Child Language Acquisition Flashcards

Question

what is a virtuous error?

Answer 1

When a child applies a rule to a word that is irregular and so does not follow this rule. The child shows understanding of the concept, but does not yet possess the knowledge to distinguish between irregularities. For example, children can show that they understand past tense by adding the bound morpheme –ed to a word, but they may do this to irregular verbs as they don’t understand about irregular verbs until later in their development. Eg they may say I falled down instead of I fell down (simple past) or I have fallen down (present perfect).

Answer 2

Identified 4 categories of a child’s first words: - NAMING (she found this to be the largest category) - ACTION - SOCIAL - MODIFYING said that nouns make up 60% of a child’s first words

Answer 3

argued that Nelson’s proposed noun bias was because the frequency of nouns was higher (a ratio of about 5:1 in most dictionaries)

Answer 4

CATEGORICAL OVEREXTENSION– eg ‘apple’ used to refer to all types of fruit, so the hyponym apple stands for the hypernym fruit ANALOGICAL OVEREXTENSION– where the word is related to a perception or function of an object eg a fluffy scarf might be a cat as the child is stroking it PREDICATE OR MISMATCH STATEMENTS– found that these account for around 25% of the overextension in her study. These convey some kind of abstract information, eg a child points to an empty cot and says ‘doll’ because the doll is usually there, or that is where it should be

Answer 5

LABELLING– linking words to objects etc PACKAGING– explore what labels apply to (over/under extension happens as they test out the range of a word’s meaning) NETWORK BUILDING– making connections between words– understanding similarities and opposites for example (antonyms, hypernyms, hyponyms)

Answer 6

children have to learn about implicatures, the appropriate register, and language in different social contexts in order to attain communicative competence

Answer 7

These first four help the child to satisfy its physical, emotional and social needs: INSTRUMENTAL: when the child expresses its needs eg ‘want drink’ REGULATORY: using language to tell others what to do eg ‘go away’ INTERACTIONAL: using language to make contact with others and form relationships eg ‘love you daddy’ PERSONAL: the use of language to express feeling, opinions and individual identity eg ‘me good girl’ The next two help the child to come to terms with its environment. HEURISTIC: language used to gain information about the environment, eg ‘what tractor doing’? IMAGINATIVE: language used to tell stories and jokes, and to create an imaginary environment Lastly: REPRESENTATIONAL– use of language to convey facts and information

Answer 8

considered the importance of games like peakaboo as it has the structure of turn taking. Although the child might not understand its part in the game the adult acts as if it does. The child and adults respond to each other and have fun doing it

Answer 9

a word with a broad meaning constituting a category into which words with more specific meanings fall

Answer 10

a word of more specific meaning than a general or superordinate term applicable to it. For example, spoon is a hyponym of cutlery

Answer 11

what is said does not always correspond to what is meant a child has to grasp implicatures including metaphors etc when they are learning language

Answer 12

his theory on behaviourism suggests that children are conditioned to learn lang (1957) Skinner viewed babies as ‘empty vessels’ which language had to be ‘put in to’. He said children learn language from their environment and consequences of their actions. Skinner would say that a child learns language through positive reinforcement. His basic explanation for the development of speech was that parents tend to reward infant vocalisations (such as babbling) by giving the infant attention. This increases the frequency of vocalisation. He would suggest that the child will not progress from babbling to language unless the parents shape the child’s language behaviour. Another important feature of Skinner’s theory is the idea that children imitate speech sounds and words spoken by caregivers and, provided this imitation is rewarded, learning will take place. This is how children learn new words.

Answer 13

input theories are the most recent CLA theories. Stresses the role of interaction in the development of language. A child’s lang acquisition is said to depend on the input made by parents and other carers bard and sachs studied a boy called Jim who was born to 2 deaf parents. although he was exposed to TV and radio, his speech did not develop until he attended face to face sessions with speech therapist. he was 3 years and nine months at the time of therapy and went on to develop normal speech

Answer 14

conducted the Wug Test (1958), asking children to complete a sentence. The children were able to answer correctly saying there are two Wugs

Answer 15

paralinguistics and prosodics during the holophrastic and early telegraphic stage MUST be imitated babbling reduces to sounds heard in the child’s environment early vocab is made up of imitated labels

Answer 16

children apply rules they cannot have heard from adults eg irregular past tenses ‘flied, throwed’ etc children form their own partially complete telegraphic utterances

Answer 17

that the ability to learn language is innate within a child’s brain Chomsky’s theory directly attacked the Behaviourist theory of CLA Chomsky argued that it is quite clear that children do not acquire language through imitation He pointed out that children do make grammatical mistakes when learning to speak (for example, “wented” and “bestest”) He also pointed out that children will only hear a narrow range of language from their parents, yet they are able to understand and produce grammatically correct utterances very quickly He proposed that every child is born with the ability to speak “programmed” into the brain; it is “native” within us He called this the Language Acquisition Device, or L.A.D.

Answer 18

the impressive speed at which children learn to speak the fact that children from different cultures pass through the same stages of development the existence of grammatical features that are common to all/many languages

Answer 19

the idea that we are born with a number of highly specific grammar rules built into our heads, which he called Universal Grammar

Answer 20

Pinker agreed with Chomsky’s nativist idea and said children were born with speech perception, but that they needed adults to help them assimilate the language that they used naturally developed the PRINCIPLES AND PARAMETERS THEORY (PPT)– speakers set the parameters of their own language through listening to language around them Pinker believed that the LAD may, in fact, be sequences of neural connections in the brain rather than a physical area of it

Answer 21

developed the Critical Period hypothesis it presents the idea that acquiring language can only take place during a set period in a child’s early life and that it is impossible to achieve full competence after it

Answer 22

nativism suggests that if a child is exposed to language, acquisition of that language will occur naturally. However, in Bard and Sachs’ case study of Jim, they found that even though he was exposed to language through TV and radio, his speech did not develop until he attended face to face sessions with a therapist

Answer 23

children apply logical rules to language as they develop eg early babbling, the syntax of telegraphic talk, over extension and under extension

Answer 24

children who are neglected or feral do not develop language until they are interacted with by adults some elements of communication can only be acquired by imitating eg prosodics and paralinguistic

Answer 25

his work focused on how humans make meaning in relation to the interaction between their experiences and their ideas ‘blanket and ball’ study (1963): piaget examined what he called ‘object permenance’. This is the ability to recognise that an object exists even if you cannot actually see it. requires the capacity to form a mental representation of the object observed that this starts in a child’s first year, but is not complete until 18 months. At this point, there is a sharp increase in a child’s vocabulary Piaget theorised that a child can only learn the names of objects once they realise they permanently exist

Answer 26

cognitive development considers intellectual development, mental abilities, and skills. this means examining how a child’s thought process changes and develops as they get older

Answer 27

equilibrium - assimilate - disequilibrium (when new knowledge does not fit with out existing schemas) - accommodate - equilibrium - etc

Answer 28

Vygotsky proposed a Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD): In this, children reach a stage which they can attempt with support, and are then able to perform independently. This idea focuses on children as individuals with their own individual needs, instead of thinking that all children need to reach a government-driven definition of development based on mass testing.

Answer 29

each child had up to 3 minutes to complete the task and reach for the object. Within this time period, it is plausible that they may have successfully completed the task by accident for example, randomly reaching out and finding the object or even reaching out due to the distress of the lights going out (rather than reaching out with the intention of searching for an object)

Answer 30

used a lab experiment to study infants aged between 1-4 months old instead of using a piaget’s blanket technique, they waited for the infant to reach for an object, and then turned out the lights so the object was no longer visible. they then filmed the infant using an infrared camera. they found that the infant continued to reach for the object for up to 90 seconds after it became invisible

Answer 31

bruner developed the concept of the LASS– the Language Acquisition Support System which he believed supported Chomsky’s idea of a predisposition to learn language

Answer 32

a form of linguistic support where adults provide the child with conversational material and patterning

Answer 33

a basic form of scaffolding before the child can function as an effective producer of language could also include non-verbal responses

Answer 34

controlling the agenda of a conversation, or making utterances that allow the child to fill in the blanks

Answer 35

the rephrasing and extending of a child’s utterance

Answer 36

the speech used to facilitate children’s language development it is a form of adapted language where the adult helps the child to learn language by making their input accessible to the child. it may also take on an educational aspect

Answer 37

substitute difficult sounds for easy ones use of proper nouns instead of pronouns short sentences concrete language simple vocab

Answer 38

accentuates new info exaggerated intonation repetition of words/clauses

Answer 39

plural personal pronoun use tag questions frequent questions

Answer 40

higher pitch pauses between words longer intervals between phrases and sentences

Answer 41

some cultures in Samoa and Papua New Guinea are notable for the lack of CDS, yet children still learn how to speak

Answer 42

genie wiley was a feral child who was locked away isolated in the back room of her house for 12.5 years without human interaction, meaning her language didn’t develop. when she was rescued she was given speech therapy, and she did manage to pick up some lexis, but could never understand grammar

Answer 43

was abandoned onto the streets by parents who couldn’t care for her. she found shelter with some homeless people but the shelter was mainly frequented by packs of dogs. oxana started to walk on all fours, to bark and would only eat raw meat. was rescued at age 8 and given intensive therapy but never fully developed speech

Answer 44

Some babies born with autism cannot take part in echolalia (echoic response) or they can’t get out of it. These children have gone through babbling and can form mands but they struggle to give mands meaning or to develop them into proto-words that they understand. Productive lexicon (everyday vocabulary): severely autistic children can either have huge vocabularies (often from restricted fields) which they have difficulty applying to different contexts, develop very limited vocabularies or don’t speak at all.

Answer 45

Babbling - Protowords - Reduplicated sounds - words Caregivers and children use diminutives (e.g.doggie) - reduce the “scale of an object” by addition. This is supposed to make word easier and more appealing to children. Plosives appear before fricatives due to “articulatory ease” and perceptual discriminability”

Answer 46

found that children can recognise more than they can pronounce eg fis vs fish

Answer 47

Early - By age 3: m, b, j (y), n, w, d, p, h, Middle - By age 4-5: t, ng, k, g, f, v, ch, j, Late - By age 6 - sh, th, s, z, l, r,

Answer 48

child adds an extra vowel to the CVCV structure

Answer 49

child leaves out the last consonant in a word

Answer 50

child repeats a structure of sounds

Answer 51

child swaps one sound for an easier one

Answer 52

groups of 2 or more consonants are reduced for ease

Answer 53

child removes entire unstressed syllables, eg nana instead of banana

Answer 54

child changes a sound in a word for one that is closer to others in the word, eg goggie instead of doggie

Answer 55

(useful for holophrastic) labelling repeating answering requesting action calling greeting protesting practising

Answer 56

IRF structure = initiation, response, feedback a 3 part adjacency exchange in which a speaker starts the conversation, a second speaker responds and the first speaker then provides some feedback demonstrates how questioning and evaluating are important aspects of CDS

Answer 57

(supports nativism) present participle plural -s possessive -s articles past tense -ed third person singular -s auxiliary verb (to be)

Answer 58

analysis in 40 studies found that corrections play a role in positive responses to children’s language