File 8 Vocabulary Flashcards
Innate
Determined by factors present from birth.
Innateness Hypothesis
A hypothesis that humans are genetically predisposed to learn and use language.
Imitation Theory
Theory of a language acquisition that claims that children acquire language by listening to the speech around them and reproducing what they hear.
Reinforcement Theory
Theory of language acquisition that says that children learn to speak like adults because they are praised, rewarded, or otherwise reinforced when they use the right forms and are corrected when they use the wrong ones.
Active Construction of a Grammar Theory
Theory of language acquisition that says that children acquire acquire a language by inventing rules of grammar based on the speech around them.
Connectionist Theories
Theory of Language acquisition that claims that children learn language through neural connections in the brain. A child develops such connections through exposure to language and by using language.
Social Interaction Theory
Theory of language acquisition that claims that children acquire language through social interaction - in particular with older children and adults - and prompt their caregivers to supply them with the appropriate language experience they need.
Linguistic Universals
Property believed to be held in common by all natural languages.
Universal Grammar
A theory that posits a set of grammatical characteristics shared by all natural languages.
Critical Period
Age span, usually described as lasting from birth to the onset of puberty, during which children must have exposure to language and must build the critical brain
Neglected Child
A child who is neglected by caretakers, often resulting in significantly lower exposure to language as a child.
Feral Child
Child who grew up in the wild without care by human adults, often with animals.
Homesign
A rudimentary visual-gestural communication system (not a language) that is developed and used by deaf children and their families when a signed language is not made available for their communication.
Child Directed Speech
Speech used by parents or caregivers when communicating with young children or infants. In many Western societies, child directed speech is slow and high pitched and has many repetitions, simplified syntax, exagerated intonation, and a simple and concrete vocabulary.
High Amplitude Sucking
Experimental technique used to study sound discrimination in infants from birth to about six months. infants are given a special pacifier that is connected to a sound-generating system. Each suck on the pacifier generates a noise, and infants’ sucking behavior is used to draw conclusions about discrimination abilities.
Conditioned Head-Turn Procedure
Experimental technique usually used with infants between five and eighteen months with two phases: Conditioning and Testing. During the conditioning phase, the infants learns to associate a change in sound with the activation of visual reinforcers, first presented at the same time and then succession, such that the infant begins to anticipate the appearance of the visual reinforcer and look at them before they are activated. During the testing phase, when the infant looks to the visual reinforcers immediately after a change in sound, it suggest that the infant has perceived the change in sound, thereby demonstrating the ability to discriminate between the two sounds involved.
