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PSYC 304 > 5. Language Development > Flashcards

5. Language Development Flashcards

1
Q

High Amplitude Sucking Procedure

A
  • Used to test infants from birth to 4 months of age
  • Relies on infants sucking reflex
  • Infants hear a sound stimulus every time they produce a strong/ high-amplitude suck on a pacifier - The number of strong sucks is an indicator of the infant’s interest
  • More strong sucks = more interest
  • 2 variations of procedure: Discrimination and Preference
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2
Q

Discrimination Procedure

A
  • Used to test whether infants can tell the difference between two auditory stimuli
  • Variation of visual habituation paradigm
  • Habituation phase: Each time infant produces a strong suck, a sound is played
    –> Continues until sucking has declined significantly (e.g. by 20%)
  • Test phase: Hears new speech stimulus every time produces a strong suck
  • If can distinguish between stimuli, sucking behaviour should increase
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3
Q

Preference Procedure

A
  • Used to test infants’ preference for different stimuli
  • 2 different stimuli are played on alternating minutes each time a strong suck is produced
    –> i.e., minute 1 = Stimulus A, minute 2 = Stimulus B, minute 3 = Stimulus A
  • Number of strong sucks produced during presentation of each stimulus type is compared
  • Preference = infants suck more during one stimulus minute type than the other
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4
Q

Preferential Listening Procedure

A
  • Speaker on either side of infant’s head
  • When looks at speaker, a recording of speech plays
    –> Different speech from each speaker
  • How long an infant spends looking in a particular direction/ listening to a particular sound indicates how much they like it
    –> Familiarity effect: Will listen longer to sounds they recognize
    –> Novelty effect: If first habituated to a sound, will listen longer to new sound
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5
Q

Speech Perception in Infancy

A
  • Using high amplitude sucking paradigms, research has shown that newborns:
    –> Prefer to listen to speech sounds over artificial sounds
    –> Prefer mother’s voice over another woman’s voice
    –> Prefer to listen to native language vs. other language
  • Suggests that language learning starts in utero
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6
Q

Categorical Perception of Speech

A

Adults perceive speech sounds as distinct categories even though the differences between speech sounds are gradual
- Categorical perception is useful because focuses listeners on sounds that are linguistically meaningful while ignoring meaningless differences
–> E.g. difference between a 10ms VOT /b/ vs. 20ms VOT /b/ is meaningless in English

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7
Q

Infant Categorical Perception of Speech

A
  • Do infants perceive the same speech categories as adults?
  • Classic study by Eimaset al., 1971:
    –> Tested 1 month old infants learning English
    –> High amplitude sucking paradigm to test discrimination between /ba/ and /pa/
    –> 2 groups:
    *Different speech sounds: Infants habituated to /ba/ (20 msVOT) and then tested with /pa/ (40 msVOT)
    *Same speech sounds: Infants habituated to 60 msVOT /pa/ and then tested with 80 msVOT /pa/
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8
Q

Newborns have same categorical perception of speech as adults

A
  • Different speech sounds: Increased sucking when sound from new category (/pa/)
  • Same speech sounds: No change in sucking when sound from same category (/pa/)
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9
Q

Infant Cross-Language Speech Perception

A
  • Infants make more distinctions between speech sounds than adults
  • Adults have difficulty perceiving differences between speech sounds that are not important in their native language
    –> E.g. In French, difference between /ou/ and /u/ is meaningful, but not in English
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10
Q

Infant Cross-Language Speech Perception Experiment

A
  • Classic study by Werkeret al., 1988:
    –> Tested 6 month old American infants learning English
    –> High amplitude sucking paradigm to see if they can discriminate between Hindi /Ta/ and /ta/
    *English-speaking adults struggle to distinguish between these 2 sounds
    –> Results:
    *After habituating to one of these Hindi speech sounds, increased sucking when heard other speech sounds
    *i.e., if habituated to /Ta/, then increased sucking when tested with /ta/
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11
Q

Implications

A
  • Infants discriminate between speech sounds they have never heard before (i.e., speech sounds not found in their native language)
  • Infants are biologically ready to learn any of the world’s languag
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12
Q

Perceptual Narrowing of Speech Perception

A
  • Infants’ ability to easily distinguish between non-native speech sounds diminishes around 8 months
  • By 10-12 months, infants’ perceptual abilities are narrowed to those sounds that are relevant to their native language
    –> Improves perception of speech sounds in native language
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13
Q

Word Segmentation

A
  • Knowing where words begin and end in fluent speech
    –> Begins around 7 months of age
    -Infants’ statistical learning enables them to segment words in a stream of speech
    –> Stress-patterning
    –> Distribution of speech sounds
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14
Q

Stress Patterning

A
  • Different languages place stress on different parts of a word
    –> English: stress usually on first syllable
    –> French: stress usually on last syllable
  • Infants pick up on the stress patterning in their language and use it as clues to for word segmentation
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15
Q

Distribution of Speech Sounds

A
  • Sounds that appear together often are likely to be words
  • Sounds that don’t appear together often are more likely to be boundaries between words
  • Example: “happy baby”
    –> “ba” and “by” occur together often because make word “baby”
    –> “ha” and “ppy” occur together often because make word “happy”
    –> “ppy” and “ba” occur together less often because don’t make a word and many different words can come before “baby” (“happy”, “little” ) and many words can come after “happy” (“birthday”, “baby”, “puppy”)
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16
Q

Distribution of Speech Sounds Study

A
  • Preferential listening procedure
  • Habituation: 8-month-olds listened to a stream of syllables for a long time (2 mins)
    –> Some syllables always occurred together
    –> Others rarely or never occurred together
  • Test: Presented with a syllable sequence that always co-occurred (“tokibu”) vs. syllable sequences that rarely co-occurred (“bagopi”)
  • Results: Listened longer to rarely occurring sequence
  • Shows that infants understood word boundaries by detecting the likelihood of syllables belonging together
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17
Q

Developmental Milestones

A
  • 2 months: Cooing and gurgling
  • 7 months: Babbling
  • 12 months: First words
  • 18 months: Knows 50 words
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18
Q

Cooing

A
  • Start around 2 months of age
  • Drawn out vowel sounds, like “ooooohhh” and “aahhhh”
  • Helps infants gain motor control over their vocalizations
  • Elicits reactions from caregivers leading to back-and-forth cooing with caregivers
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19
Q

Babbling

A
  • Start around 7 months of age (6-10 months of age)
  • Repetitive consonant-vowel syllables, like “papapa” and “babababa”
    –> Speech sounds not necessarily from native language
    –> Infant babbling is very similar across languages
  • Manual babbling: Deaf infants that are exposed to sign language babble with repetitive hand movements made up of pieces of full signs
    –> Deaf children do not verbally babble
    –> Evidence that language exposure is critical for babbling
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20
Q

Functions of Babbling

A
  • Social function: Practicing turn-taking in a dialogue
    –> Infant babbling elicits caregiver reactions which in turn elicit more babbling
  • Learning function: Signal that the infant is alert and ready to learn
    –> Infants learn more when an adult labels a new object just after they babble vs. learning the word in the absence of babbling
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21
Q

Understanding Words Precedes Production

A
  • Infants appear to understand high-frequency words around 6 months of age
    –> In lab studies, when 6-month-olds are presented with pictures of common items and hear one of the pictures being named, they look to the correct picture more often than chance
    –> But cannot yet name these items themselves
  • Shows that infants understand more words than they can produce
  • Shows that infants understand more words than their caregivers realize
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22
Q

First Words

A
  • First words are produced around 12 months of age (10-15 months)
  • First word: Any specific utterance consistently used to refer to a particular meaning
  • Can be tricky to identify:
    –> Babbling can sound like words
    –> E.g. “mamamama”
    –> Meaning of a first word can differ from its standard meaning
    –> E.g. “woof woof” referring to “dog
  • Usually refer to family members, pets, or important objects
  • Meaning of first words are very similar across cultures
    –> Suggests that infants around the world have similar interests and priorities
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23
Q

Mispronunciations of First Words

A
  • Often mispronounced in predictable ways:
    –> Omit difficult parts of words: “Banana” => “nana”
    –> Substitute difficult sounds for easier sounds: “Rabbit” => “wabbit”
    –> Re-order sounds to put easy sound first: “Spaghetti” => “pisketti”
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24
Q

Limitations of First Words

A
  • Infants express themselves initially with only one-word utterances so cannot clearly communicate what they want to say
  • Overextension: using a word in a broader context than is appropriate
    –> E.g. “dog” refers to any 4 legged animal
    –> Does not mean that they don’t understand what the word refers to
  • Underextension: using a word in a more limited context than appropriate
    –> “cat” only refers to the family’s pet cat
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25
Q

Learning More Words

A
  • 18 months of age:
  • Knows about 50 words
  • Vocabulary spurt: Rate of word learning accelerates
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26
Q

How do Children Learn Words?

A
  • Children’s assumptions about language
  • Social context
    –> Caregivers
    –> Peers
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27
Q

Children’s Assumptions in Word Learning

A
  • Children have several assumptions when learning a new word:
    –> Mutual exclusivity
    –> Whole-object assumption
    –> Grammatical form
    –> Shape bias
    –> Cross-situational word learning
    –> Pragmatic cues
    –> Adult’s intentionality
28
Q

Mutual Exclusivity Assumption

A
  • A given object/being will have only one name
    –> A child will turn their attention to the object they don’t have a name for when they hear a new word
    –> Bilingual children will follow this rule less
29
Q

Whole-Object Assumption

A

A word will refer to the whole object rather than to a part or action of the object

30
Q

Shape Bias

A

Children will apply a noun to a new object of the same shape, even if that object is very different in size, colour, or texture

31
Q

Grammatical Form

A

Grammatical form of a word influences whether it’s interpreted as a noun, verb, or adjective

32
Q

Cross-Situational Word Learning

A

Determining word meanings by tracking the correlations between labels and meanings across context

33
Q

Pragmatic Cues - Gaze

A
  • Using the social context to infer the meaning of a word
  • Adult gaze: When an adult says a new word, the child assumes that it refers to the object the adult is looking at, even if the child cannot see it
34
Q

Pragmatic Cues - Tone of Voice

A
  • If an adult uses a word that conflicts with child’s word for that object, they will learn the new word if it is said with confidence
35
Q

Caregiver Influence on Word Learning

A
  • Children’s vocabularies are hugely impacted by the vocabularies and speech of their caregivers
  • Caregiver factors influencing word learning:
    –> Infant directed speech
    –> Quantity of speech
    –> Quality of speech
36
Q

Infant-Directed Speech

A
  • Distinctive mode of speech when talking to babies and toddlers
  • Common in majority of cultures around the world, but not all cultures use it
  • Characteristics:
    –> Greater pitch variability
    –> Slower speech
    –> Shorter utterances
    –> Clearer pronunciation of vowels
    –> More word repetitions
    –> More questions
    –> Accompanied by exaggerated facial expressions
37
Q

Function of Infant-Directed Speech

A
  • Draws infants’ attention to speech
    –> Infants prefer IDS to regular adult speech
  • Because infants pay greater attention to IDS, it facilitates their language learning
38
Q

IDS and Early Word Recognition Study

A
  • 7-8 month old infants were introduced to new words in IDS or regular adult speech
  • Recognition of words tested 24 hours later using preferential listening procedure (familiarity)
  • Infants were better at recognizing (looked longer at) words introduced in IDS than adult speech
  • Indicates that IDS facilitates word learning
39
Q

Quantity of Speech

A
  • The number of words children hear used around them predicts children’s vocabulary size
    –> Especially speech directed to child
  • Children that hear more words have larger vocabularies
40
Q

Quantity of Speech and SES

A
  • Classic study found that parents’ SES predicts how much speech infant hear
  • Method: Tested parents with their 7 month old children over 2.5 years until the child turned 3 years of age
    –> High, middle, and low SE
    –> Came to lab for an hour every week
    –> Everything the parent and child said was recorded and analyzed
41
Q

Implications of Effect of SES

A
  • Children from high SES have larger vocabularies than kids from low SES
  • Differences in language exposure contribute to achievement gap between higher and lower SES children
42
Q

Quality of Speech

A
  • Richness of adult communication with their child predicts children’s language ability
    –> Joint engagement
    –> Fluency
    –> Stressing and repeating new words
    –> Playing naming games
    –> Naming an object when a toddler is already looking at it
43
Q

Grocery Store Intervention

A
  • Focuses on increasing amount of time parents spend talking to child
  • Signs placed in grocery stores in low SES neighbourhoods encouraging parents to talk to their children about the foods in the store
  • Parents increased quantity and quality of speech to their child
44
Q

Peers’ Influence on Language

A
  • Placing preschool children with similarly poor language ability in the same classroom negatively impacts their language growth
  • Better chance to “catch-up” on language ability if:
    –> placed with children with higher language ability
    –> teacher uses rich communication with students
45
Q

First Sentences

A
  • 2 years of age:
    –> Telegraphic speech: 2-3 wordphrases that leave out non-essential words
    *E.g. “Mommy cake”, “Hurt knee”, “Key door”
    *Common in many languages
46
Q

Learning Grammar

A
  • Age 5: Mastered basics of grammar
    –> Allows children to express and understand more complex ideas
  • We know that children have learned the grammar of their language when they:
    –> Can apply a grammatical rule to a new word/context
    *E.g. Adding “s” to makes a word plural
    –> Over-regularization errors
47
Q

Overregularization Errors

A
  • Speech errors in which children treat irregular forms of words as if they were regular
  • Evidence that they have learned grammatical rules but not the exceptions to the rule
  • Examples:
    –> “Mans”
    –> “Goed”
    –> “Foots”
    –> “Breaked”
    –> “Branged”
48
Q

How is Grammar Learned?

A
  • Parents and other caregivers:
    –> Model grammatically correct speech but generally don’t correct children’s grammatical errors
  • Statistical learning
49
Q

How is Grammar Learned? Study

A
  • Can infants pick up on new grammatical patterns?
  • Preferential listening paradigm
  • Habituated to a list of 3-“word” sequences in which second “word” is repeated (ABB structure)
    –> E.g. : “le di di”, “wije je”, “de li li”
  • Test: Presented with new sentences with same structure (ABB) or with a different structure (ABA)
    –> ABB: “ko ga ga” vs.
    –> ABA: “ko ga ko”
  • Results: 8 month olds look longer in direction of sentences with different structure
    –> Evidence that infants can pick-up on grammatical patter
50
Q

From Sentences to Conversations

A
  • 1-4 years old: Children initially struggle to engage in mutual conversation
    –> Private speech
    *Infants’ speech is often initially directed to themselves to organize actions
    –> Egocentric discussion between children
  • 5+ years old: able to stick to the same conversation topic as their conversation partner
51
Q

Sensitive Period for Language Acquisition

A
  • Period from birth to before puberty
    –> Due to maturational changes in the brain whereby language brain areas become less plastic
  • Crucial period in which an individual can acquire a first language if exposed to adequate linguistic stimuli
    –> Languages are learned relatively easily during this period and full native competence is possible
  • After this period, languages are learned with great difficulty and native-like competence is rare
52
Q

Evidence: Genie

A
  • Discovered in LA in 1970
  • From 18 months old until she was rescued at age 13, deprived of linguistic input
  • Could barely speak
    –> Development also stunted in all other areas
  • Language ability never fully developed despite intensive training after age 13
    –> “Father take piece wood. Hit. Cry.”
  • Evidence of sensitive period of language acquisition
    –> BUT difficulties may be due to inhumane treatment rather than linguistic deprivation per se
53
Q

Evidence: Recovery after Brain Damage

A
  • Children that sustain brain damage to language areas usually recover full language capability
    –> Children’s brains are highly plastic; other parts of the developing brain can take over language functions
  • Teenagers and adults that sustain brain damage to language areas are more likely to suffer permanent language impairment
    –> More mature brain is less plastic
54
Q

Evidence: Deaf Individuals

A
  • Researchers tested 2 groups of deaf adults:
    1. No exposure to language during early childhood
    2. Learned spoken language during early childhood
  • Both groups began learning ASL in school between ages of 9-15 - Results: Those with exposure to language in infancy, even though spoken, performed better on language task than those with no language exposure
55
Q

Evidence: Deaf Individuals

A
  • Follow-up study tested deaf adults that had exposure to ASL in early childhood
  • Performance of deaf adults with early exposure to ASL was the same as deaf adults with exposure to spoken language
  • Shows that exposure to language, regardless of modality, in infancy is critical for full language development
56
Q

Evidence: Second Language Learners

A
  • Performance on an English test by Chinese and Korean immigrants was related to the age at which they first arrived in the USA
  • Shows that language proficiency is related to first age of exposure to that language
    –> Language performance is highly variable when a language is learned after puberty
57
Q

Implications of Sensitive Period

A
  • Deaf children should be exposed to sign language as young as possible to develop native-like ability
  • Second language exposure at school should begin as early as possible to maximize opportunity to achieve native-like ability
58
Q

Bilingualism is the Norm

A
  • About 50% of people across the world use at least 2 languages on a daily basis
  • In Canada,
    –> 17% of Canadians are English-French bilingual
    *55% of Montrealersare English-French bilingual
    –> 20% of Canadians’ first language is neither English nor French
59
Q

“Monolingual Brain” Hypothesis

A
  • Belief that infants’ brains are programmed to be monolingual and that they treat input in 2 languages as if it were one language
    –> Bilingualism stretches limited processing capacity of infants
  • Implications:
    –> If bilingual from birth, children will confuse their languages and could result in language delays
60
Q

Bilingualism in Utero

A
  • Bilingual learning begins in utero
  • Study: Tested 2 groups of newborn infants
    –> Bilingual English-Tagalog mothers
    –> Monolingual English mothers
  • Preferential high amplitude sucking procedure
    –> Exposed infants to Tagalog and English sentences
    –> Measures rate of sucking on a pacifier
    –> More intense sucking indicates preference for one language
  • Results:
    –> English monolinguals had a preference forEnglish
    –> English-Tagalog bilinguals showed no consistent preference for either language
    –> Suggests that bilingual infants start learning about two native languages pre-birth
61
Q

Can bilingual infants differentiate between two native languages? Study

A
  • Study: Tested 2 groups of newborn infants
    –> Bilingual English-Tagalog mothers
    –> Monolingual English mothers
  • Discrimination high amplitude sucking procedure:
    –> Habituation: Both groups habituated to English or Tagalog until sucking declined
    –> Test: hearing sentences in new language
  • Results:
    –> Both bilingual babies and monolingual babies differentiated between Tagalog and English
    –> Shows that bilingual infants can differentiate between native languages despite showing similar preference for both language
62
Q

Two Separate Linguistic Systems

A
  • Suggests that bilingual infants are developing two separate language systems
    –> Rather than confusing 2 languages
  • Goes against “monolingual brain” hypothesis
63
Q

Evidence: Two Separate Linguistic Systems

A
  1. The progression of language development in bilingual vs. monolingual children is very similar
    - E.g., Say their first word roughly at the same time
    - Have about the same vocabulary size when considering both languages
    –> Smaller vocabulary in each language separately vs. monolinguals
  2. Children select language they use based on conversational partner
  3. Even if children mix languages, not a sign of confusion
    - Language mixing in adult bilinguals is normal
    - 90% of bilingual parents mix their languages in speech
64
Q

Advantages of Bilingualism

A
  • Bilingual children perform better on measures of executive functioning than monolingual children
  • Bilingualism seems to delay onset of Alzheimer’s in older adults
  • Why advantageous?
    –> Bilingual individuals have toquickly switch between languages, which practices their executive functioning skills, especially cognitive flexibility
65
Q

Implications

A

Schools should support learning both native and non-native language from a young age

PSYC 304 (5 decks)

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