Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T17:14:33.410Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Exposure is not enough

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2016

BRIAN MACWHINNEY*
Affiliation:
Carnegie Mellon University
*
Address for correspondence: Brian MacWhinney, Carnegie Mellon University – Psychology, 5000 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA

Extract

Child language researchers have often assumed that progress in first language learning depends heavily on language exposure. For example, Hart and Risley (1995) compared children in middle class families with children in lower class families. Based on recordings made across several years in the home, they estimated that by the time the children from lower SES families entered first grade they had heard 30 million fewer words than the middle class children. Researchers and educators have argued that this ‘30 million word gap’ is a primary cause for academic failure of lower SES children in the primary grades in the United States. Researchers in second language acquisition (SLA) research have often postulated a similar linkage between exposure and attainment, both for early and simultaneous bilingual children and later second language learning. Carroll (Carroll) expresses justifiable skepticism regarding such claims regarding the effect of amount of exposure on language attainment. Despite some important differences in conceptualization of the nature of the input, I find her overall analysis compelling and important.

Type
Peer Commentaries
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ambridge, B., & Lieven, E. (2015). A constructivist account of child language acquisition. In MacWhinney, B. & O'Grady, W. (Eds.), The handbook of language emergence (pp. 478510). New York, NY: Wiley.Google Scholar
Baayen, H. (2010). Demythologizing the word frequency effect. The Mental Lexicon, 5, 436461.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burling, R. (1959). Language development of a Garo and English speaking child. Word, 15, 4568.Google Scholar
Carroll, S. E. Exposure and input in bilingual development. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. doi:10.1017/S1366728915000863.Google Scholar
Döpke, S. (1998). Competing language structures: The acquisition of verb placement by bilingual German-English children. Journal of Child Language, 25, 555584.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gershkoff-Stowe, L., Thal, D. J., Smith, L. B., & Namy, L. L. (1997). Categorization and its developmental relation to early language. Child Development, 68, 843859.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hart, B., & Risley, T. R. (1995). Meaningful differences in the everyday experience of young American children. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes.Google Scholar
Kuhl, P. K. (2007). Is speech learning ‘gated'by the social brain? Developmental Science, 10 (1), 110120.Google Scholar
MacWhinney, B. (1975). Pragmatic patterns in child syntax. Stanford Papers And Reports on Child Language Development, 10, 153165.Google Scholar
MacWhinney, B. (1987). The Competition Model. In MacWhinney, B. (Ed.), Mechanisms of language acquisition (pp. 249308). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
MacWhinney, B. (2004). A multiple process solution to the logical problem of language acquisition. Journal of Child Language, 31, 883914.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacWhinney, B. (2014). Item-based patterns in early syntactic development. In Herbst, T., Schmid, H.-J., & Faulhaber, S. (Eds.), Constructions collocations patterns (pp. 3370). Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
MacWhinney, B. (2015a). Entrenchment in second language learning. In Schmid, H.-J. (Ed.), Entrenchment (pp. xxxx): American Psychological Association.Google Scholar
MacWhinney, B. (2015b). Introduction: Language Emergence. In MacWhinney, B. & O'Grady, W. (Eds.), Handbook of Language Emergence (pp. 132). New York, NY: Wiley.Google Scholar
Yip, V., & Matthews, S. (2007). The bilingual child: Early development and language contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar