8 - Language Acquisition 1

Question 1

At what age does babbling start? (Language 1 Developmental)

Answer 1

4 months

Question 2

At what age is the first word? (Language 1 Developmental)

Answer 2

1 year

Question 3

At what age does word combinations start? (Language 1 Developmental)

Answer 3

2 years

Question 4

At what age does grammatical constructions start? (Language 1 Developmental)

Answer 4

4/5 years

Question 5

What is the nativist argument to language acquisition? (Language 1 Developmental)

Answer 5

Too complex to be learnt so quickly

Question 6

What is the behaviourist argument to language acquisition? (Language 1 Developmental)

Answer 6

Language is learned by the standard process of operant and classical conditioning

Question 7

What is the interactionist argument to language acquisition? (Language 1 Developmental)

Answer 7

Language is a product of the interaction between biology and the environment

Question 8

What did Chomsky believe in terms of the naturist argument? (Language 1 Developmental)

Answer 8

There is a module in the brain that has necessary parameters for native language development

Question 9

What did Skinner believe in terms of the naturist argument? (Language 1 Developmental)

Answer 9

Language was reinforced

Question 10

What did Bates believe in terms of the naturist argument? (Language 1 Developmental)

Answer 10

Perceptual learning abilities are folded by culture and society

Question 11

What is phonology? (Language 1 Developmental)

Answer 11

Speech sounds

Question 12

What is grammar? (Language 1 Developmental)

Answer 12

Putting words together

Question 13

What is syntax? (Language 1 Developmental)

Answer 13

Arrangement of words into sentences

Question 14

What is morphology? (Language 1 Developmental)

Answer 14

Using markers to indicate meaning e.g. ‘ed’ for past tense

Question 15

What is semantics? (Language 1 Developmental)

Answer 15

Word meanings

Question 16

What is high amplitude sucking procedure and how does it work? (Language 1 Developmental)

Answer 16

• Used to measure phonology
• Dummy attached to a computer
• Measures how often the infant sucks, how long for etc

Question 17

Who devised the intro-utero speech hypothesis? (Language 1 Developmental)

Answer 17

Kisilevsky et al 2003

Question 18

What is the intro-utero speech hypothesis? (Language 1 Developmental)

Answer 18

Foetus can remember and recognise voices they were exposed to parentally

Question 19

What is categorical perception? (Language 1 Developmental)

Answer 19

Classification of continuous stimuli into distinct boundaries

Question 20

What did Werker and Kuhl find? (Language 1 Developmental)

Answer 20

• Infants can discriminate against speech sounds

- This ability declines over the first year

Question 21

What two categories can non-native perception be? (Language 1 Developmental)

Answer 21

• Unimodal

- Bimodal

Question 22

What is unimodal perception? (Language 1 Developmental)

Answer 22

• 1 category

- Instances clustered around the middle

Question 23

What is bimodal perception? (Language 1 Developmental)

Answer 23

• 2 categories

- instances cluster around the edges

Question 24

What is segmenting the speech stream? (Language 1 Developmental)

Answer 24

Breaking in the words of sentences

Question 25

What three ways did Saffran et al 1996 suggest indicate a child to put the break in a sentence? (Language 1 Developmental)

Answer 25

• Prosody (changes in pitch)
• Pauses
• Correlations (statistical regularities)

Question 26

What does infant directed speech aid? (Language 1 Developmental)

Answer 26

Isolation of words