Child Language Acquisition Flashcards
What is Piaget’s Pre-Operational Stage of Development?
2-7 years old
Language and motor skills are developing
Egocentric language is used
What is Piaget’s Sensorimotor Stage of Development?
Children up to two years old
Concrete lexical choices
Developing object permanence
Experiences world through senses
What is Piaget’s Concrete Operational Stage of Development?
7-11 years
Children think logically about concrete events
What is Piaget’s Formal Operational Stage of development?
11+ years old
Abstract reasoning skills are used
What are John Dore’s Language Functions?
Protesting Greeting Calling Requesting Answering Repeating Labelling Practising
Who supports Piaget’s theory that language is used to discover the world?
John Dore
What is the first phonological development stage?
Vegetative
0-4 months
Crying, coughing, burping
What is the second stage of phonological development?
Cooing
4-7 months
Cooing, laughter, pitch, loudness, consonant and vowel sounds
What is the third stage of phonological development?
Babbling
6-12 months
repeated patterns, extended sounds/syllables, reduplicated sounds
What are reduplicated sounds?
Repetition of consonant-vowel combination.
e.g. ba-ba
What is the fourth stage of phonological development?
Proto-words
9-12 months
word-like vocalistations
What is the first stage of lexical and grammatical development?
Holophrastic
12-18 months
1 word phrases
What is the second stage of lexical and grammatical development?
Two-word
18-24 months
2 word combinations
What is the third stage of lexical and grammatical development?
Telegraphic
24-36 months
3 or more words combined
What is the fourth stage of lexical and grammatical development?
Post-telegraphic
36+ months
More grammatically complex
What is pre-verbal?
Anything that a baby does before meaningful words are used
What is non-vocal?
behaviour that does not involve voice
What is a vocalisation?
A sound made by the voice that is not a word
What are stopped sounds?
Where air is momentarily stopped from being released
e.g p
What is variegated babbling?
A variation of reduplication where the vowel sounds differ
e.g da-de
What is a consonant cluster?
A number of consonants that have been combined
e.g fr
What are friction sounds?
Sounds made when there is a vibration while air is being released
e.g s
What do behaviourists believe?
Language is developed through imitating other’s language and gaining positive or negative feedback
What do social interactionists believe?
Children’s early language can be influenced and improved by adult carers adjusting their own speech
e.g LASS
What do nativists believe?
Language is inate
What do cognitivists believe?
Language develops when a child’s ideas of the world develop
What is universal grammar?
the idea that all languages share a similar grammar structure
What is nativism?
The belief that all children have an inbuilt Language Acquisition Device (LAD) that enables them to extract the rules of the particular language from the words and structures that they hear.
What is the critical period?
the idea that children must be activated with sufficient input before the age of 12
What did DeCasper and Spence (1986) find?
Babies sucked on their dummies more when their mothers read them a story that had been read to them during the last 6 months of pregnancy.
What did Mechler et al (1988) find?
4 day old french babies sucked on their dummies more when they heard french than when they heard English or Italian.
What did Fitzpatrick (2002) find?
The heart rate of unborn babies slows when they hear their mother’s voices.
What are the 3 types of simplification?
Deletion
Substitution
Cluster Reduction
What is deletion?
When consonants are dropped from words, particularly at the end
E.g ca vs cat
What is substitution?
The replacing of a consonant with another that is easier to say.
E.g wegs vs legs
What is Cluster Reduction?
The dropping of consonants from a cluster of them.
E.g geen vs green
What is assimilation?
When one consonant within a word is changed because of the influence of another consonant.
E.g bub vs tub due to the final b
