Chapter 8- Language and Thought Flashcards

Question

Experiment: | Janet Werker and Richard Tees were able to determine the age at which the ability to discriminate sounds disappears

Answer 1

Exposed English-speaking children of different ages to phones from English, Hindi and Salish Children from six to eight months could easily discriminate between non-English phonemes that adults could not However, this ability was lost in children by the time they reached the age of one year As children progress through the babbling stage and with repeated exposure to the sounds in their native language, they lose the ability to say or perceive sounds that are not used in their language

Answer 2

Single word speech, like “mama”, “dada”, “more”, or “no!” 12 months of age Likely descended from protolanguage

Answer 3

hildren tend to learn words that are spoken at the end of sentences first Example: In languages that are structured in the order of subject-verb-object, like English, children acquire sounds earlier than verbs because nouns are objects that tend to appear at the end of sentences In languages that are structured subject-object-verb, like Japanese or Mandarin, children acquire verbs earlier than nouns

Answer 4

Tendency to remember/learn the last word in a sentence first How babies learn language

Answer 5

Phrases children put together 18 months “my ball”, “mo wawa” or “go away” Parents act as translators

Answer 6

``` The third phase of language development Speaking in fully grammatical sentences Happens quickly Age 2 and 1/2 to 3 years old Example: “I going come in fourteen minutes. You dress me up like a baby elephant. You know how to put it back together” ```

Answer 7

Girls slightly outperform boys in the acquisition of language skills, particularly vocabulary This is true regardless of the language spoken and geographical area The female advantage is not as apparent by the age of six and gender differences in language ability in adults are not as clear

Answer 8

Cooing to babbling, one-word utterances, two-word utterances, adult-like sentence structure

Answer 9

Steep rise in brain growth and language between the ages of one and three The rapid development of language matches the rapid growth of the brain Age one child’s brain is less than 50% of its adult size Infant is babbling and perhaps saying a few words Age three Brain is 75-80% of its adults size Child says two-word phrases and short sentences

Answer 10

If children are not exposed to any human language before a certain age, their language abilities never develop Begins in first years of life and ends at about age 12 Optimal time for learning language Severe neglect and lack of exposure during this period cause permanent problems in language development We need verbal stimulation from others while we are young children in order to develop the ability to speak

Answer 11

Abused and severely neglected Diagnosed as mildly retarded at 2 years old Father tied her to a chair all day and caged her in a crib at night Was beaten every time she tried to speak and yelled at Abuse lasted until Genie was 13 and 1/2 Social worker thought she was 6 or 7 years old based on her body Could only speak a few words like “stopit” or “nomore” Age 17 and four years of language training, her language skills were extremely delayed Could communicate simple ideas, but her speech was ungrammatical sentences “Spot chew glove” or “Applesauce buy store” Language on par with young child Language comprehension was much better than language production Brain activity while speaking was located in the right hemisphere, language ability is located in the left hemisphere The Case of Genie suggests that left hemisphere speech development requires stimulation from the environment during a certain sensitive period if it is to develop properly

Answer 12

We learn language from the people around us Acquire vocabulary by hearing others speak Figure out what people mean by context Children who hear more total and unique words and complex sentences develop their language faster and more richly than those who do not

Answer 13

Argue for the importance of social input and stimulation

Answer 14

``` Culture Socioeconomic status Birth order School Peers Television Parents ```

Answer 15

Examined language development in families with children from three different economic groups: professional, middle and working class, and unemployed All children started to speak around the same time and developed good structure and use of language Children from professional families heard 2153 words per hour, those from middle and working families heard 1251 words per hour, those from unemployed heard 616 words per hour. By age three, the average vocabulary of children from unemployed families was around 500 words Children from professional families was 1100 words Children from professional families heard more encouragement words than discouragement words than all of the others

Answer 16

Doing exactly what you see someone else do Much of what we learn comes from imitating family members Newborns will stick out their tongues or open their mouths when they see an adult do so Older babies try to imitate sounds they hear

Answer 17

``` Changes in adult speech patterns when speaking to young children or infants Universal Characterized by: Speaking in a higher pitch Raise and lowering volume of voice Using simpler sentence structures Emphasizing the here and now Using emotion to communicate their messages ```

Answer 18

Clusters of brain cells that fire when an individual both performs a task and observes another person do the same task Facilitate social learning and imitation Humans have mirror neurons that become active during both language and imitation tasks, suggesting an important relationship

Answer 19

relies on auditory input and oral output

Answer 20

relies on visual input and manual output Are true languages Recruit the same left hemisphere areas used in spoken language Also involves right hemisphere, which has strong role in spatial cognition Degree of right hemisphere activation in signers is strongly influenced by early life experience Individuals who learned ASL before puberty show much more right hemisphere involvement than signers who learned after puberty

Answer 21

Believed that language is like any other behaviour: something that exists because it is reinforced and shaped Proposed that we don't speak because we want to convey an idea or feeling We speak because we are reinforced to

Answer 22

Parent’s reaction has reinforcing effect that shapes children behaviour Whenever children say anything that comes close to a word, the parents smile and say “Wow! She said Mama!” Language development is shaping, successive approximations, and reinforcement The first approximation of a complex behaviour will be reinforced A toddler utters “mama”, she gets more of her mother’s attention and smiles than when she utters “baba” The child learns that the word “mama” matters and then learns what it means Each step is subsequently reinforced until the child reaches the final behaviour, speaking in fully grammatical sentences Cannot fully explain how we learn language, parental reinforcement does not consistently occur for aspects of language development like syntax and grammar rules

Answer 23

We discover language rather than learn it Language development is “native” or inborn The brain is structured for language learning

Answer 24

An innate, biologically based capacity to acquire language Proposed by Noam Chomsky as part of his nativist view of language Humans are biologically built to speak Must have principles of universal grammar that allow a child to learn any language as her/his native language

Answer 25

Suggested that there is a universal grammar underlying all human languages Each individual language is simply a specific expression of this universal grammar A cornerstone of universal grammar is that all languages embed clauses within clauses

Answer 26

Argue for the importance of brain structures and genetic factors

Answer 27

We learn to speak, but in doing so we are guided by our innate capacity for language learning Grammar: more innate and genetically influenced Vocabulary: more strongly shaped by the environment

Answer 28

a gene involved in both understanding and producing speech Variants found in all mammals, but human form differs from chimpanzees/ closest living relatives Recently found in Neanderthal DNA

Answer 29

Chimps do not have vocal apparatus that allows them to speak, physically incapable of making same range of sounds as humans Can be taught to communicate using non-vocal sign language, ASL (American Sign Language) Allen and Beatrix Gardner have compiled more than 400 ASL signs that three chimps named Dar, Tatu, and Moja learned Range: 100=400 words Kanzi was son of Matata, who were both captured in the wild Adult Matata had little success in learning sign language Kanzi was present for all sessions but not formally taught any signs Kanzi was paying attention to the signs they taught his mother He learned more quickly and developed a larger vocabulary than his mom Equivalent language comprehension to that of a two-and-a-half year old human child Kanzi knows 3000 words

Answer 30

88% conversations about social interaction, play, and reassurance 12% about feeding, grooming, cleaning, discipline, and “talking” to themselves

Answer 31

Chimp who taught her son Louis how to sign | In 8 weeks, Louis regularly signed with humans and learned about 20 signs after 18 months

Answer 32

Do have some basic level of metacognition Acquire signs slower than humans Apes rarely progress beyond two or three word combinations Highest level of language learning is equivalent to the level of a toddler in terms of vocabulary and sentence structure Do not understand or correctly use syntax

Answer 33

Knowing what they know and do not know

Answer 34

Vocabulary of 200 words, similar to that of human toddler Can fetch objects based on their spoken name If asked to retrieve object he has never heard of before, will fetch an unfamiliar object over familiar ones Can make the link between an unfamiliar, arbitrary sound and an novel object, a process important in human children

Answer 35

Created computer programs that can learn, understand and translate language

Answer 36

Language creates thought as much as thought creates language Benjamin Whorf and Edward Sapir Language shapes our thoughts and perceptions to the extent that people who speak languages that lack a common foundation (Like English or Chinese) have difficulty directly communicating and translating their ideas from one language to another Leads to the linguistic determinism hypothesis

Answer 37

States that our language determines our way of thinking and perceptions of the world If there are no words for certain objects or concept’s in one’s language, it is not possible to think about those objects or concepts

Answer 38

The view that language influences our thinking (not determines) If languages differ in the words they use to define categories, one might have a cognitive advantage with a larger amount of categories