Child Language Acquisition Flashcards
What are human languages referred to as?
Natural Languages
2 elements of language development
Language pathology
Language pedagogy
What is language pedagogy?
The theories and techniques of teaching language
5 elements of identification and interpretation in fluent speech
speech segmentation
phonology
syntactic categorisation
syntax, semantics
pragmatics
By what age is much of the linguistic system already known?
4 years old
What is proof that language is not learned purely through imitation
. most sentences are novel
. bad at imitating if they don’t know all the words
Children extract ___ & make ____
extract patterns and make generalisations
Which kind of errors do parents often not correct?
syntactic errors
Implicit Correction/Recast
the parents provide a good example of language use for children
____ et al. (__) found children learned more quickly when they were given ___
Saxon & et al. (1998)
recasts
What are these elements of?
. interpretable melodies
. exaggerated prosodic features
. topics about the present
. very few grammatical errors
. gestures
. repetitive speech
. expansion of children’s utterances
. tuned to the level of linguistic complexity that a child can handle
Motherese/ Child Directed Speech
Importance of Child Directed Speech
. promotes the acquisition of the fundamental cognitive and social psychological capacities
Child Language Acquisition research methods (7)
. diary studies
. child language data exchange system
. standardised assessments of children’s performance
. Peabody picture vocabulary test
. act-out tasks
. pointing tasks
. grammaticality judgement tasks
Some ‘hidden rules’ that may be difficult for children to learn? (3)
. Non interchangeability of ‘want to’ and ‘going to’ contracted forms
. island violation in question formation
. binding principles
At what age do children have awareness of the ‘is’ auxiliary dependence on -ing ending?
20 months
Children try to learn _______ rules
descriptivist hidden rules
What is Piaget’s Theory of Conservation?
the same entity will remain the same, no matter the array
Why are these tests important?:
. Wheldall and Poborca (1980) - can conserve when tested using novel, non-verbal method
. Rose and Blank (1974) - asking the question twice
Two tests that demonstrated the weaknesses of Piaget’s Theory of Conservation test with children
What is Computational Modelling?
Creation of a computer program that implements some learning theory’s ideas about how acquisition works
Chomsky’s 1957: Syntactic Structures innovation
what speakers do is not as interesting as the mental grammar that underlies what speakers do
information from the environment -> ____ -> language acquisition
Language Acquisition Device
Universal Grammar approach
LAD contains some domain-specific knowledge about the structure of language
Poverty of the Stimulus
input is too impoverished for children to converge on the right language rules
Domain-general approach
language acquisition is no different from any other kind of knowledge acquisition
Saffran, Aslin, Newport (1996): research showed ____ can unconsciously track probabilities between ____ in order to identify words in ____ in an artificial language?
8 month olds
syllables
fluent speech
Roseberry, Richie, Hirsh-Pasek, Golinkoff, Shipley (2012): research showed ____ are able to track probabilities between ____?
8 month olds
dynamic events
Ferguson, Franconeri, Waxman (2018): research showed _____ are able to unconsciously track probabilities between visual objects?
3 and 4 month old infants
Kidd & Arciuli 2016: children’s ____ learning proficiency is linked to their individual _____ proficiency
individual statistical
grammatical
What is the nativist approach of CLA?
children acquire language rapidly
. very little conscious effort
. without explicit instruction for most of it
What is the domain specific approach?
The acquisition of language and mathematical skill is genetically, neurologically, and computationally independent
Generativist Approach
Universal Grammar
Domain-Specific
. language experience triggers prior knowledge
Constructionist Approach
Domain-General
. language constructed using general cognitive learning procedures applied to language input
Empiricist Approach
Nothing is innate
1+ things innate = ___
nativist
at least one innate thing is ____
domain-general
0 innate things domain specific =
constructionist
1+ innate things domain-specific =
generativist
Positive Evidence Help
produce more items which are in the (infinite) set
Negative Evidence Help
which items are absent from the (infinite) set
Language learning is the generalisation from a _____ to an ____
finite subset
infinite set
The input children receive when learning their language is….
finite
Examples of Negative Evidence help (4)
. explicit disapproval
. non sequiturs
. repetitions
. recasts
Feedback is not a clear indicator of what?
ungrammaticality
Bohannon and Stanowicz 1988:
. parents gave feedback after ungrammatical sentences ____
. grammatical sentences ___
35%
14%
Which evidence do children ignore or misinterpret?
negative evidence
What does modern nativism believe is most important?
biology
What does modern empiricism think is most important?
experience
Strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?
determines the thoughts you think
Weak Sapir-Whorf/ Neo-Whorfian hypothesis?
some influence on the thoughts you think
Language is a ____ system that can help with _____
symbolic system that can help with cognitive off-loading
Theory of Mind
others can have different points of view
potentially even different from reality
What is the Sentential Complement?
Embedded sentence, follows a sentential complement verb
Three aspects to evaluating a truth value
Syntactic Knowledge
Social Cognitive Knowledge
Bridge
What is Syntactic Knowledge in respect of a truth value?
the knowledge that some verbs can take sentential complements
What is Social Cognitive Knowledge in respect of a truth value?
the knowledge that other people can have a false belief
What is a Bridge in respect of a truth value?
connection between syntactic form and expression of potentially false beliefs
Example of a false belief task?
Unseen Displacement
At which average age do children complete the unseen displacement task correctly?
4-5 year olds
At what age do children understand mental verbs can take a whole sentence as their object?
four years old
Children’s production of mental state verbs coincides with what?
children’s capacity to represent two worlds: their own and someone else’s mental world
Children can use evidence from verbs like ‘say’ to generalise to verbs like ‘think’ and ‘believe’. What is this?
Syntactic Bootstrapping
Theory of Mind links to ___
executive function
Children must be able to suppress their own ____
internal representation
Training studies of _____ lead to improved false belief performance
executive function
Verbal Overshadowing
a technique that interrupts subconscious use of language for cognitive off-loading
__ year-olds can pass a false belief task when they are tested ____
2
indirectly
Two issues with standard false belief tasks
. often use mental state verbs to indicate level of certainty (usually assumed to be true)
. children <4 use these verbs assuming them to be true
Lewis, Hacquard, & Lidz
(2012, 2017): what did they conclude helps children do better at passing false belief tasks?
children are made aware that the beliefs themselves are being questioned
Harrigan, Hacquard, Lidz (2018): “… we find that __-year-olds successfully interpret ___ sentences… ability to represent conflicting desires is adult-like at this age”
3-year-olds
want
What was the goal of Choi et al. (1999)?
to determine whether 18-23-month-old infants are able to show sensitivity to language-specific principles of semantic organisation
What was the methodology of Choi et al. (1999)?
preferential-looking paradigm
How does preferential-looking paradigm work?
. eye tracking
. two tv screens of different images
. get babies familiar with which images will appear on screen
. analyse which images they look at, and for how long, when given a promptq
What did McDonough et al. (2000) find out when researching Korean-speaking adults and English-speaking adults?
. found that Korean-speaking adults looked longer at the kind of spatial relation they had been familiarised with
. can pick ‘the odd one out’
What did McDonough et al. (2000) find out when researching prelinguistic infants?
. distinguished between tight and loose-fit scenes
English mainly uses _____ metaphors to talk about time
horizontal spatial metaphors
Mandarin has _____ and ____ metaphors for time
horizontal and vertical spatial
The strategy and subjects of Boroditsky’s 2001 research ‘Does Language Shape Thought?’
. prime subjects for ______
. give them _____
. do it all in ____
. ____ monolinguals and ________ bilinguals
. prime subjects for horizontal or vertical thinking
. give them a temporal judgements
. do it all entirely in English
. English monolinguals and Mandarin-English bilinguals
In the follow-up to Boroditsky’s 2001 experiment in which English speakers were trained to use vertical time words, what were the results?
. increased horizontal prime reaction time
. significantly reduced vertical prime reaction time
. more like Mandarin speakers
Critical period for language
biologically determined period during which language acquisition must occur in order for language to be learned fully and correctly
. limited time which certain development can occur
Sensitive period for language
biologically determined period during which learning must occur for development to happen correctly, but development can still occur partially after this period
. window of time where certain aspects are more easily achieved
What would be the ideal experiment to test for a critical period of language acquisition?
deprive children of all linguistic input
What was the potential implication taken from the case of ‘Isabelle’, who was taught to speak and by age 8 appeared normal?
. implies Isabelle was discovered before critical/sensitive period was over
In which skill did ‘Genie’ lag behind?
syntactic skill, in production and comprehension
Which hemisphere is language typically an activity in?
left-hemisphere
What is the potential implication of the case of ‘Genie’?
may have been discovered after the critical period was over
What skills did ‘Chelsea’, fitted with hearing aids at 31, lack?
poor syntax and morphology skills
but had a large vocabulary
If a critical or sensitive period is true, what should also be true?
children who learn earlier should be better than children who learned later
The age of ____ has an impact on:
. ____ acquisition
. narrative comprehension
. ____ memory
. sentence interpretation
. online _____ processing
ASL acquisition
syntactic
sentence
grammatical
What did Henner, Caldwell-Harris, Novogrodsky, and Hoffmeister find as input effects in their research on the different ages of ASL acquisition?
. poorer performance when you don’t have a deaf parent at home to give ASL input
. poorer performance the older you are when you first enter the signing school
What are the implications of Henner. et al (2016) research on children’s acquisition?
age of systematic language exposure matters
the older you are, the harder it is to achieve native proficiency
What did the functional magnetic resonance imaging studies confirm in multilinguals?
different neural processing for language
in individuals who learned before age 8 v people who learned after
What did the event-related potential studies confirm?
differing left-hemisphere specialisation for language
in individuals who learned <4 v individuals who learned >7
___ and certain aspects of ___ seem to be set earlier while ____ knowledge seems to remain attainable for quite some time
phonology
morphosyntax
lexical
What is the estimated learning rate cut-off for second-language proficiency?
17(.4) years old
Sensitive period shape
a plateau followed by a continuous decline
Why are younger children better at acquiring language?
highly adaptable learners
not yet strongly adapted to their particular linguistic environment
What is Newport’s ‘less is more’ hypothesis?
. perhaps language is easier to figure out if the input is limited to smaller chunks
. limitation on the way children process input leads to better learning performance
What were the results of the Chin & Kersten 2010 ‘less is more’ research?
. adults learning incrementally outperformed adults learning from full sentences on language proficiency tests of vocabulary and grammar
What were the results of the Finn. et al 2014 artificial language listening task?
passive listeners outdid the active listeners when it came to learning morphology
Pidgin
language created by adults from different language backgrounds who need to communicate with each other
Creole
if children acquire a pidgin as their native language, they create a creole
What tells us this about language acquisition?
. the existence of language in a community does not depend on someone importing a language for a community to learn
. when children acquire language, they sometimes add something extra
. ____ tend to share the same features, suggesting human minds tend to construct languages in the same way
creoles
Homesign system
basic communication system created within a family that involves at least one linguistically deaf individual
A language ability shared by adult signers and homesigners: they use combinations of linguistic elements like __, ___, and ___ in a ___ manner
nouns, demonstratives, possessives
productive
Homesigners distinguish ___ and ___
Homesigners do not use ______ of their caretakers
nouns, verbs
the word order
Homesigners distinguish between __ and ___
nouns
demonstratives
Homesigners produce more _____
sentences with multiple clauses
What does homesign tell us about language
. create their own systematic uses of gestures
. seem to be some biases in the way these systematic gestural systems develop
What are the implications for language acquisition, in Nicaraguan Sign Language?
(young) children are the driving force of language creation
Language Bioprogram Hypothesis
Derek Bickerton
. structural similarities between different creole languages cannot be solely attributed to their superstrate and substrate languages
innate domain-specific knowledge
Blind children make more errors with sounds that involve ____
visible articulatory movements
Blind children have fewer words for ____ and more words for ____
. things can be seen but not touched
. things associated with auditory change
What did Bedny et. al (2019) conclude in their research regarding language acquisition of blind children?
. have detailed knowledge of ____ verbs
. _____ development same as that of sighted children
. have detailed knowledge of visual perception verbs
. syntactic development same as that of sighted children
What do the studies of blind children language acquisition imply?
. language development builds on nonverbal communication
. access meanings of sentences from observable non-linguistic context
. nonlinguistic clues are helpful, but not necessary
Features of Signed Languages (4)
. handshape
. palm orientation
. location
. motion
Manual tradition of language acquisition for deaf children
. teach sign language exclusively
Oral tradition of language acquisition for deaf children
. force to learn spoken language
. delayed linguistic input
. potentially better communication with non-signers
What errors do deaf children make in spoken language acquisition?
. ____ errors in morphology
. ignoring ________
. _____ reversal errors
. overregularization errors in morphology
. ignoring parental corrections of form
. pronoun reversal errors
Delays in the oral language development of deaf children
. ____ development
. oral vocabulary
. ___
. _______
. phonological development
. oral vocabulary
. syntax
. cognitive offloading
What is implied by the studies of language acquisition by deaf children?
. language is ____
. acquiring a __________ is a separate cognitive enterprise from ______
. children have ______ proficiency in their signed language
. language is a property of the human brain
. acquiring a formal grammatical system is a separate cognitive enterprise from learning how to communicate
. children have native-level proficiency in their signed language
What are the fissures in the brain?
. sylvian fissure
. central fissure
Where is auditory perception focused in the brain?
. temporal lobe
For right-handed people, where is language lateralized?
. left hemisphere
What are the hemispheres of the brain connected by?
corpus callosum
Lesion method of neurolinguistic investigation
. localized areas of damaged brain tissue
. correlate bits of missing brain & bits of missing psychological functioning
EEG/ERP method of neuroimaging
. voltage fluctuation in response to particular stimuli
Positives of EEG/ERP
. not ____
. relatively ____
. ____
. excellent ____
not too expensive
relatively undemanding and non-invasive
noiseless
excellent temporal resolution
MEG method of neuroimaging
magnetic field changes
Negatives of EEG/ERP
. sensitive to movement
. poor information about location in the brain
Positives of MEG
. excellent ____ and ____
. _____
. __ and ___
excellent temporal and spatial resolution
head tracking
safe and noiseless
Negatives of MEG
. ____
. not ____
. has to be used in _____
expensive
not portable
has to be used in magnetically shielded room
fMRI method of neuroimaging
tracks blood flow, magnetic properties
Positives of fMRI
. excellent spatial resolution
Negatives of fMRI
. poor ______
. extremely ________
. ______ needed
. _____
. poor temporal resolution
. extremely movement sensitive
. noise protectors needed
. expensive
NIRS method of neuroimaging
. transmission of light through brain tissue affected by haemoglobin concentration changes
Positives of NIRS
. moderate ___
. good _______
. _____
moderate price
good spatial resolution
noiseless
Negatives of NIRS
sensitive to movement
What is Broca’s area in the brain?
Left Inferior Frontal Gyrus
What is Wernicke’s area in the brain?
Posterior Superior Temporal Gyrus
left hemisphere damage can result in ____ for signers
aphasia
The symptoms of Broca’s aphasia
. speech lacks grammatical function
. difficulty comprehending sentences with complex syntax
Symptoms of Wernicke’s aphasia
. syntactically full but semantically empty
comprehension difficulties
Which type of aphasia are children more likely to suffer from?
Broca-type (non-fluent)
What do the differences between child and adult aphasia suggest?
suggests that within the left hemisphere, developmental changes affect the way language functions are organised
What is the right hemisphere more involved in?
language acquisition
Early right hemisphere damage impairs _____ more than late damage impairs _____
acquisition
functioning
By what age do children with very early brain injury catch up to normal range on standardized tests of language
5-7
Children’s quick recovery from early brain injury may be due to _____
neural plasticity
In which children are these signs expressed:
. less attention-sharing behaviours
. rarely point at object
. less time looking at eyes and mouth regions of speaking faces
Autistic children
Autistic children have impairments in _____ aspects of language
social/pragmatic
Pragmatics
discerning meaning in specific context
‘form is easy, meaning is hard’ hypothesis
. discovery and abstraction of grammatical forms can occur prior to complete establishment of their meanings
Aspects of lexical development autistic children that deviate:
. ____ terms and ____ words underrepresented
. higher production of _____ verbs
. don’t seem to have a _____
. impaired _____
. mental state terms and emotion words underrepresented
. there is a higher production of ‘general-all-use’ verbs
. don’t seem to have a shape bias
. impaired categorical induction
What is a key element for building social communication abilities?
brain responses to mother’s voice
CHILDES
Child Language Data Exchange System
Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test
listens to word, and selects one of four pictures that best describes it
MLU
mean length of utterance
MacArthur-Bates CDIs
measure of developing expressive vocabulary
vocabulary comprehension
production
gestures
grammar
Elicited production
give the participants the beginning of a target sentence, participants are then asked to complete
Elicited imitation
child asked to repeat utterance that is modelled by the examiner
Syntactic Priming
facilitation of processing
when a sentence has the same syntactic form as a preceding sentence
Language Acquisition Device
a system of principles that children are born with that help them learn language
Statistical learning
ability to extract statistical regularities in order to learn about the environment
Induction Problems
questions reasons for believing the future will resemble the past
/questions predictions about unobserved things based on previous observations
What do modern nativists believe is the most important aspect in language acquisition?
biology
What do modern empiricists believe is the most important aspect in language acquisition?
experience
Plato’s Problem
finding an explanation for how a child acquires language despite not receiving explicit instruction, and limited primary linguistic data
Logical Problem of Language Acquisition
the gap between available experience and attained competence
cognitive off-loading
reliance on the external environment in order to reduce cognitive demand
Premise of a false belief task
distinguish between the child’s belief and the child’s awareness of someone else’s (false) belief
Syntactic Bootstrapping: children learn ____ by recognising ____ and the structure of their language
word meanings
syntactic categories
ASL
American Sign Language
Iconicity
relationship of resemblance with the form and meaning of a sign
cochlear implants
electrically stimulates the cochlear nerve, providing a sensation of hearing
ASD
Autism Spectrum Disorder
neurolinguistics
the study of how language is represented in the brain
. how and where our brains store our knowledge of the language(s) that we speak
Which lobe of the brain carries out these functions?
. emotions
. decision making
. planning
frontal lobe
Which lobe of the brain carries out these functions?
. bodily sensation
. sensory integration
. spatial orientation
parietal lobe
Which lobe of the brain carries out these functions?
. vision
occipital lobe
Which lobe of the brain carries out these functions?
. auditory perception
. memory
. emotion
temporal lobe
lateralization of language
one hemisphere shows greater involvement in language functions
typically left hemisphere
contralateral connections
hemispheres of the brain control the opposite sides of the body
