Major theories of early childhood
Psychoanalysis & Language
Agenda
Today
- Current Events
- Psychoanalytic perspectives
- Language Development
- Social deprivation
- Presentations
Early Childhood and Psychoanalysis
- Sexual development in Early Childhood
- Emergence of self-stimulation for comfort or tension relief
- Exploration with others is common
- Psychosexual Development (Freud)
- Phallic Stage (3-6) - focus on anatomical sex differences
- Identification with anatomically similar parent (Oedipus/Electra complex)
- Genital anxieties (castration anxiety/penis envy)
- Little to no support of Freud's Phallic stage, but prevalent in folk psychology
Early Childhood and Psychoanalysis
- Psychosocial Development (Erickson)
- Initiative vs. Guilt
VS
- Self-concept: How do you describe yourself?
- Self-esteem: How do you evaluate yourself?
- Generally, children at this stage have positive self-image.
- Fewer social comparisons?
Language Development
Major theories:
-
Behaviorist- acquired through conditioning and imitation
- Scale with complexity?
-
Nativist- innate "universal grammar", we have a Language Acquisition Device (LAD)
- Early mistakes?
- Constructionist- Social interaction + Statistical learning produce internalized templates
Chomsky
Parallels with prefigurative Politics
What makes humans unique?
Language Development
- (IPT) Emergent Literacy- search for familiar/memorized
- Vocabulary
- fast-mapping
- Learn Objectives... Verbs... Modifiers/Adjectives (in English)
- Grammar
- Subject--Verb--Object Grammatical structure
- Overregularization ("The cup breaked")
- recasts- parental feedback
- Conversation
- Pragmatics - Social, practical language use
- Majority of children are bilingual, when balanced improves language cognition
Role of Theory-Theory?
Supporting Early Language
Sensitive Period for Social Interaction
Socially-deprived Romanian Orphans
- Orphans adopted before 6 months of age “caught up” to peers
- Orphans adopted after 6 months showed intellectual deficits and autism-like symptoms
The “Video Deficit Effect”
- Studies find that children under 2.5 years of age consistently learn better from a live person than a video
- Live Mandarin-Chinese lessons for English-speaking infants allowed children to perceive the sound contrasts in Mandarin;
- Same lesson on videotape did not
- Baby Einstein videos
- Educational Apps
