exam 2 Flashcards
critical period
there is a biologically determined period during which a behavior must appear
what are some things that would provide proof of a sensitive period for language learning?
children unexposed to language (do not develop syntax), children who are deaf born to hearing parents, second language studies
what are some non-biological factors that could affect language acquisition throughout the lifespan?
education level, environment (learning: classroom vs. immersion), social psychosocial factors (role in the family, personality)
Which aspects of language development are most strongly related to genetics?
-genetics: predictive of rate of acquisition of language, rate of language disorder, grammar/syntax
-environment: lexical/vocab development
social gating
the social function of language ‘gates’ children’s attention which allows them to learn
what were the results of studies on the language outcomes of infants who were exposed to live interaction and audio visual media of a speaker of a different language?
live social interactions: infants display skills of native speaker; audio-visual (recording): infants display same ability as having no exposure; interaction has important connotation in language learning
joint attention
when an adult and child are looking at same thing and “mutually engaged”
gaze following
child looks where person looks (around 10-15 mo)
gaze leading
eye gaze, communicative pointing (10mo-1 yr)
conventional gestures
: culturally agreed upon meaning (nodding, shaking head no, appear just before emergence of words)
spontaneous gestures
symbolic communication created by children- predicts vocab & syntax development (ex: blow on food- hot, open & close hand- give me)
evidence that children can read intentions of others?
-missed string in a cup experiment: can imitate correct behavior by 18 mo
-used for language learning: new labels go to what adult is looking at, not child (around 24 months)
what do infant visual stimuli looking time measures tell us about mental categorization?
infants are actively forming categories of things/objects- can differentiate between rectangles and a circle
high amplitude sucking paradigm
sucking rate increases (dishabituation) with new sound if it is heard as different
habituation
become acclimated to (bored of)
dishabituation
regain interest in stimuli
headturn paradigm
uses pavlovian (classical conditioning) responses (ex: turning head when hearing “da” rather than “pa”
preferential looking & eye tracking
looking in a certain direction to relay preference; device used to track pupils/eye movements
what are some of babies’ preferences at birth?
i. Language > other audio
ii. Mother’s voice to other women
iii. Stories they’ve heard in the womb
iv. Native language
when does the shift from being a “universal” vs. “language specific” listeners?
around 1 yr
true or false: infants can create categories of objects and animals by 4-6 mo.
true
path
how infants recognize and categorize motion events- the direction the agent moves in (prepositions)- not mandatory/optional
manner
how infants recognize and categorize motion events- the way the agent moves (jumping, bouncing, skipping) (verbs)
what do infants use to differentiate between objects
adjectives and nouns
statistical learning
counting the frequency with which one stimulus is followed by another
statistical learning and identifying syntactic rules
abstract patterns that can apply to any stimuli (Ex: the dog was running, the boy was playing the X was _Y_ing)
how old were the infants in the rule learning (syntactic patterns) study?
7 mo- could tell the difference
phonological memory
capacity to remember newly encountered sound sequences
how can you test phonological memory
Non-word how do you repetition task: grall, brasterer- words get longer w/ more phonemes
better phonological memory, better …
vocab, grammar, second language learning- predictive of language abilities
central executive
executive functions – allocates mental resources among competing demands.
central executive
executive functions – allocates mental resources among competing demands.
what is poor central executive indicative of?
language disorders (Developmental Language Disorder) and trouble with sentence comprehension
what is the benefit of naps for infants and preschoolers?
infants- improve retention of statistical learning
preschoolers- improves retention of new words
frequent frames
a couple of set words that have verry few words that vary between them- cue syntactic categories 9ex: “ you ____ (verb) it)”, “the ___ (noun) is”)
prosody
melody of speech, stress patterns
Prosodic and phonological bootstrapping and 2 methods
use prosody and phonology to learn syntax or word meaning
1. Nouns vs verbs in syllable stress (‘record vs. re’cord)
2. Pauses at phrase boundaries (“the fuzzy brown bear|walked to the store”)
attributes of infant directed speech
higher and wider range of pitch, shorter phrases and slower tempo, longer more prototypical vowels, highlight particular vowels
what are the benefits of Infant Directed Speech (IDS)
preferred by infants and improves phonological processing
example of expansion
kid- “shoes!” parent- “ you need your shoes?”
example of reframing
kid- “I not did it”; Mom: “You didn’t?”; Zoe: “I didn’t did it”
parents are “ _____ _____” at birth
conversational partners
true or false: Children whose mothers are less responsive to their communication, have better language earlier
false (responses to crying and following kid’s attention promotes language development)
what are 3 ways quality of maternal input can be measured
range of vocab, complexity of sentences, chances for child to respond (conversational terms)
quantity of maternal input
more speech that children hear spoken to them –> higher vocab
what are the major findings from Hart & Risley (1994)
children of parents w/ higher socioeconomic status (SES) have higher vocabularies because they hear significantly more words
avocado example
- Low SES- “you wouldn’t like that”
- “higher SES- “that’s an avocado, remember we had that other day- it was guacamole and you didn’t like it”- more language learning
directives
ex: “pick that up now”- associated w/ low SES high stress households- less language learning
directives vs. eliciting speech
directives: low SES; eliciting speech “what do we do after playing?”- higher SES and more language acquisition
responsiveness in availability of language
label what kid’s attend to and respond to kid’s communications, babble, and speech
phonological knowledge
the ability to recognize and manipulate the spoken parts of sentences and words
phones
different sounds a language uses
how many phones are possible and how many dos each language use on avg.?
200; 45
phoneme
perceptually distinct unit of sound in a specific language that distinguishes one word from another (think minimal pairs- /bIt/ vs /pIt/
allophones
sounds that occur in a language that do not differentiate language (English: aspirated vs. unaspirated p)
distinctive feature
sound that carries meaning
how do adults represent speech sound?
process language on the phoneme level
how do we know adults represent speech sound on the phoneme level
onset and rhythms, manipulate sounds, spoonerisms (sound switching errors)
phonotactic knowledge
constraints on sound sequences (ex: “gn” in german & italian but not english
phonological rules
rules about how sounds go together in a language
voicing assimilation
consonants match in voicing (“wugs” vs “blicks”)
phonetic feature
The elements making up and distinguishing phones are phonetic features (height, backness, frontness, stop, etc.)
articulatory phonetics
speech sounds and how they are pronounced
what differentiates vowels and consonants?
consonants: how airflow is obstructed; vowels: airflow is not obstructed
manner of articulation
how airflow is obstructed (stops and fricatives)
place of articulation
where airflow is obstructed (bilabial, etc.)
voicing
time vocal chords start vibrating relative to release of air (voiceless vs. voiced)
why are vowels difficult for children to differentiate and categorize?
varied between speakers; high frequency helps infants
What are vegetative sounds? When do they first occur?
accompany biological functions (cry, burp, etc.); occurs at BIRTH
what advances in phonological production are made btwn 16-30 wks?
cooing and vocal play
cooing & brain devlopment?
vowels (when happy, social); development of limbic system –> emotion
what is vocal play?
increase in types of sounds- all babies sound the same (16-30 wks)
canonical babbling
true syllables “bababa” (6-9 mo)
jargon
babbling with prosody (ex: twins talking video) (ab 10 mo)
nonreduplicated babbling
range and type of sound increase (not just the same syllable over and over
babbling drift
sounds like native language
why is babbling drift important and when does it occur
importance: environment influence- when do babies recognize/recreate native sounds
how does prosody play a role in babbling drift?
differences at 9 mo in prosody (comprehension)
What do cross-linguistic studies and research with children who are deaf tell us about the phonological production that occurs between 6 and 9 months?
canonical babbling is rare in babies who are deaf- deaf children often stop babbling (importance in hearing experience)
Language specific babbling was tested using 2 different methodologies. Explain these two studies.
study 1: adult french raters listened to babbling from babies learning different languages- novice raters detected french sounds at 8 mo, expert: 6 mo. RESULTS: babbling drift occurs from 6-9 mo
study 2: experts identified vowels and consonants in babbling- differences at 9 mo in prosody. RESULTS: babbling drift6-9 mo
when do first words emerge?
about 52 wks
how is physical growth related to speech sound development?
vocal tract- smaller, different shape- muscles developing (ex: tongue); facial skeleton getting larger
how is brain development related to speech sound development?
limbic system (emotion-cooing); motor cortex (moving muscles etc. to produce speech sounds)
how is experience related to speech sound development
hearing self to learn (ex: deaf children often stop babbling)
how do newborns represent speech sounds in comprehension
syllable level (ex: ba vs. bu- 1 difference, ba vs. du- 2 differences)
when do people start to represent speech sounds on the phonemic level?
3 mo. (/b/ /a/- individual phonemes)
what are some early errors in word production?
reduplication- ball –> baba
deletion of weak syllable- banana –> nana
stops –> fricative- see –> tee
“whole word”
first words are represented as whole words in production- adults have representations of phonemes
phonological idioms
child produces sound correctly in one word, but mispronounces in another (‘wa-bit” but “rag”)
perception vs. production
hear errors in others that they produce
when is phonology mastered?
by 7 yrs (mostly by 4)- excludes phonological awareness (individual’s awareness of phonetic structure
mental lexicon
mental dictionary of words you know
lexical selection
early words biased towards phonemes kids can produce (“mama” vs. “mother”)
word
arbitrary symbol- stands for something w/o being part of it (arbitrary: no specific rule about sounds of word/what word refers to)
reference
symbol standing for a whole concept (ex: grass, human reference of outside vs. dog’s understanding (walk))
mental lexicon
mental dictionary- includes semantics (word mearning)
first word production?
10-15 mo. (ab 52 wks)
context-bound words
tied to particular context (dog is my corgi in the backyard- no other dog in no other situation)
referential words
not bound to specific use (has a reference for word) (dog is my corgi and pic of dog in book, and neighbor’s dog, etc.)
What is the overall pattern of referential and context bound words in young children and how does this change with age?
slowly context-bound –> referential over time
50 word point
50 sounds most common in children’s babble also most common sounds in children’s 50 first words
make up of early vocabulary?
nominals (nouns)- noun bias
action words- up, go
modifiers- allgone, pretty
personal social words- no, want
grammatical function words- what, is
human simulation study
mom interacting w/ toddler- bleeped out nouns & verbs
task- name missing words
RESULTS: nouns: 45% missing nouns, 15% missing verbs
many more possible meanings for verbs
natural partitions theory
noun bias is caused by the nature of things in the word to labeled- objects are easier to categorize than verbs, adj., etc.
relational relativity hypothesis
nouns are more consistent across languages than verbs, adjectives, etc. (ex: “Wikipedia, the FREE encyclopedia”)
verb embedded
present in noun-bias languages (she hit him)
verb final
present in no noun-bias languages (she him hit)
noun drop languages
don’t need noun (ex: puedes ir vs. tu puedes ir)
What is different about parent interactions in different cultures that could lead to less of a noun bias in some languages?
english- label objects
mandarin- label actions (verbs)
overextentions
using a word too broadly (dog for all 4 legged animals)
underextensions
using word too narrowly (dog = only my dog fluffy)
When do children show more advanced production than comprehension in word meaning? Give an example.
produce some words they don’t fully understand (ex: uncle- that guy that comes over
word spurt
around 50 words (15-20 mo) inc. in word learning (some kids have big inc., some more linear)
what are some possible causes of individual differences in vocabulary growth?
sex, birth order, SES, phonological memory
speech segmentation
statistical learning using phonological cues (stress patterns)
find referent in environment
ex: what does gavagai mean when someone points at rabbit
lexical constraints
guides child by constraining possible interpretations of new words- whole object assumption and mutual exclusivity assumption
