Exam 2 Flashcards
Joint selective attention
When baby and primary caregiver lock in shared gaze, forms basis of communication
Entrainment
(dialogue / behaviour synching)
Over time, babies and caregivers become similar in how they interact, syncing of sounds, facial expressions, etc.
Lays groundwork for communication later on, learning about conversation turn taking
(e.g., smile at baby, baby smiles back)
Social and Communicative Development During the 1st Year: Birth – 6 months
◼2 weeks: can distinguish mom from stranger
◼3 weeks: social smile (recognition)
◼3 – 6 weeks: smile in response to human face and gaze, more faces other than just caregiver
◼1 month: engage in interactional sequences, imitate pitch and speech sounds of caregiver, patterns with the person they are communicating with
◼6 weeks: coordinate gazing time and change patterns based on partner’s gaze, e.g., gaze locked with mom, mom shifts gaze to corner of room, baby shifts gaze to corner of room as well
◼3 months: visually discriminate people and alter response and mutual gaze → gaze coupling/locking = social bonding
◼Cooing increases (attention, speech, toys)
◼3 – 4 months: rituals (e.g., feeding) and game-
playing, games have rules, steps, and routine which babies love
◼3 – 6 months: mirror caregiver’s expression
Social and Communicative Development During the 1st Year: Modulating Factors
◼Mother’s responsiveness and attachment style (e.g., cry it out method vs. being overly responsive)
◼High emotionality (e.g., very anxious, stressed, angry, etc.) = poorer receptive vocab (less understanding of what they are hearing around them) and shorter narratives
◼Pleasantness = better receptive vocab
◼High caregiver stress = poorer receptive and expressive vocab; lower cognitive / behavioural outcomes, cognitively they don’t do as well, which can lead to behavioural issues later on
Social and Communicative Development During the 1st Year: 7 – 12 months
◼6 months: communicate intentions more
effectively
◼7 months: different responses to different interactional partners (e.g., respond differently to mom then to brother)
◼8-10 months: imitate simple motor behaviours (e.g., wave)
◼8 – 9 months: intentionality (goal directedness), start to communicate intentions
◼1 year: coordinate gaze and vocalization (e.g., shift gaze. look someone in the eye, and vocalize)
◼1 year: First Words, communication of intentions using words with or without gestures, hearing words over and over makes it more familiar, increases association between sounds of word and the actual meaning of the word, helps reinforce the concepts, schemas, scripts, etc. (example of pattern finding)
Communication of Intentions
They learn gestures, then they start to use gestures in conjunction with vocalization
◼2 Types of Gestures:
◼Protoimperatives: requests
◼Protodeclaratives: point / show, leads to joint attention
Motherese
“Baby talk”
Stretched out vowels when speaking, short words, sweet tone, often repetitive, exaggerated facial expression, etc.
Facilitates learning phonological regularities (helps kids learn sound rules of language)
Deaf children and maternal signing = reach
milestones same as or before hearing children
Important for gaining/holding attention, emotional bonding, and communication development
Factors that influence mom – baby interactions
◼ Medication used in delivery (less awareness of the process, less immediate contact with baby, etc.)
◼ Number of pregnancies (a lot of pregnancies/children can be stressful, caregivers have to split time, etc.)
◼SES (especially maternal education levels, biggest predictor of children’s language acquisition, how your mother speaks to you (the quality and quantity of language she uses) affects you and your learning)
◼ Cultural background (in the West: very expressive, speak a lot with babies, other cultures speak less with babies)
Joint reference
◼Share common focus (joint selective attention)
◼Indicating
◼Deixis: words that are dependent on the context they are in (time, place, location), we use these concepts/words and babies have to learn them
◼Naming object, lays foundation for semantics
Joint action
Primary caregiver and child do actions/activities together
◼Shared behaviours in familiar contexts (routines)
◼Game playing (e.g., peek-a-boo)
◼ 6 weeks old (can initiate) → 13 weeks (body movements + facial expressions to begin play)→23 weeks independent play
◼Scripts (how to play XYZ = meaningful interpretation of information)
Structure for language analysis + semantic categories of early speech, forming categories, (cat and dog are both animals, they are both domestic animals…)
Turn taking
◼Early feeding sessions
◼Pauses are as important as the actual turns
◼Alternating patterns of vocalizations develop = protoconversations (gestures fill gaps)
◼Vocalizations reinforced by caregiver’s response ◼Mutual gaze and gaze coupling
e.g., peek-a-boo, taking turns, one is saying peek-a-boo, one is laughing/responding
Word acquisition guided by…
◼Event-based knowledge: events/routines organized toward a goal, which leads to scripts, one of the most important factors shaping language learning when your’e young (learning the labels for things through daily routine)
◼Taxonomic knowledge: categories/classes of words
Developmental differences in use:
- Pre-K: event-based knowledge
- K: more sophisticated script-based groupings
- 7 to 10 years = taxonomic categories
Production
Speech-sound perception, leads to expression
If you aren’t able to perceive the sound properly (e.g., can’t full hear the sound), you won’t be able to properly produce it
Comprehension
Highly context-dependent until 2 years
Comprehension precedes production, especially with early words
Understand more than you can speak
Less is more hypothesis: children are better at learning language than adults (they have fewer cognitive resources, more processing limitations), better at learning second, third… languages
Toddler receptive language strategies
Receptive Strategies:
- 11 months = word boundaries + phonological characteristics
- Sort out relevant vs. irrelevant info in convos
- Which utterances are good examples of language
- Hypotheses about meanings and structures
Different lexical principles and properties used:
- Reference principle: words represent entities
- Whole-object principle: words represent whole object (not its parts, features, etc.)
- Extendibility principle: words can be extended to similar objects (e.g., calling everything round “ball” because they look similar)
- Categorical assumption: extend words/labels to related objects
- Novel name-nameless assumption: map name to new object when it is named
- Conventionality assumption: expect others to use consistent forms you learn a word, (e.g., expect everyone else to use that word), e.g., sofa vs. couch
Toddler expressive language strategies
Expressive Strategies:
- + correlation b/w amount of adult verbal input at 20 months and vocab and MLU (mean length of utterance: how long their utterance is) at 24 months
- Evocative utterances: naming entities
- Interrogative utterances: gaining more ling
knowledge ( 24 months = vocab)
- End of adult utterances = crucial perceptual info
Pre-K language strategies
- Bootstrapping: take info you learned in one area, apply it in another area
1. Semantic: use semantics to decode syntax
2. Syntactic: use syntax and context to figure out word meanings - Learn classes of words and basic sentences first (subject – verb – object)
- Learn syntactic rules because cues from adult utterances
- Grammatical errors are normal
- Syntactic and morphological development
- Pay attention to ends of words: ling markers at end of words learned early (sweeter before more sweet)
- Varying pronunciation can change meaning
- Adults: avoid rearrangements of linguistic units
- Children overgeneralize rules and avoid exceptions (eat: eated vs. ate), Rote learning and memorization of rules
- 75% utterances are repetitions of previous utterances, only 25% of the time it is a novel, generated utterance
K onward language strategies
Intention-Reading
- Understand mental processes and behaviours of others
- Intention and meaning of utterances
- Communicative function of words, phrases, utterances, etc.
Pattern finding:
Schematization and Analogy
- Children create abstract syntactic constructions from concrete pieces of language
Entrenchment and Preemption
- Children use ling constructions successfully
several times
- People use difference forms to relay specific communicative intentions, better understanding of the rules
Functionally Based Distribution Analysis
- Concrete ling terms w/ same communicative
f(x)s = grouped together in ling categories
- Based on nouns
Statistical Learning Production
- Construct utterances from learned pieces of
language as f(x) of communicative context
- Pieces of lang together; not words + morphemes + countless abstract rules
- when (what contexts) you do and don’t use certain language
Modelling with toddlers
Especially from mothers
- Repetition, confirmation, and increase chances of reciprocating
- Motherese
- Lack of child response = breakdown
in communication - Fathers acknowledge utterances less often, less convo, reinforce less often, in general engaging in conversation less often
Prompting with toddlers
- Elicit responses from toddlers
- Elicited imitations, fill-ins, questions (incorrect or unanswered = reformulated, ask the question differntly/direct towards teh right answer)
- Short
Responding behaviours with toddlers
- Grammatically correct utterances are not always directly reinforced (imitation, topic changes, acknowledgements, or no response)
- Grammatically incorrect utterances (reformulations, expansions, clarification requests)
-Children can repeat, acknowledge, or reject because adult did not understand
What do preschoolers hear?
- 80% of mothers’ utterances = full adult sentences (25% verb “to be” = main verb)
- Highly repetitive word-based frames (100s of times / day), ties into routines that kids are engaging in
- Children interrupt often
- Reformulations, clarification requests, questions (esp. yes/no), this is how they learn the rules of conversation
- Provide scripts/mental models
- Turnabouts: response to a child’s utterance that requires another response, babysteps towards conversational dialogue/turn-taking, corrective feedback for syntax in these turnabouts
Play and Language
- Development of sensorimotor + visual cortex reflected in play
- Both concrete at first
- Infants engage in solitary play (but often modelled by parents, siblings)
- Social play and first words occur around the same time
- Toddlers engage in parallel play (they like to play alone, but with others nearby)
- Combining symbols = symbolic/pretend play
- Number sequences in play related to grammatical complexity of language
- Kids with more grammar engage in more sophisticated play, those with less grammar engage in more concrete play
- 3 years: thematic role playing (scripts/mental models), e.g., playing a princess, playing “house”, etc.
- 3 years: role play baby; role play parents (develop a script for how to take care of a baby)
- Increased use of imaginative props
- Songs and rhymes boost language development
- 4 years: cooperative play with others
Play and language: Modulating Factors
Variation in preschoolers’ language:
- Intellect (e.g., developmental delays)
- Personality (e.g., extraverted vs. introverted)
- Learning style (e.g., memorizing vs. hands on)
- Home language, culture (e.g., more than one language at home, cultural differences, etc.)
- SES (e.g., economic background, mothers economic background and education affects language used around child, etc.)
- Family structure (single parent vs. married couple), affects understanding and how child communicates, single parent households have language advantage, etc.
- Birth order (first or only child = much adult time), younger siblings experience more child speech
- Twins (mimic each other, e.g., one could have speech impediment, one without will imitate one with)
Nature of Early Words
◼Requests (info, objects, help) or comments →
frequently used by adults (esp. moms)
◼Holophrases: holistic communicative intention (e.g., go!, mine!)
◼Criteria for words:
- Phonetically related to an adult word
- Consistent use
- Occur in presence of reference (concept/meaning)
Early Words: Pragmatics
◼Early words fulfill intentions originally conveyed by gestures
◼Development of intention: gestures only, leads to gestures + vocalizations, leads to gestures + words, leads to words
◼Words used in same contexts caregivers did (esp. moms)
◼12-14 months: social-cognitive and social- motivational skills for cooperative communication
◼Presupposition: assumption that listener knows/doesn’t know certain info
- Include or delete info, e.g., explaining TV show to someone who has not seen it, include more background info
- Toddlers exhibit this
Early Words: Phonology
◼Each intention = different verbal form
◼Increase in words + intentions, increased utterance flexibility (can make utterances more complicated), as they learn more words, they are better able to communicate their intentions
◼Flat or level contour for naming/labelling → contour modulation (requests, attention getting, surprise, greeting), e.g., expressing emotion
◼2 years: multiple intentions within single utterance, better at combining things, better at combining intentions
Early Words: Mental Lexicons
◼Words + nonwords: 3 or fewer sounds
◼1st 10 words: toys, animals, food
◼Lexical growth is slow; some words lost with changing interests
◼18 months: learn new word-referent associations
◼Sex differences: Females have larger & stronger vocabs., could be because of socialization/how often young girls are spoken to versus young boys
◼18-24 months: vocab spurt
◼2.5 years: rapid vocab expansion
Factors that influence word learning:
◼Frequency of input: e.g., Genie (was never spoken to/taught language) could not pick up language after this
◼Phonology: difficult words are difficult to pick up
◼Grammatical class (nouns predominate, easier to pick up than verbs) for 1st 100 words, then verbs increase
◼Style: Learning by breaking up utterances into parts vs. holistic learning (memorized formulas)
Early Words: Semantics
◼Word knowledge likely derived from
multisensory experiences
◼6 months: mapping sounds onto meanings
- Not just associative learning (meaningful processing happening in the brain)
- Social intentions of speaker important
◼2 years: word learning expert
◼Concept formation is crucial
◼Semantic Feature Hypothesis: meaning = combining features present in environment (what the thing looks like)
◼Functional Core Hypothesis: meaning motion features (how the thing is used)
◼Associative + Prototypic Complexes Hypothesis:
(1) Each use of word associated with core concept
(2) Concept includes a prototype
◼Fast or Initial Mapping: link between new name +
referent (quick and dirty)
◼Form hypotheses about underlying concepts and extend current meanings to include new examples
- Underextensions: overly restricted meanings (e.g., truck = toy only)
- Overextentions: meanings too broad (e.g., bus = truck)
- Perceptual similarity (visually) = driving force for extensions
- Feedback is important
Transitioning to Early Word Combos
◼18 months in most children
◼Similar to adults, involves:
- Syntactic knowledge
- Cognitive resources
- Communicative goals
- Structure to convo
◼Words + sounds, words + gestures in many
combos→two-word utterances
- Reduplication of single-word utterance
- Holophrases
◼Verbs and position in utterance, learned one verb at a time
- 3 years: generalize language rules
How do they do this?
◼Language in environment + social- cognitive skills
◼Plan + create a multi-step path to accomplish a goal
- Problem-solving (non-linguistic activities, play)
- Mental combos of required steps
Phonological Development
◼Strong influence on early words lexical/vocal development strong influence on sounds produced
◼2 years: matching audition to articulation
- Articulatory sequences = rehearsal and memory
◼Key component: transition from holistic to segmental storage of phonological info
Auditory maps
◼Associations between sounds of word and meaning
◼Phonological system = paired system of incoming and outgoing lexicons
- Incoming (stored info about word, working memory)
- Outgoing (speech production)
Modulating factors:
◼Lexical characteristics:
◼Frequency of use, frequency effects: words you encounter very often, easy for kids to retrieve from semantic memory and to use, words they don’t use often take a long time to access and use
◼Neighborhood density, ND effects: ND effects can cause interference and make accessing words challenging, neighbours can hinder early on, but later it can also help
◼Phonotactic probability (how often sounds occur, independently or in combos), around 9 months
Articulatory Maps
◼Different word shape patterns → motor practice and perceived speech of others
◼Sounds + patterns ≠ child’s template = hard to produce and omitted
- Sound substitutions rare
◼Preference for monosyllables over longer strings, stop consonants
◼More consonants at 9 months → larger lexicon at 16 months
◼At first, vowels vary more than consonants within words (consonants easier to pronounce earlier on)
◼First sounds: /m/, /w/, /b/, and /p/ (easier to produce, takes less effort)
◼Some words produced consistently, others not and there is variation among children (especially vowels)
◼Reduplication: polysyllabic word, but cannot pronounce 1 syllable correctly → compensate by repeating other syllable
◼Children delete weak syllables
Preschool Development: Background
Around 3 years:
◼Gross motor movements (bigger, less controlled)
◼Fine motor abilities develop slowly
◼Play in groups, share toys, take turns
◼Increased cog f(x)s : memory = recount past and remember short stories
◼Expressive vocab = 900 to 1,000 words, but use many more
Around 4 years:
◼Tell simple stories
◼More complex sentences
◼Expressive vocab = 1,500 to 1,600 words, but use many more
◼ Increased cog f(x)s : but conversation is still limited in scope
Pragmatic Development: Background
◼Growing social networks
- Increasing awareness of social standards (through exposure to other people, interactions with others, engaging with more and more conversation)
◼Conversation
◼Primary caregiver (mother) still in control
◼Short, limited turns, about immediate context
◼Monologues (songs, sounds, fake words, verbal fantasies, feelings)
◼Self-talk decreases around 10 years
Preschool Conversational Skills: Peers
◼Mention a person (usually the listener)
◼70% of time = interest in mental states (their own mental state and their friends mental states, e.g., how are you feeling, are you happy, do you like this…)
◼20% of responses are relevant to the question/thought about mental states
◼4 years: CDS to younger children, (child directed speech), e.g., engaging in motherese with a child at the park
◼4 years: exchange of info (40%); establish social relations, teaching, expressing feelings, monologues
◼5 years: 50% can sustain topics around a dozen turns in conversation (half of kids)
Preschool Conversational Skills: Registers
◼Different roles = different speaking styles, e.g., family roles, speaking like baby, mom, dad, etc.
◼Varies with age and experience
◼Younger children = familiar roles
◼Pitch + loudness = first denote different roles
- Later on = MLU + choice of topics/words
◼Girls = more roles, speak more, modify registers to suit roles
◼Use of politeness terms (e.g., please, thank you)
Preschool Conversational Skills: Repairs
◼ Questions to initiate or continue
◼ Well formed requests for clarification = mid-elementary
◼ Stalls:
- Long silent pauses
- Pauses filled with (ummm, uhhh)
- Repetitions of material already produced when recalling what about to say
◼ Changes in revision rates = ability to monitor language production
◼ 2.5 years: bilinguals can repair convo breakdowns by switching languages
Preschool Conversational Skills: Topics
◼Topic maintenance: commenting with more info
- Repetition (to remain on topic)
◼Topic focus change: shading
- Introduce new topic
- Reintroduce an old topic
- Ending (ends to roles, e.g., baby has stopped crying, the role is over in the game)
◼5 years: within 15 minutes of play or conversation, can engage in up to 50 topics
Preschool Conversational Skills: Presupposition
◼Better at knowing what info to include, how to arrange it, which lexical items + linguistic forms to use
◼Topic choice = based on assumption of participant knowledge + interest (e.g., ensuring you don’t talk about something that person will not be interested in (requires theory of mind))
◼3 years: start understanding the effect of not including enough info (social consequences, they are sensitive/in tune to that very early on)
Preschool Conversational Skills: Directives & Requests
◼Get others to do things for them!
◼3 years: politeness distinctions (age/size, familiarity, role, etc. of listener), modulating requests/orders
◼Many explanations and justifications for requests
Preschool Narratives
◼Self-generated stories
◼Telling familiar tales
◼Retelling of books, movies, shows
◼Recounting personal experiences
◼People, animals, or imaginary characters doing things
◼Bottom line: decontextualized monologues
◼Cultural differences
◼Event descriptions → event scripts
◼Influenced by expectations
◼Describe sets of sequences that form total event
◼Describe single events + event combos + relationships + significance in overall event structure
◼3 years: describe events in familiar activities (e.g., bday party)
◼2-3 years: self-generated, fictional narratives
◼4 years: describe event sequences
◼Structural terminology:
◼Overall organization = narrative level
◼Linking units to form a story core = centering
◼Sequence of events that share attributes + lead directly from one to another = chaining
◼2 years: chaining only
◼3 years: centering (builds story around central theme, lacks sequencing) + chaining (follows a sequence of events, around 4 years)
Preschool Theory of mind
◼Theory of mind + language require similar sociocog abilities
◼Theory of mind + self-awareness develop together
◼2 years: express emotions + recognize those of others
◼4 years: relate to emotions of others + can have different perspectives
◼Better theory of mind means determining listeners’ misunderstandings, more efficient at repair with reformulated info (not just repetition)
◼Shaped by maternal speaking style
Semantic Development: Background Info
◼1.5 – 6 years: add words to lexicon each day
- Semantically related words = easier to learn
- Influence of lexical properties
- Associational strategies
◼Gaps in vocab = filled with pseudowords
◼Vocab growth = f(x) maternal speech, language, and literacy skills (diversity = key)
- Shared storybook reading
Semantic Development: Relational Terms
◼Interrogatives ◼Temporal Relationships ◼Location Relationships ◼Physical Relationships ◼Kinship Relationships
◼Modulating factors:
- Syntactic complexity
- Amount of adult usage
- Underlying cognitive concept
Relational Terms: Interrogatives:
◼Early question forms
- what + where→who, whose, + which→
when, how, + why
Relational Terms: Temporal Relationships:
◼Order words (after, before)→duration words (since, until)→simultaneity words (while, during)
◼Preschoolers cannot follow multiple directions well
Relational Terms: Location Relationships:
◼2 years: in, on, and to
◼Around 3-3.5 years: next to, in front of, behind
Relational Terms: Physical Relationships:
◼Short/tall, soft/hard, same/different, more/less = challenging!
◼1st learn terms are opposites, and then what dimension
- 1st = positive member of pair
◼Modulating factors:
- Conversational skills
- Attentional skills (focus on different perceptual
dimensions)
Relational Terms: Kinship Relationships:
◼Limited knowledge
1) Terms for specific people based on child’s
experience
2) Features / definition of person, but not the
relationship
◼Parent terms (mommy)→sibling terms (brother)
◼10 years: understand kinship terms
Bilingual Language Learning Modulating Factors
- Age of acquisition
- Input / exposure to languages
- Environment
- Social prestige of language
- Differences / similarities of languages
- Individual factors (motivation, aptitude,
maternal SES)
Bilingual Language Learning: Simultaneous Acquisition
◼Prior to 3 years
◼Rate is comparable to monolinguals
◼Social experiences are important
◼ Stages:
1) Two separate lexicons
2) Two separate lexicons, but same syntactic rules
for both
3) Integrated lexicon, correct lexical and syntactic forms
◼Interdependence between languages
- Transfer: use L1 sounds to produce L2 words
and vice-verse
- Deceleration: phonological development is slower than in monolingual peers
Bilingual Language Learning: Sequential Acquisition
◼Most bilinguals, especially in schools
◼Stages
1) L1 use in L2 environment
2) Receptive knowledge, but little expression
3) Expression (takes time: 3-5 years)
◼Interlanguage: L1 influences L2 grammar and pronunciation
◼Omissions, over-extensions
Language Delays
◼ Early neurobiological growth
◼ Family history / genetics
◼ Hearing problems
◼ Temperament challenges
◼ Males
◼ SES (more parental education = more teaching, less parental education = teachers teaching)
◼ Poverty (household density, family instability, lack of structure, noise levels, etc.)
