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Access Full Paper ELT VOICES – INDIA INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR TEACHERS OF ENGLISH FEBRUARY 2014 | VOLUME 4, ISSUE 1 | ISSN 2230-9136 (PRINT) 2321-7170 (ONLINE) Intelligence and First Language Acquisition FARID GHAEMI1, FARZANEH SABOKROUH2 ABSTRACT This paper focuses the link between intelligence and first language development (acquisition). First, it reviews the existing theories of intelligence and then briefly highlights the gist of the studies concerning the interdependency of first language acquisition and intelligence. Finally, it concludes that the present attempts regarding the exploration of the nature of the interrelationship between child language acquisition and intelligence is mainly focused on general intelligence (g) factor and few, if any, attempts have been made to discover the connections of the more modern theories of intelligence such as multiple intelligences or emotional intelligence and first language acquisition. 1. Assistant professor in TESL/TEFL, Karaj branch, Islamic Azad University, Iran 2. Ph.D. candidate in TEFL, Islamic Azad University, Iran ELT VOICES – INDIA February 2014 | Volume 4, Issue 1 Introduction Generally, it is accepted that there is a positive relationship between language ability and intelligence as measured by a standard intelligence test. The relationship has been suspect since the understanding and making use of words play a key role in many of the IQ tests. The question has long been raised if a child receives a high score on a verbal intelligence test because he has a good command of language, or if he has a good command of language because of his verbal intelligence. This has been termed the "overlap" of linguistic ability and general intelligence (Watts, 1944). While the connection between verbal capacity and measured IQ is most remarkable, the IQ tests are greatly correlated with and possibly depend on facility in language. This concept of likelihood of the dependence on language implies the restrictions of these IQ tests and the disagreement about the validity of the scores (Mussen, 1963). It can be anticipated that a nonverbal type intelligence test would give way to an IQ score representing those cognitive capacities not particularly verified or involved by linguistic ability. As has been put forward by Bruner (1964), Piaget (1958), and Vygotsky (1962) language smoothes the progress of thought processes. The inquiry concerning the verbal-type test might be pertinent to whether the child in asked to respond verbally or not. Along with following orders, provided verbally or nonverbally, one can question if the child is utilizing language in solving manipulative and perceptual problems offered in the testing condition. Dixon (1967) found that children who are capable of talking over the stages and operations as they perform them have a better opportunity of being successful. Starting in the 1950s, the linguist Noam Chomsky (1986) reasoned that there must be a substantial innate component underlying language acquisition. He contrasted the abstractness of some kinds of language knowledge with the plodding concreteness of the information that seemed likely to be available to infants in their experience of other people talking. Chomsky's arguments were a major stimulus to studies of first language acquisition, not only by people who found his arguments persuasive, but also by a spectrum of others, some reacting strongly against Chomsky's position and some who were merely interested to see whether observations of the process of language acquisition would refute or confirm a view arrived at by logical conjecture. Everyone acknowledges that language acquisition is the product of both the intrinsic genetically-determined make up of human children (their nature) and their life experiences as they are growing up (the nurture that they receive from the environment). A chimpanzee brought up in a human household does not learn to talk, because chimpanzees evidently do not have the relevant aspects of human nature. Children who suffer the cruelty of isolation from interaction also do not learn to talk, through not having been adequately nurtured. If this nature-based approach to first language acquisition is true then intelligence does not play a crucial role in first language development. On the other hand, intelligence would play a crucial role in first language development and deciphering linguistic experiences if one relied on nurture-based approaches to first language acquisition. 235|ELT Voices – India International Journal|ISSN 2230-9136 (Print) 2321-7170 (Online) ELT VOICES – INDIA February 2014 | Volume 4, Issue 1 For most aspects of language development, we do not know whether nature or nurture is the dominant influence. Some theorists stress the importance of humans being born to become language users (nature), while others emphasize the several years of daily experience that preschoolers get with language in use (nurture). Proportions attributable to nature and nurture can be estimated by comparing identical twins with non-identical twins, but opinions regarding which measures of language achievement are the interesting and important ones depend on one's theoretical predilections — whether the indicators should be vocabulary size, or children's ability to make judgments about the semantic effects of certain syntactic structures, or some index of subtlety in conversation, etc — so twin comparisons do not fully resolve the issue. Child language researchers also want to know in detail how nature and nurture work together to achieve language acquisition, not just what percentage of the outcome each can be held responsible for (Clarke, 2009). A distinction that most child language theorists accept is the one that Chomsky drew between competence (a person's internalized language knowledge) and performance (actual linguistic behaviour — different from competence because language users are subject to memory limitations, errors, interruptions, etc). Competence is what researchers would like to know about. Performance is one kind of evidence that child language researchers can use. Beyond this, however, there are disagreements. Formalists see competence as concerned with the rules and principles according to which linguistic forms — sentences especially, but also words and phonological units — are patterned. Researchers with sociolinguistic priorities talk, instead, about communicative competence (which, in addition to knowledge of form, includes knowledge about how to make appropriate use of language). Functionalists tend to view the patterns that formalists study as largely arising from the use of language in communication. Different approaches are inclined to rely on different sorts of data. For instance, a formalist who is centrally interested in children's acquisition of syntax does not have much interest in holophrases, because a child whose ‘sentences’ are limited in length to one ‘word’ does not appear to have any syntax on the production side. Formalists often concentrate on evidence from comprehension, as a kind of performance less susceptible to memory and skill limitations and, therefore, likely to reflect competence more closely. Functionalists are interested in comprehension too. However, they usually regard holophrases as important, being the child's earliest ways of initiating verbal communication. A theoretician with a cognitive orientation will generally want to know not only about children's language development — formal as well as communicative — but also about concurrent developments in the child's thinking abilities outside of language. These tend to be of less interest to formalists, who usually assume that the human predisposition for language is not just a spin off from general cognitive endowment (Clarke, 2009). However, both camps rely on intellectual power either explicitly or implicitly. To decipher linguistic experiences children have to rely on their general intelligence. On the other hand, in order to form and test their linguistic hypotheses their general intelligence may play an essential role due to the mental processing rate. Contemporary Theories of Intelligence 236|ELT Voices – India International Journal|ISSN 2230-9136 (Print) 2321-7170 (Online) ELT VOICES – INDIA February 2014 | Volume 4, Issue 1 Despite what was mentioned above was basically based on the concept of IQ, there exist some other theories of intelligence presented more recently. This section covers these theories considering the fact that these theories may be fundamentally diverse in terms of their definition or put more technically core construct. CHC Theory (Cattell-Horn-Carroll) The theory of intelligence mainly used in IQ tests is the CHC theory, an amalgamation of the Cattell-Horn theory of fluid and crystallized intelligence (Horn & Cattell, 1966) and Carroll’s (1993) Three-Stratum Theory. The Cattell-Horn and Carroll’s (1996) models fundamentally initiated from the same point—Spearman’s (1904) g- factor theory; despite the fact that they developed differently, they came to astonishingly almost the same conclusions about the variety of cognitive abilities. Cattell bases his comments on Spearman’s g to hypothesize two kinds of g: Fluid intelligence (Gf), that is, the capability to solve original problems by utilizing reasoning and Crystallized intelligence (Gc), a knowledge-based capability highly dependent on education and acculturation. This model includes both the notion of a general intelligence g though this facet is rarely stressed and the conception of many different aspects of intelligence
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