Description
In "How Children Learn to Learn Language," Lorraine McCune explores the process of language acquisition in children and the various factors that contribute to it. She emphasizes the importance of social, cognitive, and vocal variables in enabling children to transition to referential language. McCune also highlights the role of the caregiver in this development, as language is a system of symbolic communication that requires children to recognize their own separate identity. She argues that language learning involves both developing meanings and learning to produce corresponding sound sequences. In order for this process to be effective, children must also discover their ability to refer to objects and events in the world through focused attention and vocalization. McCune's book will be a valuable resource for students and researchers in developmental psychology, providing insight into the often-neglected topic of pre-language development.
Studies of language acquisition often assume that children will simply begin to learn language, without questioning what sets the whole process in motion. In How Children Learn to Learn Language, Lorraine McCune thoroughly examines the often-neglected topic of how children discover the possibility of language and demonstrates that pre-language development involves a dynamic system of social, cognitive, and vocal variables that come together to enable the transition to referential language. The relationship with a caregiver is integral to this development because language is a system of symbolic communication that can emerge only with children's recognition that they are separate from others. McCune sees language learning as constructed equally from needing to develop meanings and learning to produce the sound sequences that represent them. In order for this dual construction to be effective, however, children must discover their capacity to refer to objects and events in the world by having their internal states of focused attention accompanied by an autonomic, physiologically based vocalization, which is the grunt that results from physical or mental effort. When the grunt is intensified and directed at a conversational partner, as when children attempt to convey an internal state, it becomes their first protoword. How Children Learn to Learn Language will be a valuable resource on pre-language development for students and researchers in developmental psychology.
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