities and that it is an endowment to human beings.
Performance factors
Lust (2006) states that children’s behavior with language is also affected by a number of performance factors such as memory and ability to deal with length of linguistic utterances. He believes that the relation between these factors and linguistic knowledge is complex. No one denies the role of memory in the cognitive domain of individual differences. Some children have good memory and some not as well as the others. However, memory studies should be under the title of intelligence. That’s why it is discussed under that topic.
Intelligence
The importance of intelligence as a cognitive entity can never be ignored in studying issues related to mental activities. Nevertheless, its role in language acquisition is not fully appreciated by all researchers. Some consider either studies of individuals, who were intellectually handicapped but still show normal mastery of language or individuals whose cognitive abilities are normal but whose speech is impaired.
The children with Spina Bifida, a malformation of the vertebrae that leaves the spinal cord unprotected, and children suffering from Williams Syndrome show that language development does not depend on fully functioning general intelligence.
On the other hand, some scholars such as Gardner believe in linguistic intelligence as one of the eight intelligences in human beings. Gardner developed the theory of multiple intelligences which is based on eight different intelligences such as mathematical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, visual, musical, and bodily intelligences. If we accept that linguistic intelligence exists, then we have to accept that some children are born with high level of linguistic intelligence and some with low linguistic intelligence. Therefore, those with high level can acquire the language much easier and better, and those with low level of linguistic intelligence can acquire language slower and with difficulty.
Cultural Dimension
Gender and birth order
Throughout the last century psychologists have used a number of tests to see if there is any difference in the performance of males and females in different cognitive tasks. Language acquisition is considered to be a cognitive process and this made some psychologists search for the relationship between language acquisition and gender differences.
Teale (1996) claimed that families spend substantially more time in literacy-related activities with girls than with boys. However, this can be culture-bound as well. The common conclusion has been that females perform much better than males in a number of language skills (Kimura, 993). In tasks such as listing words that all begin with the same letter or which are all related semantically.
There is a number of research studies conducted to explain why sex differences exist in first language performance. Cattell (2000) stated that some psychologists believe that males are more strongly lateralized than females, both for language and spatial relationships. Those skills are processed by both hemispheres in females. This claim comes from the idea that the splenum (part of corpus callosum) is larger in females than males.
The birth order is the other criterion which was emphasized by some researchers. Hoff-Ginsberg (1998) identified first-born versus later-born children in high socioeconomic status (SES) versus middle SES families and studied the language addressed to them and their rates of language development. He found out that first-born children were more advanced in lexical and grammatical development than later-born children. However, later-born children were more developed in conversational skills. Wells (1985) stated that adults talk more to first-born than to later-born children, and high SES adults talk more to their children than middle SES adults do.
Hart & Risley (1995) examined the number of people living in a house and the amount of parent-to-child speech. They found out that adults in crowded homes spoke to their children in simpler, less sophisticated ways than adults in less crowded homes. And parents in the more crowded settings were less responsive verbally to their children.
Family background
The effect of cultural and ethnic diversity on first language acquisition can easily be detected when children start speaking their mother tongue with the friends. Children from low-income backgrounds lag behind their peers in language skills from early on, and have been shown to develop vocabularies up to four times more slowly than their peers from more economically advantaged backgrounds (Feldman, 2000).
Tamis-Lemonda and Rodriguez (2008) found out that three aspects of parenting have been highlighted as central to children’s early language and learning: (1) the frequency of children’s participation in routine learning activities such as shared book reading and storytelling; (2) the quality of caregiver-child engagements; and (3) the provision of age-appropriate learning materials.
However, it seems that these aspects of parenting are highly dependent on the parents’ educational status, parent’s age, and ethnicity. It cannot be ignored that parents who are highly educated spend more time with their babies in order to help and scaffold their children’s language learning. Highly-educated parents also use more vocabulary in their conversation and this diversity in word usage gives the child more opportunity to be exposed with more words.
That’s why the children in these families use more elaborate words in their conversation with the teachers and peers when they enter schools. On the other hand, parental education can affect on the household income. Parents living in poverty have children who are at risk for cognitive, academic, and social-emotional problems (McLoyd, 1998).
The other important aspect of parenting is the ethnic and cultural differences in families.
Evens (1999) stated that Hispanic and African American mothers are, on average, less likely to read their children than white non-Hispanic mothers and Spanish-speaking Hispanic families have fewer children’s books available in the home than their non-Hispanic counterparts.
The parent’s age is a determinant in the process of language acquisition. For example, compared to older mothers, teen mothers display lower levels of verbal stimulation and involvement, higher levels of intrusiveness, and material speech that is less varied and complex (Whiteside-Mansell & Pope, 1996).
Conclusion
There exists irrefutable evidence for the individual differences in First Language Acquisition. Children who display delays in language acquisition, those who never catch the standard and normal level of language proficiency, stammering and stuttering of some children, eloquence in speech of some children and lack of it in others, politeness in speech of some infants and lack of it in others, and some more reasons all show that there should be individual differences.
However, most of these variables cannot be easily measured. That’s why many researchers prefer not to search or talk about it. These researchers would rather search for individual differences in Second Language Acquisition.
References
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**ELTWeekly would like to thank Dr. Birjandi and M-Hashamdar for contributing this research paper.
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