1-3 - Prelinguistic Development: Production Flashcards
What is the going hypothesis on learning and language development?
The infant has to know something about the language they are going to hear
How does Maturation affect language development?
The infant doesn’t need much more maturation to hear but need tons of maturation in order to speak
There are major changes to the vocal track during the first 6 months of life
What are two hypotheses on infant language perception?
Former: Infants are born with limited perceptual ability
Current: Infants are born with the ability to perceive more and possible all speech sounds
Why was it believed that infants are born with limited perceptual ability? When did our belief in this change?
Assumed because they didn’t do much of anything
People started asking questions in the 1960s
When this was seen as an empirical issue (we may actually be able to test this)
How did we learn that infants are born with the ability to perceive more and possibly all speech sounds?
Once we started testing infants empirically
What are three methods for studying infant language perception?
Sucking rate
Heart rate
Head turn
Which is the most common method for studying infant speech perception?
Sucking Rate
At what age is the Sucking Rate method used?
< 0;6
How does the Sucking Rate Method work?
Sucking is rewarded by increasing the audio stimulus
Increase in sucking -> more stimulus
Decrease in sucking -> less stimulus
At what age is the Heart Rate method used?
< 0;6
What are some issues with the Heart Rate method?
Didn’t work out so well because heart rate can change for so many reasons
You would need an enormous amount of infants to test in order to find consistency
At what age is the Head Turn method used?
0;6+
The Habituation Paradigm is a basic property of the _____.
Central nervous system (CNS)
What is habituation?
You start tuning out the stimulus
______ leads to habituation.
Repetition
What is dishabituation?
Tuning your attention to a stimulus
You get a new interesting stimulus
______ leads to dishabituation.
New stimuli
What did Eilers study? What did Eimas study?
Eilers = Spanish/English bilabial stops
Eimas = English bilabial stops
Who did Eimas et al study?
26 infants at 0;1
26 infants at 0;4
When was Eimas et al’s big year?
1971
What method did Eimas et al use?
Measured sucking rate
What stimuli did Eimas et al use?
/pa/
/ba/
What is the universal theory?
That infants can make fine phonetic discriminations
What results did Eimas et al find?
There was a difference in sucking rate when phonemes were switched
Thus infants can make fine phonetic discriminations
Who did Eilers et al study?
8 infants from Spanish speaking homes
8 infants from English speaking homes
When was Eilers et al’s big year?
1979
What stimuli did Eilers et al use?
/pa/ vs/ /ba/ in English
/pa/ vs/ /ba/ in Spanish
(English /p/ and the Spanish /p/ differ slightly)
What were the ages of the infants in Eilers et al’s study?
0;6-0;8
What were Eilers et al’s results for English infants?
Distinguished 92% of the English /p/ and /b
Distinguished 42% of the Spanish /p/ and /b/
What method did Eilers et al use?
Head turn
How did Eilers et al interpret the discrepancy between the English & Spanish results?
That maybe the difference between English phonemes is found more commonly found across languages
Perhaps the Spanish phonemic difference is more subtle and harder to perceive
What were Eilers et al’s results for Spanish infants?
Distinguished 86% of the English /p/ and /b/
Distinguished 80% of the Spanish /p/ and /b/
When was Walker & Tees’ big year?
1984
What was Eilers et al’s conclusion?
Some sounds may be harder to perceive than others
Infants may not be about to perceive absolutely all sounds
(Still the overwhelming evidence seems to prove the universal theory)
What stimuli did Walker & Tees use?
Hindi dental vs. retroflex stops
Salish [k’] vs. [q’] ( [’] means glottalized)
These are all sounds that native English speakers cannot distinguish
Who did Walker & Tees study?
English “speaking” infants between the ages of 0;6-1;0
What method did Walker & Tees use?
Head turning
What were Walker & Tees’ results for ages 0;6- 0;8?
95%: Perception of Hindi Differences
80%: Perception of Salish Differences
What were Walker & Tees’ results for ages 0;8 - 0;10?
68%: Perception of Hindi Differences
52%: Perception of Salish Differences
What were Walker & Tees’ results for ages 0;10 – 0;12?
20%: Perception of Hindi Differences
10%: Perception of Salish Differences
What did Walker & Tees conclude?
The universal theory is accurate
Ability for non-native sounds is lost around 0;10
At what “stage” of language development did Walker & Tees see their results drop off?
At the same point that the infants start developing speech
What did Juszyk find?
Infants perceive wide range of speech vowels & consonants
When was Juszyk’s big year?
1997
Juszyk found that infants prefer their native language from _____.
Birth
Juszyk found that infants prefer their mother’s voice from _____.
Birth
Juszyk found that infants prefer frequent phonotactics from _____.
0;9
Juszyk found that infants prefer their own names from _____.
0;4
What is the Perceptual Assimilation Model?
That we assimilate non-native sounds to those that are similar to our native language
E.g. Japanese speakers with English /r/ /l/
E.g. English speakers with Zulu clicks
What are phonotactics?
Allowed phoneme combinations
What did Jusczyk write about in his book?
That infants only hear about 15% of words in isolation. The rest is heard during continuous speech.
This seems to help the child develop phonemic structure of the language
Who came up with the Perceptual Assimilation Model?
Best
Who studied Phonological Deafness?
Doupoux & Peperkamp
What did Doupoux & Peperkamp find?
That infants form prelexical representations around 1;0
After this point the infant is so tuned into all the elements of language that they ignore the rest
What were the two words used in the Phonological Deafness study?
Japanese [ebzo] vs. [ebuzo] (voiceless vowels)
