The aim of this experiment was to investigate the processes involved in imitation, in particular whether or not the child s own grammatical system influences elicited imitations. The problem was studied using pre-school children of middle and working class origin. It was found that when asked to repeat back sentences with verb forms found to be used by children of their own social class, subjects imitated accurately, but when presented with those of the other social class the verb forms were altered to produce those with which they were familiar. This led to the conclusion that the child does filter imitations through his own grammatical productive system as proposed by Slobin and Welsh (1968).
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Bernstein, B. ( 1961). Social structure, language and learning. Educational Res., 3, 163.
2.
Brown, R.W. and Fraser, C. ( 1963). The acquisition of syntax. In C. N. Cofer and B. S. Musgrave (Eds.), Verbal Behavior and Learning ( New York).
3.
Fraser, C., Bellugi, U. and Brown, R.W. ( 1963). Control of grammar in imitation, comprehension and production . J. verb. Learn. verb. Behav., 2, 121.
4.
Fries, C.C. ( 1940). American English Grammar ( New York ).
5.
Lawton, D. ( 1968). Social Class, Education and Language ( London).
6.
Mcnally, J. and Murray, W. ( 1962). Key words to literacy. Curriculum Studies , 3, NUT publication .
7.
Mcneill, D. ( 1966). The creation of language by children. In J. Lyons and R. J. Wales (Eds.), Psycholinguistic Papers ( Edinburgh).
8.
Menyuk, P. ( 1963). Syntactic structures in the language of children . Child Develpm., 34, 407.
9.
Menyuk, P. ( 1964). Syntactic rules used by children from preschool through first grade. Child Develpm., 35, 533.
10.
Slobin, D.I. and Welsh, C.A. ( 1968). Elicited imitations as a research tool in developmental psycholinguistics. Working Paper No. 10, Language-Behavior Res. Lab., University of California.
11.
Thorndike, E.L. and Lorge, E. ( 1944). The Teacher's Book of 30,000 Words ( New York).
