Class 7 - Language acquisition/learning

Question 1

High Amplitude Sucking (HAS)

Answer 1

A sound is presented to the infant every time a strong or “high amplitude” suck occurs. Infants quickly learn that their sucking controls the sounds, and they will suck more strongly and more often to hear sounds they like the most.

Question 2

Headturn paradigm

Answer 2

The infant is put on the parent laps (people who babies trust and know): the parent has headphones so does not know what the baby is hearing: they sit in a cabin which has a lamp in the center and the experimenter sees the baby via a camera. The
baby does not see the experimenter nor the caregiver. The experimenter starts coding when the stimulus is presented (a blinking light) and records the time the baby takes to get bored about the light. At this moment, the experimenter records the time and then presents the light on the other side and does the same thing. If the infant perceives the stimulus in a different way, he/she will look shorter/longer depending on the age.

Question 3

Baby/newborn

Answer 3

0-2 months

Question 4

Infant

Answer 4

3-12 months

Question 5

Toddler

Answer 5

3-12 months

Question 6

Children start to perceive airborne sounds at…

Answer 6

30 weeks of pregnancy (detected via heart beat monitoring of infants)

Question 7

Rhythmic information

Answer 7

Infants at only 2 days old can distinguish their native language’s rhythm, proven by studies which used the HAS.

Question 8

Approximately from 4 to 8 months, infants…

Answer 8

prefer what it’s familiar to them

Question 9

Approximately from 8 months onwards, infants…

Answer 9

prefer novelties (should be considered when conducting experiments with infants in this ranges)

Question 10

Statistical learning

Answer 10

ability for humans and other animals to extract statistical regularities from the world around them to learn about the environment. Although statistical learning is now thought to be a generalized learning mechanism, the phenomenon was first identified in human infant language acquisition.

Question 11

Statistical learning

Answer 11

It can be divided into subgroups:

• Hebbian learning (which relies on regularity, frequency distribution, probability)
• Categorical learning / perception
• Transitional probability
• Stress patterns

Question 12

Hebbian learning

Answer 12

Biology: form of activity-dependent synaptic plasticity where correlated activation of pre- and postsynaptic neurons leads to the strengthening of the connection between the two neurons.

Linguistics: learning rule that specifies how much the weight of the connection between two units should be increased or decreased in proportion to the product of their activation.

Question 13

Categorical perception

Answer 13

refers to the ability that listeners can distinguish cross-category stimuli, but cannot discriminate different stimuli within the same category. The degree of categorization for lexical tone perception may be influenced by the acoustical similarity of different tones.

Question 14

Categorization

Answer 14

The process in which experiences and concepts are recognised and understood.
Categorization is central issue in Cognitive Linguistics in which it is argued to be one of the primary principles of conceptual and linguistic organization.

Question 15

Is the magnet effect a language-specific phenomena?

Answer 15

Yes

Question 16

Magnet effect

Answer 16

Kuhl demonstrated that adults and 6-month-old human infants showed a “perceptual magnet effect” for vowel prototypes. Kuhl et al. also showed that Swedish infants do not show a magnet effect for phoneme categories that are not present in their native language. This study
demonstrated that the “perceptual magnet effect” was also present in human newborns.
Newborns of English- and Spanish-speaking mothers
were presented phoneme exemplars around the prototypes /i/and/•/, and also around non-prototypical /i/and /3/. Neonates of Spanish speaking mothers demonstrated the magnet effect for the prototype /i/,
a speech sound present in their native language, and also for the prototype /•/, a sound not present in their native language. The results suggest that newborns enter the world with “platonic forms” for phoneme categories that are influenced by subsequent linguistic experience

Source: https://asa.scitation.org/doi/pdf/10.1121/1.405107

Question 17

Transitional probability

Answer 17

Refers to the probability of one syllable occurring given the previous syllable.

Saffran and colleagues (from the article) firmly established that 8-month-old infants can learn word-like units on the basis of transitional probabilities.

Question 18

Language specialization

Answer 18

We come with a good enough way to distinguish sounds and we become better at it, while becoming less sensitive to what is not important to our language.

Question 19

Native Language Neural commitment (NLNC)

Answer 19

Kuhl has proposed the NLNC theory to account for the developmental change by which infants’ ability to discriminate speech sounds becomes increasingly specific to their native language as they age.

Interpretation:
The use of statistical/prosodic info is going to help to shape our universal ability of language into a language specific one. The learning of a L2 relies on different strategies than for first language. The learning strategy and mechanisms are going to be different. The native language works on our language apparatus from
scratch, while the L2 needs rewires the apparatus, but doesn’t create a new one.

Question 20

“Ingredients” to learn a L2

Answer 20

Proficiency
Explicit training
Motivation

Question 21

Social interaction

Answer 21

All this learning is related to social interaction: it seems clear that interacting with real humans helps the maintenance of sound recognition. We learn something if we see that it is important for the relationship with a person. Also, interaction makes babbling longer, kids get interested more if they receive attention because they
see the usefulness of babbling.