Development of language & Adolescents Flashcards
What 4 things characterise the human language
Communication system
Symbolic system (words refer to something other than themselves)
Rule-governed system
Productivity- novel sentences
Name the four systems language consists of
Pragmatic system, phonological system, syntax system, semantic system
What is meant by the pragmatic system?
The abilities that allow us to communicate effectively and appropriately in a social context
Is turn taking present in infants? What can demonstrate this
turn taking is present in infants as shown by proto-conversations; interactions between adults and infants where adults tend to vocalise when infants are not vocalising.
What is meant by proto-imperitive?
When an infant points to an object and alternates their gaze between the object and the adult until they obtain the object.
What is meant by proto-decleritive?
when infants use pointing or looking to direct an adults attention towards something
What parts does the pragmatic system consist of?
imitation
initiating communication- initially nonverbal; pointing, develops to be more verbal and less gestural
maintaining conversation- when to add something and for it to be substantial
repairing faulty conversation
how do adults and infants differ in their categorical perception of speech sounds?
Adult speakers can differentiate between sounds that differ in category but rarely between sounds within the same category. Infants can differ between phonemes, this diminishes with time. It could be said this ability could be innate.
Name and describe the first three phases of vocal production
Reflexive vocalisations (0-2m)- This includes cries burps coughs and sneezes, the type of cry changes in different situations according to the emotion or context etc. Laughing and cooing (2-4m)- The infant starts cooing and laughing and practicing putting sounds together. The reciprocal cooing between a parent and child may teach it turn taking for conversation. Babbling and vocal play (4-6m)- the infant starts to practice and play with controlled sound. Infants learn to produce a wide range of sounds and sound combinations.
Name and describe the last 2 phases of vocal production
Canonical babbling (6-10m)- The infant starts producing sounds that sound like words but don't have meaning attached to them yet. Early babbling does not require human interaction or reciprocal babbling. manual babbling is the sign language equivalent of babbling. Modulated babbling (10m onwards)- This is defined by the usage of intonation, place and stress patterns. This stage overlaps with the beginnings of speech. it may play a part in the infants acquisition of the intonation patterns of the native language.
Children are more likely to use words that they can pronounce correctly, what does this suggest?
They aware of the differences between their correct and incorrect pronunciations. While forming these pronunciations they might produce phonological distinctions adults don’t perceive.
What interrelated set of elements has Chomsky suggested that make up syntax in language?
the s-structure corresponds to the spoken part of a language and the d-structure corresponds a more abstract representation of a sentence.
Contrast children’s language between 10 and 18 months and 18 and 24 months
Between 10 and 18 months children make single word utterances. They comprehend more than they produce. Between 18 and 24 months they produce two word utterances. They mostly use words prevalent in their environment. They may be primed to learn syntax and make novel sentences. It is not known how much they know is this two word phase. Syntax develops rapidly after this.
What is meant by over-regularisation and what does it demonstrate?
over regularisation occurs when infants overuse a new syntax rule on things where it doesn’t apply. This demonstrates they’re learning the rules of syntax. They often mix up plurals, past tense and make creative over-regularisations.
What is an overgeneralisation?
When children add an ‘ing’ on the end of a noun making it a verb
How did Chomsky argue language was innate?
Language requires applying d structures to s structures. Children are only exposed to s structures by the environment so they must have some knowledge about d structures. Infants are not often corrected on their bad grammar and it is often reinforced. Chomsky argued parents play a small part in syntactic development.
what does the manner in which a child interprets a new world depend on
The child’s semantic system, their cognitive ability, their knowledge of the world and their selective attention
A child may broaden the meaning of a word or they might make it too narrow, what are these errors called?
overextension error; under extension error
Describe two possible constraints to word meaning development
Whole object constraint- This constraint assumes that infants believe the name for parts of an object refer to the whole object
Mutual exclusivity constraint- This constraint assumes there is a one to one correspondence between words and meanings.
Give an example of how the semantic system is developed by children’s acquisition of semantic relations
Words that fall on the far ends of the spectrum (hot, cold) will be learned before the words in between.
Describe the two strategies children use when facing gaps in their semantic / conceptual system
Acquiring a new word- Known concepts are searched through to attempt to attach a word to it. If no concepts are found, construct a new one.
Acquiring a new concept- Try and attach a known word to it, if none, find a new one
What are meant by cultural tools?
Any tools that help us calculate, produce models, make predictions and understand the world more fully.
What is the name given to a writing system? give an example of one
An example of an orthography is an alphabetic script, in which written symbols correspond to spoken sound.
What do children find hard about alphabetic scripts
To comprehend that each symbol corresponds to a sound, this gets better as they get older.
Is reading and writing innate?
No, instruction is necessary for reading and writing and environment is key.
What is meant by phonemic awareness?
The knowledge that words consist of a series of phonemes, this does not come easily to young children
What is meant by phonological skills?
The ability to detect and manipulate sounds at the phonetic , syllabic and intrasyllabic levels
What are intrasyllabic units>
Units that are larger than phonemes but smaller than syllables
Give an example of an intrasyllabic unit
A rime (the unit that rhymes).
What is the relationship between rimes and reading
Most children have an understanding of rimes from an early age. There is a positive relationship between sensitivity to rhyme and reading ability.
What are conditional spelling rules
Rules that dictate if a letter or group of letters represent a certain sound in one context and a different sound in another.
When do children usually pass the pseudo word test?
10
Children’s success in reading determines their success in what spelling rule?
The role of the silent e
What are the spelling rules based on in a morphemic script?
Morphemes and Phonemes
Name and describe two kinds of morphemes
Inflectional morphemes tell you about the syntactical context of the word while derivational morphemes change the meaning of the word.
How may overgeneralisation be constructive? describe this
It may be an essential part of learning according the the 3 step sequence;
- Start by spelling a particular sound
- They learn another way to spell the particular sound and start using it without knowing when it’s right.
- They learn the rule based on the feedback they receive
What is the basis for children’s learning morphemic spelling rules?
Their word specific knowledge, instruction is an essential part of letter-sound associations
Name the five claims of Stephen pinker about language as adaptation
- Language is universal
- Languages conform to a universal design
- Children pass through a universal series of stages in acquiring a language
- If children are put together without a pre-existing language they’ll develop one of their own
- Language and intelligence are doubly dissociable in disorders
What is pigdin?
A makeshift communicative system with little grammar used by slaves brought over to america
Name two disorders that demonstrate that language and intelligence are doubly dissociable
Williams syndrome- low IQ, good language
Specific language impairment- normal IQ/ poor language
Name the gene thought to be the language gene
FOXP2
Why is this not thought to be the language gene anymore?
It’s responsible for making small sequential movements, such as those made in the mouth for speech
What is meant by selective attention? How is this ability shown to be better in adolescents than infants?
selective attention is the ability to allocate your attentional resources on one object, adolescents can see both figures in ambiguous figures while infants can only see one or take longer to see both
What is meant by speed of processing?
The amount of time it takes to complete any mental calculation.
What is the development of speed of processing partly due to?
The maturation of white matter in the brain
Explain the encoding switch hypothesis, describing the different processes
Encoding switch hypothesis proposes that children process faces differently at different ages. Children below ten recognise faces by their individual features (featural processing) while those above ten look at the overall facial configuration (configural processing)
Between the ages of 11-14 is facial recognition better or worse? what accounts for this
Slightly worse, hormones released during puberty may account for this
Compare the memories of young children and adolescents and account for why this might be
Adolescents could have a better memory than young children because they adopt different strategies while children use basic mnemonics such as rehearsal. Adolescents can make use of the cluster strategy etc
The the three important characteristics of adolescent’s general intellectual ability
- Adolescents intelligence is significantly higher than children under 10 years old
- The speed of intellectual development differs for each intellectual ability
- Intelligence is relatively stable through adolescence
Differ between the development of fluid and crystallised intelligence
Fluid intelligence steadily improves until the age of 30 then slowly declines. Crystallised intelligence continues to improve later in life then remains stable.
What is meant by the Flynn effect?
The increase in IQ over generations
Define the three types of reasoning
Inductive reasoning- specific to general
Deductive reasoning- general to specific
Analogical reasoning- comparing a problem to a similar problem which has already been solved
Name three ways children are better at certain lines of reasoning than others
Younger children are better at reasoning if the subject is concrete rather than abstract. Young children are better at deductive reasoning than inductive. Children struggle with analogies up until the age of about 9 or 10 when this understanding increases rapidly.
What are the stages to analogical reasoning?
- analogies with familiar elements (9-10)
- analogies with concrete relations to elements are considered (12)
- full understanding, second order analogies can be used (13/14)
What is meant by second order analogies?
Analogies that require crystallised intelligence
What type of thinking do adolescent’s make use of? Describe this
Interpropisitional thinking; ie where a person is able to relate one or more parts of a proposition to another part of a proposition to arrive at a solution for a problem
What type of thinking do younger children tend towards?
Intrapropisitional thinking; includes concrete content rather than abstract symbols
What type of reasoning do people start to use in adolescence? Explain this
Hypothetic-deductive reasoning; adolescents can develop theories to explain certain phenomena, develop hypotheses from these theories, and systematically design tests to test these hypotheses.
How does hypothetic-reasoning differ to reasoning pf children in the concrete operations stage?
Younger children will only accept confirmatory evidence and dismiss counter evidence.
What does the balance scale task show?
It shows that adolescents can think in a combinatory matter ( Combining rules) and children cannot
What similar task to the balance scale gives insight into adolescent’s thinking?
The pendulum problem shows that adolescents think in a more systematic way than children do
What three variables were involved in the pendulum problem?
Weights, length of string and starting point
What criticisms were there of Piaget’s formal operations stage?
He seemed to overestimate adolescents. It is not clear if all adolescents get to formal operations. It is not fully developed and not regularly used in younger adolescents and may steadily develop over time. Training and education may be useful for this stage, this highlights the importance of experience in formal operations.
What is the information processing approach to adolescent thinking?
It’s a process of obtaining information from the environment, storing that information in the short term and long term memory and using various strategies and rules to manipulate information. It views adolescents as rule based problem solvers. These rules are domain specific.
How does the information processing approach differ in children to adolescents.
Children use a single rule and this gets more complex with age.
What does the intuitive scientist approach state
That both adolescents and children are able to construct theories in a law like manner to make sense of the world around them and they are able to construct experiments and test these hypotheses
How does the intuitive scientist approach differ from Piaget
There is no overarching principle that a child of all ages can use, but that knowledge is domain specific
What are the three common flaws of children and adolescents use of theories?
- Failure to separate theory and evidence when older children or adolescents already have a favoured theory
- Only choosing evidence that is consistent with their theory instead of modifying theory in light of counter evidence
- Needing a plausible alternative-explanation in order to accept counter evidence into their theory
What 5 major characteristics did Keating associate with adolescent thinking?
- Adolescent thinking emphasises the possible
- Systematic theory forming and hypothesis testing emerges
- Plans for the future by thinking ahead
- Thinking can be introspective about their own thought processes; thinking about thinking
- Thoughts include social, political and moral issues
Where in the brain is involved in selective attention ability?
Prefrontal cortex
What does the flanker task consist of and what does it test
Asked to focus on the centre arrow of a series and turn in that direction. Tests for borderline intellectual disabilities.
What does the forward digit span test for?
the capacity to reproduce recent information
What does the backward digit span test? What could this reflect neurologically?
The working memory, the increase in this with age could reflect an increase in activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.
What is the working memory at a young age a good predictor of?
study success and self control
What two conditions are in the speed of card sorting task?
Physical similarity: AA,BB,aa,bb
Name similarity: Aa, BB, bB
What were the results found from the speed of cards sorting task?
Difference between name and physical condition decreased with age, meaning time to relieve names from memory decreases with age
Name a possible alternative explanation for the speed of cards sorting task
Increased selective attention
