11.1 Language Development
Learning Objectives
By the end of this chapter, you will be able to
- Describe the role of language exposure on perceptual narrowing for phenomenological learning.
- Explain three commonly studied attachment patterns.
- Describe cultural variations in the development of the three commonly studied attachment patterns.
- Describe the consequences of secure attachment in diverse relationship types.
- Describe the consequences of insecure attachment in diverse relationship types.
- Describe cross-cultural research from an information processing theory perspective of cognitive development.
- Describe the development of social cognition.
- Examine the implications of social cognition on diverse peer relationships.
- Describe major cultural features of psychosocial development during adolescence.
- Describe major cultural features of cognitive development during adolescence.
- Describe major cultural features of social development during adolescence.
Infants come into the world having had experience with language. While in utero, they listen to the languages their mother speaks as well as the languages produced around her. Consequently, newborns display a preference for the languages they heard in utero (Byers-Heinlein et al., 2010) and show an early inclination to pay attention to the sounds that are familiar to them. During the first 3 years of development, children learn both phonological and semantic aspects of language. Phonological development encompasses learning the sounds produced in one’s language and how these speech sounds combine to make words, while semantic development encompasses learning the meaning behind words and word combinations. Each language has its own distinct set of phonemes, which are the smallest distinguishable sound of a consonant or vowel in a language. Although newborns prefer to listen to the familiar sounds of the languages they were exposed to in utero, they are born with the ability to distinguish between the phonemes that appear in any language, regardless of exposure during fetal development.
Between 10 and 12 months of age, infants begin to experience perceptual narrowing (see Chapter 4) concerning the sounds they can perceive in a language. This means that their experience with language in the first 10 months of development determines their ability to discriminate between the sounds that exist in a language (see this video demonstrating perceptual narrowing experiments; Tsushima et al., 1994; Werker & Tees, 1984). For example, infants who live in a bilingual household and are exposed to two languages can distinguish between the sounds that exist in both languages. Infants living in monolingual households become proficient in distinguishing between the sounds that exist in their first language, but they lose the ability to distinguish between the sounds of a foreign language. Perceptual narrowing also occurs with sign language in hearing infants. This means that hearing infants as young as 4 months can discriminate between signed handshapes but lose that ability after 1 year of age (Baker-Palmer et al., 2012).
These findings suggest that early exposure to multiple languages predisposes children to learn the languages they are exposed to, as phonological learning opens the door to semantic learning (i.e., word meaning). This refutes the misconception that learning two or more languages interferes with learning one language proficiently. Language researchers have identified similar language processes among dual and monolingual children. For example, the number of vocabulary words known by monolingual children is similar to the number of vocabulary words known by bilingual learners in both languages together (Carlo et al., 2004). The quality of speech received from caregivers and the adults who communicate with children largely predicts a child’s proficiency in a particular language (De Houwer, 2009). Therefore, the proficiency of a caregiver in a second language will help children learn that language. However, these studies have mainly focused on dual-language learning in the United States and Europe.
Studies that examine communication practices in other cultures across the world, such as Bolivia, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Kenya, and Mayan communities, show that adults do not communicate with infants and children in ways as direct as those documented in Northern American and European cultures (Cristia et al., 2019; Shieffelin & Ochs, 1986; LeVine et al., 1994). Instead, speech and language are often communicated from adult to adult and are less often directed toward the child. As a result, children learn language by observing and listening in on their caregivers’ conversations (Miao & Wang, 2003; Rogoff et al., 2003). Although there are some universal processes in language acquisition, such as infants learning through phonological discrimination and semantic development, how one’s environment contributes to these processes can vary across cultures. There are many ways in which children learn language from adults around them, yet there continues to be less research on language development in countries from the global south. Therefore, interventions for language development for American or European children should be used with caution in other countries (Singh et al., 2025).