Dev of Language + Symbol Use (ch. 6)

Question 1

Symbols

Answer 1

System for representing our thoughts, feelings, and knowledge by communicating them to others
- use fo this frees us from the present

Question 2

Language Comprehension

Answer 2

Understanding what others say (or write or sign)

Question 3

Language Production

Answer 3

The process of speaking (or signing/writing)

Question 4

Generative

Answer 4

A system in which a finite set of words can be combined to generate an infinite number of sentences, thus expressing infinite ideas

Question 5

Phonemes

Answer 5

smallest units of meaningful sound
(rake and lake differ by “r” and “l” and have diff meanings)

Question 6

Syntax

Answer 6

Rules specifying how words from diff categories (nouns, verbs, etc) can be combined
(in English, the order of the words in a sentence is crucial)

Question 7

Morphemes

Answer 7

Smallest units of meaning in a language (dog vs dogs –> 1 morpheme vs 2 morphemes)

Question 8

Pragmatics

Answer 8

Knowledge about how language is used in specific cultural contexts

Question 9

Lang Dev + Human Brain

Answer 9

• This is the key
• language is a species-specific behavior = only humans acquire lang in the normal course of deve
• it’s also species-universal = language learning is achieved by typically developing children across the globe

Question 10

Brain-language Lateralization

Answer 10

right handed = left hemisphere controls language
- life long signers process sign languages in left-lateralized language centers in the brain, whereas non-signers don’t
- suggests left-hem regions aren’t solely specialized for spoken language

Question 11

Sensitive period for language dev

Answer 11

• Early years constitute a sensitive period during which languages are learned relatively easily
• after this ends (betw ~5yrs and puberty) language acquisition outcomes become more variable and less successful
• As you get older, more difficult to learn a new language
• suggestion of changes in plasticity for diff ages could be for this proficiency difference
• ALSO, children’s native leang knowledge impinges on 2nd language learning

Question 12

Exposure to Language (Environment)

Answer 12

-Infants identify speech as something important early on
- Infants prefer human speech over artificial sounds

Question 13

Infant directed speech

Answer 13

• the distinctive mode of speech used when speaking to infants and toddlers
• greater pitch variability, slower speech, shorter utterances, more repetition and questions
• coupled with exaggerated facial expressions
• draws infants attention to speech, they have a preference for this compared to adult-directed speech

Question 14

Bilingualism

Answer 14

• evidence shows that being bilingual improves aspects of cognitive function in childhood and beyond
• Can begin prenatally = mothers who spoke two languages with fetus, they have equal preference for them
• bilingual infants attention to speech cues is heightened

Question 15

Speech Perception (Prosody)

Answer 15

• the characteristic rhythmic and intonation patterns with which a language is spoken
• differences in prosody are responsible for why languages sound so diff from one another
• speech perception involves determining which differences between speech sounds are important and what can be ignored

Question 16

Categorical perception of speech sounds

Answer 16

Both adults and infants perceive sounds (phonemes) as belonging to categories

Question 17

Voice onset time (VOT)

Answer 17

the length of time between when air passes through the lips and when the vocal cords start vibrating

Question 18

Dev changes in speech perception

Answer 18

Infants increasingly hone in on sounds of their native lang, and by 12 mo, can become less sensitive to the differences between nonnative sounds
- at 6 to 8 mos, English-learning infants discriminated between on-English phonemes (Hindi vs Indigenous lang)
- BUT by 10 to 12 mos, they no longer perceived the differences they had detected earlier

Question 19

Word Segmentation

Answer 19

discovering where words begin and end in fluent speech
- infants appear to be very good at pulling out words from speech

Question 20

Distributional Properties

Answer 20

in any language, certain sounds are more likely to occur together than are others (remember how infants are skilled in statistical learning)
- infants will listen to repetitions of their name than repetitions of a diff name

Question 21

Babbling

Answer 21

Begins between 6 + 10 mos, average 7mos
- produce strings of consonant-vowel syllables drawn from a fairly limited set of sounds
- language exposure is a key component to this
- deaf infants exposed to ASL babble with their hands!
- with time, eventually take on the sounds, rhythms, and intonational patterns of the language infants hear

Question 22

Intersubjectivity + Joint attention

Answer 22

• successful communication requires two interacting partners who share a mutual understanding.
• the foundation of intersubjectivity is joint attention = caregiver follows the baby’s head looking and commenting on whatever the infant looks at
• by 12mos, infants have begun to understand the communicative nature of pointing

Question 23

Early world recognition

Answer 23

• by 6mos hear ‘mom” or “dad” they turn their head to the image of the appropriate person
• infants understand more words than they can actually produce
• parents think infants know LESS words than they actually do

Question 24

Rapid word comprehension

Answer 24

Infants become skilled in this with linguistic experience
- 15 most presented a pair of objects and hear one of them labeled; they wait until the entire word is heard to then look at correct object, whereas 24mos looked at correct object after hearing only the first part of its label, just as adults do

Question 25

Overextension

Answer 25

an overly broad interpretation of the meaning of a word EX: any four legged animal is a dog

Question 26

underextension

Answer 26

an overly narrow interpretation of the meaning of a word EX: dog only refers to the child's dog not others etc

Question 27

Early Word Production

Answer 27

- infants initially express their thoughts with one-word utterances but what they want to talk about outstrips their limited vocabularies

Question 28

Word Learning

Answer 28

- talking to children is very important for this - adults facilitate word learning by stressing or repeating new words - when talking about an object, better to label it when it's centered in child's visual field rather than periphery

Question 29

Children's contribution to word learning

Answer 29

- with new words, children exploit the context in which the word is used in order to infer its meaning

Question 30

Pragmatic Cues

Answer 30

aspects of the social context used for word learning - children will use the adults label of something if they believe the adult had intention behind it

Question 31

Linguistic Context

Answer 31

- the gramatical form of a word influences how children interpret its meaning EX: sib vs sibbing vs some sib

Question 32

Object shape for word learning

Answer 32

children extend a novel noun to a novel object of the same shape, even when those objects duffer dramatically in size, color, and texture

Question 33

cross-situational word learning

Answer 33

determining the word meanings by tracking the correlations between labels and meanings across scenes and contexts

Question 34

synaptic bootstrapping

Answer 34

the strategy of using grammatical structure to infer the meaning of a new word EX: duck and rabbit task

Question 35

Duck and Rabbit "Kradding" Task

Answer 35

*figure that out*

Question 36

First sentences

Answer 36

most children begin to combine words into simple sentences by the end of their second year - but they can UNDERSTAND sentences earlier than they can produce them

Question 37

Tech and word learning study

Answer 37

- infants who learned from parents performed best in the study's measure of word learning

Question 38

Telegraphic speech

Answer 38

children's two word utterances - short utterances that leave out non-essential words

Question 39

overregularization

Answer 39

speech errors in which children treat irregular forms of words as if they were regular EX: feets, breaked, goed

Question 40

Private speech

Answer 40

- vygotsky thought that young children's private speech serves as a strategy to organize their actions - gradually, it's internalized as thought and children become capable of mentally organizing their behavior, so they no longer need to talk out loud to themselves

Question 41

Collective monologue

Answer 41

Conversation between children that involves a series of non-sequiters

Question 42

Narratives

Answer 42

descriptions of past events that have the form of a story in correct order

Question 43

Pragmatic development

Answer 43

- crucial aspect of becoming good conversational partner - allows children to understand how language is used to communicate - listener goes beyond the words and grasps their actual meaning EX: sarcasm, rhetorical questions

Question 44

Behaviorists (skinner)

Answer 44

believed that development is a function of learning through reinforcement and punishment of overt behavior - argued that parents teach children to speak by means of the same kinds of reinforcement techniques that are used to train animals

Question 45

Noam Chomsky

Answer 45

- countered skinner's thoughts by pointing out some of the reasons why language CAN'T be learned via reinforcement and punishment - i.e. we can understand and produce sentences that we have never heard before - proposed that humans are born with a universal grammar rule

Question 46

Connectionism

Answer 46

a type of computational model that emphasizes the simultaneous activity of numerous interconnected processing units

Question 47

Nonlinguistic symbols

Answer 47

virtually anything can serves as a symbol as long as it stands for something other than itself

Question 48

Dual representation

Answer 48

treating a symbolic artifact both as a real object and as a symbol for something other than itself - Using symbols as info EX: a map - young children have difficulty with this until they're older

Question 49

Scale model task

Answer 49

- tests children's ability to use a symbol as a source of info - 3yro readily use their knowledge of the location of the mini toy in the model to figure out where the large toy is in the adjacent room -IN CONTRAST = 2.5 yro fail to find the large real life toy from the miniature --> don't treat the model as both an object and a representation of the large room HOWEVER, that changes if a "shrinking machine" is used because the child thinks the model IS the room, thus no symbolic relation between the two spaces and no need for dual rep.

Question 50

Drawing + Writing

Answer 50

- scribbles reflect emerging understanding of writing - Exposure toe representational symbols affects the age at which children begin to produce them - children simplify their drawings at first