Abstract
Despite a colorful and controversial history, imitation has been prematurely rejected as an explanatory mechanism in language acquisition. During the 1950s, behaviorists asserted that simple or exact imitation was the primary means of language learning (e.g., Skinner, 1957). Critics later argued that imitation could not logically account for the rich, generative language behavior of children (see Chomsky, 1959, 1979, 1980). For example, Brown and Bellugi (1964) argued that, because children’s overregularizations (taked, swimmed) were not and could not be imitative in nature, then neither could other acquisition phenomena be imitative. What seemed particularly damaging was the observation that children’s imitative speech was no more sophisticated than their spontaneous utterances (Ervin, 1964 Slobin, 1967). What followed in the 1970s was a bifurcation of the field; researchers with more applied interests continued to work in imitation, while a few mainstream developmental psycholinguists relegated imitation to debates over appropriate definitions (e.g., McTear, 1978; Moerk, 1977; Snow, 1979, 198lb; Whitehurst & Vasta, 1975). Unfortunately, this division has widened the conceptual distance between current theory and applications such that modern thinkers (e.g., Pinker, 1984; Wexler & Cullicover, 1980) virtually ignore imitation data from clinical or applied sources. In fact, neither Pinker’s (1984) nor Wexler and Cullicover’s (1980) books on language learnability theory mention the term imitation at all, nor do they cite data on imitation or other phenomena reported in the applied journals of the American Speech and Hearing Association. Not surprisingly, clinicians may well despair of using modern theories in practice, as they appear to be too abstract for application or simply irrelevant for clinical populations. Thus, each “camp” proceeds for the most part, independently, focusing on different facets of the problem of language acquisition, with neither trying to account for the other’s data. The aim of this chapter is to bridge this crevasse and reintegrate imitation into explanatory models of language acquisition.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Anderson, J. (1980). Cognitive psychology and its implications. San Francisco: Freeman Press.
Baker, N., & Nelson, K. (1984). Recasting and related conversational techniques for triggering syntactic advances by young children. First Language, 5, 3–22.
Bates, E., Beeghly-Smith, M., Bretherton, I., & McNew, S. (1982). Social basis of language development: A reassessment. In H. Reese & L. Lipsett (Eds.), Advances in child development and behavior (Vol. 16, pp. 8–75). New York: Academic Press.
Bates, E., & MacWhinney, B. (1982). Functionalist approaches to grammar. In E. Wanner & L. Gleitman (Eds.), Language acquisition: The state of the art (pp. 173–218). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Bloom, L. (1974). Talking, understanding and thinking. In R. Schiefelbusch & R. Lloyd (Eds.), Language perspective: Acquisition,retardation, and intervention (pp. 285–312). Baltimore, MD: University Park Press.
Bloom, L., Hood, R, & Lightbown, P. (1974). Imitation in language development: If when and why? Cognitive Psychology, 6, 380–420.
Bloom, L., Rocissano, L., & Hood, L. (1976). Adult-child discourse: Developmental interaction between information processing and linguistic knowledge. Cognitive Psychology, 8, 521–552.
Bock, K. (1982). Toward a cognitive psychology of syntax: Information processing contributions to sentence formulation. Psychological Review, 89, 1–47.
Bock, K. (in press). Syntactic persistence in language production. Cognitive Psychology.
Bohannon, J. (1975). The relationship between syntax discrimination and sentence imitation in children. Child Development, 46, 444–451.
Bohannon, J. (1976). Normal and scrambled grammar in discrimination, imitation, and comprehension. Child Development, 47, 669–681.
Bohannon, J., & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (1984). Do children say as they are told? A new perspective on motherese. In Feagans, L., Garvey, C., & Gol inkoff, R. (Eds.), The origins and growth of communication (pp. 176–195). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Bohannon, J., & Marquis, A.L. (1977). Children’s control of adult speech. Child Development, 48, 1002–1008.
Bohannon, J., & Stanowicz, L. (1988). Adult response to children’s language errors: The issue of negative evidence. Developmental Psychology, 24, 684–689.
Bohannon, J., Stanowicz, L., Ness, J., & Warren-Leubecker, A. (1986, April). Errors in sentence production: Evidence from a limited information processor. Paper presented at the Conference on Human Development, Nashville, TN.
Bohannon, J., Stine, E.L., & Ritzenberg, D. (1982). Motherese: The effects of feedback and experience. The Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 19, 201–204.
Bohannon, J., & Warren-Leubecker, A. (1985). Theoretical approaches to language acquisition. In J.B. Gleason (Ed.), The development of language (pp. 173–226). Columbus, OH: Merrill.
Bohannon, J., & Warren-Leubecker, A. (1988). Recent developments in child directed speech: You’ve come a long way, baby-talk. Language Science 10(1), in press.
Bonvillian, J., Nelson, K.E., & Charrow, V. (1976). Languages and language-related skills in deaf and hearing children. Sign Language Studies, 12, 211–250.
Braine, M. (1963). The ontogeny of English phrase structure: The first phase. Language, 39, 1–14.
Brown, R. (1973). A first language: The early stages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Brown, R., & Bellugi, U. (1964). Three processes in the child’s acquisition of syntax. Harvard Education Review, 34, 133–151.
Brown, R., & Hanlon, C. (1970). Derivational complexity and the order of acquisition in child speech. In J.R. Hayes (Ed.), Cognition and the development of language. New York: Wiley.
Brown, R., & McNeill, D. (1966). The “tip of the tongue” phenomenon. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 5, 454–462.
Carr, T., & Evans, M. (1984). The ontogeny of description. In L. Feagans, C. Garvey, & R. Golinkoff (Eds.), The origins and growth of communication (pp. 297–316). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Chafe, W. (1977). Creativity in verbalizations and its implications for the nature of stored knowledge. In R. Freedle (Ed.), Discourse production and comprehension (Vol. 1). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Chapman, K., Leonard, L., & Mervis, C. (1986). The effects of feedback on young children’s inappropriate word usage. Journal of Child Languages, 13, 101–117.
Chapman, R., & Miller, J. (1975). Word order in early two and three word utterances: Does production precede comprehension? Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 18, 355–371.
Chomsky, N. (1959). Review of Verbal Behavior by B.F. Skinner. Language, 35, 26–58.
Chomsky, N. (1972). Language and mind. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich.
Chomsky, N. (1979). Human language and other semiotic systems. Semiotica, 25, 31–44.
Chomsky, N. (1980). On binding. Linguistic Inquiry, 11, 1–46.
Clark, E. (1977). What’s the use of imitation? Journal of Child Language, 4, 341–358.
Clark, R., Hutcheson, S., & Van Buren, R. (1974). Comprehension and production in language acquisition. Journal of Linguistics, 10, 39–54.
Collins, A., & Loftus, E. (1975). A spreading activation theory of semantic processing. Psychological Review, 82, 407–428.
Cross, T.G. (1977). Mother’s speech adjustments: Contributions of selected child listener variables. In C. Snow & C. Ferguson (Eds.), Talking to children: Language input and acquisition (pp. 151–188). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Demetras, M., Post, K., & Snow, C. (1986). Feedback to first language learners: The role of repetitions and clarification questions. Journal of Child Language, 13, 275–292.
DePaulo, B., & Coleman, L. (1986). Talking to children, foreigners, and retarded adults. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 945–959.
de Villiers, J. (1980). The processing of rule learning in child speech: A new look. In K. Nelson (Ed.), Children’s Language (Vol. 2, pp. 1–44). New York: Gardner Press.
de Villiers, P., & de Villiers, J. (1972). Early judgements of semantic and syntactic acceptability by children. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 1, 299–310.
Ervin, S. (1964). Imitation and structural change in children’s language. In E. Lenneberg (Ed.), New directions in the study of language (pp. 163–189). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Ervin Tripp, S. (1971). An overview of theories of grammatical development. In D. Slobin (Ed.), The ontogenesis of grammar. New York: Academic Press.
Farrar, M. (1987, April). Adult recasts as conditions for imitation in children. Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Baltimore, MD.
Fernald, C. (1972). Control of grammar in imitation, comprehension, and production. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 11, 606–613.
Fraser, C., Bellugi, U., & Brown, R. (1973). Control of grammar in imitation, comprehension, and production. In C. Ferguson & D. Slobin (Eds.), Studies in child language development (pp. 465–485). New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Garvey, C. (1977). The contingent query: A dependent act in conversation. In M. Lewis & L. Rosenblum (Eds.), Interaction, conversation, and the development of language. New York: Wiley.
Garvey, C. (1978). Contingent queries and their relations in discourse. In E.O. Keenan (Ed.), Studies in linguistic pragmatics. NY: Academic Press.
George, B., & Tomasello, M. (1984). The effect of variation in sentence length on young children’s attention and comprehension. First Language, 5, 115–128.
Gleitman, L., & Landau, B. (1985). Language and experience: Evidence from the blind child. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Gleitman, L., Newport, E., & Gleitman, H. (1984). The current status of the motherese hypothesis. Journal of Child Language, 11, 43–80.
Gleitman, L., & Wanner, E. (1984). Current issues in language learning. In M. Bornstein & M. Lamb (Eds.), Developmental psychology: An advanced textbook. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Gold, E. (1967). Language identification in the limit. Information and Control, 10, 447–474.
Grossberg, S., & Stone, G. (1986). Neural dynamics of word recognition and recall: Attentional priming, learning, and resonance. Psychological Review, 93, 46–74.
Hamburger, H., & Crain, S. (1984). Acquisition of cognitive compiling. Cognition, 17, 85–136.
Harris, M., & Hassemer, W. (1972). Some factors affecting the complexity of children’s sentences: The effects of modeling, age, sex, and bilingualism. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 13, 447–455.
Hirsh-Pasek, K., Treiman, R., & Schneiderman, M. (1984). Brown and Hanlon revisited: Mother’s sensitivity to ungrammatical forms. Journal of Child Language, 11, 81–88.
Hoff-Ginsburg, E., & Shatz, M. (1982). Linguistic input and the child’s acquisition of language. Psychological Bulletin, 92, 3–26.
Keenan, E. (1977). Making it last: repetition in children’s discourse. In S. Ervin Tripp & C. Mitchell-Kernan (Eds.), Child discourse (pp. 125–138). New York: Academic Press.
Keeney, T., & Wolfe, J. (1972). The acquisition of agreement in English. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 11, 698–705.
Lempert, H. (1984). Topic as a starting point for syntax. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 49(Serial No. 5).
Leonard, L., Chapman, K., Rowan, L., & Weiss, A. (1983). Three hypotheses concerning young children’s imitation of lexical items. Developmental Psychology, 19, 591–601.
Lovell, K., & Dixon, E. (1967). The growth of the control of grammar in imitation, comprehension and production. The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 8, 31–39.
MacWhinney, B. (1987). The competition model of language acquisition. In B. MacWhinney (Ed.), Mechanisms of language acquisition (pp. 249–308). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Maratsos, M., & Chalkey, M. (1980). The internal language of children’s syntax: The ontogenesis and representation of syntactic categories. In K.E. Nelson (Ed.), Children’s language (Vol. 2, pp. 127–214). New York: Gardner Press.
Mayer, J., & Valian, V. (1977, October). When do children imitate? When imitate? When necessary. Paper presented at the annual Boston University Conference on Language Acquisition, Boston, MA.
McClelland, J., & Rumelhart, D. (1981). An interactive activation model of context effects in letter perception: An account of the basic findings. Psychological Review, 88, 375–402.
McClelland, J., & Rumelhart, D., & the PDP Research Group. (1986). Parallel distributed processing: Explorations in the microstructure of cognition (Vol. 2). Cambridge, MA: Bradford Books.
McClelland, J., Yerchuk, C., & Holdgrafer, G. (1986). Comprehension and production of word order by two year old children. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 15, 97–116.
McDade, H., Simpson, M., & Lamb, D. (1982). The use of elicited imitation as a measure of expressive grammar: A question of validity. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 47, 19–24.
McTear, M.F. (1978). Repetition in child language: Imitation or creation. In R. Campbell & P. Smith (Eds.), Recent advances in the psychology of language (pp. 293–312). New York: Plenum.
Meyer, D., & Schwaneveldt, R. (1971). Facilitation in recognizing pairs of words: Evidence of a dependence between retrieval operations. Psychological Review, 90, 227–234.
Moerk, E. (1975). Verbal interactions between children and their mothers during the preschool years. Developmental Psychology, 11, 788–794.
Moerk, E. (1977). Processes and products of imitation: Additional evidence that imitation is progressive. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 6, 187–202.
Moerk, E. (1983). The mother of Eve as a first language teacher. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Moerk, E. (1985). A differential interactive analysis of language teaching and learning. Discourse Processes, 8, 113–142.
Nakayama, M., & Crain, S. (1985, October). Performance factors in children’s spontaneous sentence production. Paper presented at the Boston University Conference on Language Development, Boston, MA.
Nelson, K. (1973). Structure and strategy in learning to talk. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 38(Serial No. 1–2).
Nelson, K.E. (1977). Facilitating children’s syntax acquisition. Developmental Psychology, 13, 101–107.
Nelson, K.E. (1981). Toward a rare-event cognitive comparison theory of syntax acquisition. In R. Dale & D. Ingram (Eds.), Child language: An international perspective. Baltimore, MD: University Park Press.
Nelson, K.E. (1987). Some observations from the perspective of the rare event cognitive comparison theory of language acquisition. In K.E. Nelson & A. van Kleeck (Eds.), Children’s Language. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Nelson, K.E. (1988). Strategies for first language teaching. In R. Schiefelbusch & M. Rice (Eds.), Teachability of language. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Nelson, K.E., Denninger, M., Bonvillian, J., Kaplan, B., & Baker, N. (1983). Maternal input adjustments and non-adjustments as related to children’s linguistic advances and the language acquisition theories. In A. Pelligrini & T. Yawkey (Eds.), The development of oral and written languages: Readings in developmental and applied linguistics. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Newport, E., Gleitman, L., & Gleitman, H. (1977). Mother I’d rather do it myself: Some effects and non-effects of motherese. In C. Snow & C. Ferguson (Eds.), Talking to children: Language input and acquisition. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Ornstein, P. (Ed.), (1978). Memory development in children. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Patterson, C., Cosgrove, J., & O’Brien, R. (1980). Nonverbal indicants of comprehension and noncomprehension in children. Developmental Psychology, 16, 38–48.
Penner, S. (1987). Parental responses to grammatical and ungrammatical child utterances. Child Development, 58, 376–384.
Pinker, S. (1979). Formal models of language learning. Cognition, 7, 217–283.
Pinker, S. (1984). Language learnability and language development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Pinker, S. (1987). The bootstrapping problem in language acquisition. In B. MacWhinney (Ed.), Mechanisms of language acquisition (pp. 399–442). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Rodd, L., & Braine, M. (1970). Children’s imitations of syntactic construction as a measure of linguistic competence. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 10, 430–441.
Rubin, D. (1975). Within word structure in the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 13, 392–397.
Ruder, K., Hermann, P., & Schiefelbusch, R. (1977). Effects of verbal imitation and comprehension training on verbal production. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 6, 59–72.
Ryan, J. (1973). Interpretation and imitation in early language development. In R. Hinde & J. Stevenson-Hinde (Eds.), Constraints on learning. New York: Academic Press.
Sachs, J., & Johnson, M. (1972, July). Language development in a hearing child of deaf parents. Paper presented at the International Symposium on First Language Acquisition, Florence, Italy.
Shiffrin, R., & Schneider, W. (1977). Controlled and automatic human information processing: II. Perceptual learning, automatic attending, and a general theory. Psychological Review, 84, 127–190.
Shipley, E., Smith, C., & Gleitman, L. (1969). A study of the acquisition of language: Free responses to commands. Language, 8, 322–342.
Skinner, B.F. (1957). Verbal behavior. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Slobin, D.I. (1967). Imitation and grammatical development in children. In N. Endler, S. Boulter, & H. Osser (Eds.), Contemporary issues in developmental psychology. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Snow, C.E. (1972). Mothers’ speech to language learning children. Child Development, 43,549–569.
Snow, C.E. (1979). The role of social interaction in language acquisition. In A. Collins (Ed.), Children’s language and communication: 12th Minnesota Symposium on Child Psychology. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Snow, C.E. (1981a). Social interaction and language acquisition. In P. Dale and D. Ingram (Eds.), Child language: An international perspective. Baltimore, MD: University Park Press.
Snow, C.E. (1981b). The uses of imitation. Journal of Child Language, 8, 205–208.
Snow, C.E., & Ferguson, C.A. (Eds.), (1977). Talking to children: Language input and acquisition. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Stine, E.L., & Bohannon, J. (1983). Imitations, interactions and language acquisition. Journal of Child Language, 10, 589–604.
Tomasello, M. (1988). The role of joint attentional processes in early language development. Language Sciences, 7, in press.
Vallan, V. (1986, October). A problem about positive and negative evidence. Paper presented at the meeting of the Boston University Conference on Language Development, Boston, MA.
Warren-Leubecker, A., & Bohannon, J. (1982). The effects of expectation and feedback on speech to foreigners. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 11, 207–215.
Warren-Leubecker, A., & Bohannon, J. (1983). The effects of verbal feedback and listener type on the speech of preschool children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 35, 540–548.
Warren-Leubecker, A., & Bohannon, J. (1984). Intonation patterns in child-directed speech: Mother-father differences. Child Development, 55, 1541–1548.
Warren-Leubecker, A., & Bohannon, J. (1985). Language in society: Variation and adaptation. In J. Berko-Gleason (Ed.), The development of language (pp. 331–367). Columbus, OH: Merrill.
Warren-Leubecker, A., & Tate, C. (1986, October). Is preschoolers’ speech egocentric? Evidence of pragmatic errors and routines in telephone conversations. Paper presented at the Boston University Conference on Language Development, Boston, MA.
Wexler, K. (1982). A principle theory for language acquisition. In E. Wanner & L. Gleit-man (Eds.), Language acquisition: The state of the art (pp. 288–318). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Wexler, K., & Cullicover, P. (1980). Formal principles of language acquisition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Whitehurst, G. (1977). Imitation, response novelty, and language acquisition. In B.C. Etzel, J.M. LeBlanc, & D.M. Baer (Eds.), New developments in behavioral research: Theory, method and application. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Whitehurst, G., Ironsmith, M., & Goldfein, M. (1974). Selective imitation of the passive construction through modeling. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 17, 288–302.
Whitehurst, G., & Vasta, R. (1975). Is language acquired through imitation? Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 9, 1–22.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1989 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bohannon, J.N., Stanowicz, L. (1989). Bidirectional Effects of Imitation and Repetition in Conversation: A Synthesis Within a Cognitive Model. In: Speidel, G.E., Nelson, K.E. (eds) The Many Faces of Imitation in Language Learning. Springer Series in Language and Communication, vol 24. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-1011-5_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-1011-5_6
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4612-6983-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-4612-1011-5
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive