Module 3.3

Adults and children talking

Mothers may talk to their children differently from the way that they talk to other adults - but, according to Pinker and other nativists, this makes no difference to the children's ability to acquire the language. Do parents intervene in other useful ways? It might seem that they do ; for example, parents sometimes correct their children's errors. They also sometimes expand upon what the children say, so that a childish utterance such as 'Doggy goned' might be countered by 'Yes, the nice doggie has gone back home'. We might expect children to learn both from the corrections and from the expansions.

However, most of the research that has been done to date on the way children acquire language suggests that they take little notice of correction - unless there is too much of it, in which case they may simply refuse to speak. There is some evidence that expansions are of little use either ; children who hear expansions seem to make less progress than those who heard more open responses to their utterances.

So direct intervention, consciously intended to improve a child's linguistic progress, does not seem to have much effect - or may even slow down the acquisition process. Does this mean, as the Nativists believe, that parents make no real difference? Go to this page, and search through it until you find the report on the work of Professor Huttenlocher.