Chapter 6 Flashcards
Underextension
The overly narrow use of a word, blanky, chocolate chip cookie
Overextension
The use of a word beyond its customary semantic boundary
Fast Mapping
Learning a new word on the basis of very little input
May be facilitated by three assumptions: whole-object, taxonomic, and mutual exclusivity assumptions
Child directed speech
Special tone pacing used by adults when talking to children
- high pitched/musical
- short sentences
- clear enunciation
- limited vocabulary
- large number of directives and exclamations
Behaviorist
BF Skinner, classical and operant conditioning
Nativist
Noam Chomsky
Focus on the innate capacity for language-we are born with an understanding of language. Language acquisition device. Universal grammar Fails to explain various aspects of acquisition.
Social Interactionist
Linguistic skill viewed as a form of social skill development. Supported by the evidence that cultural context affects language development. It cannot account as well for grammatical as for semantic development
Connectionist/Neural network view
- Structure exists in the language itself.
- Children only need to notice it and to make necessary neural connections to use their knowledge
Statistical Learning
Infants extract statistical info about how likely one syllable is to follow another
- type of learning may occur in other areas as well
- patricia kuhl
stages of language development
- recognizing language sounds
- babbling and other vocalizations
- gestures
- first words
- two word utterances
recognizing language sounds
kuhl’s experiment: child turns their head when they hear different syllables; her research demonstrates that from birth to 6 months children are “citizens of the world” and can recognize when sounds change most of the time, despite different languages
-6-12 months: are better at perceiving changes in their own language
Babbling and other vocalizations
early vocalizations help them practice making sounds, to communicate and to attract attention
- crying: can signal distress; but differnt types of crying signal different things
- cooing: 1-2 months: sounds made at the back of their throat and usually express pleasure during interaction with caregiver
- babbling: middle of 1st year-produce strings of consonant-vowel combos i.e. ba ba ba
Gestures
8-12 months: pointing and showing. Ex: nod and wave bye bye, smacking lips to show hunger/ thirst
- is an important index of the social aspects of language
- follows a developmental sequence from pointing without checking on adult gaze to pointing while looking back and forth
- lack of pointing is significant indicator of problems with infants communication system (ex: autistic children)
- ability to use pointing improves through 2nd year
- use of gestures @ 14 months in high SES families linked to larger vocab @ 54 months
First words
understand first words better than they speak them.
-5 months recognize their name
-6 months recognize mommy daddy
-recognize 50 words at 13 months but cant say them until 18 months
-Receptive Vocab: words the child understands
Spoken voab: words child uses
- first words include names of important people, familiar animals, vehicles, toys, food, body parts, clothes, household items and greeting terms
-average 2 years can speak 200 words
-18 months: vocab spurt however timing varies
-first word 10-17 months
-vocab spurt 13-25 months
two word utterances
18-24 months: most of their communication is two word utterances
- to convey meaning with only 2 word utterances the child relies on gestures, tone and context
- telegraphic speech: the use of content words without grammatical markers such as articles, auxiliary verbs and other connectives Ex: mommy give ice cream
