Children’s Language Development: The Role of Parents and Caregivers

Abstract

The family environment and parental involvement play a very important role in the development of children's speech. Scholars have expressed different viewpoints on the development of children's speech. For example, Jean Piaget believed that children's cognitive development occurs at different levels depending on their age, and that speech is closely related to their cognitive processes. Noam Chomsky considered speech development to be an innate ability, proposing the concept of the "theory of innate language capacity," suggesting that children have an inherent mechanism for learning language and learn it regardless of their environment. B.F. Skinner explained in his behavioral theory that speech development is influenced by the environment and that children's language develops through parental reinforcement and environmental influences. Lev Vygotsky mentioned in his social interaction theory that children are capable of independent learning but develop more rapidly with the assistance of adults, stating that children first learn to communicate with others and then learn to self-direct through inner speech.