IDS and methods Flashcards
Linguistic competence
Implicit knowledge that allows production and understanding of any utterance in a language
- Linguistic potential
A native speaker’s _____ reaches the same level as other speakers of the language community
Ability
Language performance
Ability to use competence in a given situation
Factors that can reduce performance
Competing demands on cognitive processing, fatigue and substance use
Why it is harder to evaluate children’s performance compared to adults ?
Children have limited working memory capacity, cannot process information quickly and get distracted easily.
Lacking performance does not necessarily mean lacking ____
Competence
Properties of infant directed speech (IDS)/child directed speech (CDS)
Higher pitch and wider voice range, exaggeration of vowel space, slower rate of speech, frequent and longer pauses, shorter continuous sequences, more frequent stress, repetition
Japanese speaking mothers produce more ____ variation in vowels than English speaking mothers
Length
English speaking mothers exhibit more variation in vowel ____
Tenseness
Tenseness is more used to distinguish vowels in ____ and length has the same role _____
English, Japanese
True or false : babies prefer IDS
True (it is attention-grabbing)
Low-pass filtered sounds received by fetuses in the womb omits information about phonological ____
Segments
Low-pass filtered sounds received by fetuses in the womb maintains ____
Prosody (such as pitch)
Babies may prefer IDS because it is more similar to…
It exagerrates prosody, which is similar to sounds they received in the womb
IDS exaggeration provides information on …
The units of speech
In some cultures, mothers do not use IDS until their baby can ___ language
Understand
Can IDS/CDS facilitate language learning ?
It may facilitate learning of vocabulary and language processing
However : higher vocabulary does not mean more complex grammar\
- Properties of CDS in some languages do not seem to facilitate acquisition of the target grammar (e.g. K’iche CDS has initial syllable deletion which makes lexical retrieval more difficult)
For a variable phenomenon, if children’s production patterns mirror their caregivers’ patterns, this indicates that …
Children have acquired the
constraints regulating the variation.
There is more t/d deletion in adult English in _______ words
Monomorphemic (e.g. most)
There is less t/d deletion in adult English in _______ words
Regularly inflected (e.g. walked)
There is moderate t/d deletion in adult English in _______ words
Irregulary inflected (e.g. ate)
In what words is there variation in t/d deletion between adult and children ?
Only in irregulary inflected words, with more variation in adult t/d deletion
This means that children are sensitive to variation, but do not fully understand the conditions of it
2 factors to consider before choosing a data collection method
- Questions we are studying
- Age of children
To produce something, you need to ______ it
Perceive
True or false : there is no need to test children’s production because there is no production without perception
False , production data can reveal patterns and rules, and even reveal perception problems (E.g. Amahl and puddle/pugle)
Naturalistic data
Recordings of spontaneously produced speech data in natural everyday contexts
Longitudinal data
Data collected at regular intervals over time from the same participant that spontaneously produces data
Cross-sectional data
Large number of participants, usually with data collected in 1 session
3 properties of naturalistic data
- Language is spoken by the child
- The child’s production are not manipulated (no activity to elicit certain type of linguistic structure)
- Data must be recorded
Sampling
Gathering data at regular intervals over a period of time
True or false : naturalistic data is usually gathered before the elaboration of a hypothesis
True
True or false : the experimenter must model the form they are expecting from the child
False
Elicited production
The researcher creates a context in which the child will produce the targeted structure of the study
Elicited immitation
Present the child with a structure that they must repeat verbatim
True or false : children usually cannot repeat structures that they have not acquired yet
True
True or false : if a child has not acquired passive voice, they will repeat a passive sentence as an active sentence
True
When you hear a particular grammar pattern, you are more likely to …
Repeat it in the next utterance
Prime
First exposure to a linguistic structure that activates a pattern in the mind of the participant, making them more likely to use this structure
True or false : priming a child with a structure they have not acquired yet will work
False
True or false : priming is a good test to know if a structure has been acquired
True
True or false : comprehension always exceeds production
True
_____ tests are more representative of a child’s true knowledge
Comprehension
Grammaticality judgment task
Present a sentence and ask if it is grammatical
Acceptability judgment task
Participants are asked to judge if a sentence is acceptable on a Likert scale
Metalinguistic judgment
Thinking of the language as an object
For children to do the acceptability judgment test, researchers may need to…
Model lots of ungrammatical sentences
Truth value judgment task (TVJT)
Method that measures children’s comprehension without metalinguistic knowledge needed. Children listen to a sentence and assess whether it is true based on a previously given scenario.
TVJT with puppets
The child watches a context with a puppet that is said to be learning the language. The child decides if the puppet is right or wrong when describing the context.
Principle of charity
If a child is unsure if the statment is true, they will accept the statement
Solution to the principle of charity problem in TVJT
Make sure there are many wrong answers from the puppet
True or false : TVJT must have a specific hypothesis (alternative answer for the child to adopt)
True
Picture selection task
Present children with 2 pictures then with a linguistic stimulus, and ask the child to pick the picture that matches the linguistic stimulus
Intermodal preferential looking paradigm
2 screens : each screen shows a different video; then audio describes what happened on one of the screens.
* If children understand the construction, they will look at the screen that matches the audio. Otherwise, they will look at both screens equally.
Visual word eye-tracking paradigm
Present the child with a visual scene along with a linguistic stimulus and then code where the child looks
Act out task
Present the child with a sentence for the child to act out (sometimes with toys), errors can be due to factors like cognitive load
High amplitude sucking (HAS) or heart rate measure in infants
The baby’s heartbeat is measured when it is at baseline.The experimenter presents a stimulus repeatedly and waits until the baby habituates (heartrate back to baseline). Then they present a new stimulus, to which the baby will deshabituate only if they detect this stimulus is different.
Headturn preference procedure
If an infant (4 months+) perceives a stimulus as new and different, they will turn towards it (novelty preference)
Steps of headturn preference procedure
- Light flashes, infant looks.
- Sound plays (familiar or new).
- Infant looks at light until they look away.
- Looking time shows sound preference.
Familiarity preference
When babies look for longer at a familiar stimulus (such as more similar to their native language)
Electroencephalography measures…
Electrical activity in the brain
Functional magnetic resonance imaging measures…
Changes in blood flow in different areas of the brain.
EEG study
a skullcap with sensors detects changes in electrical voltages in the brain in response to linguistic stimuli (also called events, measuring event-related potentials ERPs)
How time to process grammar is measured in EEG
Comparing activity in brain regions while viewing ungrammatical vs grammatical structures
True or false : on EEGs, children have slightly delayed responses compared to adults and do not show a strong response to syntactic violations before age 7
True
Temporal resolution advantage of EEg
EEG provides very precise information about when the brain responds to linguistic stimulus (milliseconds reactions)
Spatial resolution disadvantage of EEG
EEG does not tell us where language processing happens in the brain as electrical responses are dispersed over the cerebral cortex
FMRI has better _____ resolution than EGG but worse _____ resolution
Spatial (millimeters), temporal (seconds)
FMRI found that there is increased _____ of language for right handers from age 5-25, and then less and less from age 25
Lateralization (language is more concentrated in the left hemisphere)
Diary studies (longitidunal)
Spontaneously-produced data are collected by the parent/researcher (almost) every day (e.g. Amahl)
Longitudinal language sampling
Sontaneously-produced data are collected by the researcher at regular intervals
- Usually recorded for later transcription, coding and analysis.
Minimal Pair Picture Selection Task
Testing phonological discrimination in children aged 1;3-3;0 yrs and older
Child hears one utterance from a minimal pair and has to point to the corresponding picture (e.g. must choose key from pictures of pea, key and foil used to check if child understands task)
Chance in the minimal pair picture selection task
1/3 if the child does not understand the task
1/2 if the child understands the task but does not perceive the contrast
Comprehension studies usually create less _______ load
Cognitive
Elicited production tasks
To test children’s representations and generalizations
Show a child something and ask what its color is for example
Wug test results
Wugs : shows child has acquired the inflectional rule of plural formation
Wug : could be due to not having the rule yet ; or might not be able to produce /s/, think wug is irregular, trouble with /gs/ cluster, cognitive load
2 ways of charting the developmental path
- Longitudinally: testing the same child at many points in time
- cross-sectionally: testing different children at different developmental stages
Mean Length of Utterance (MLU)
Total number of morphemes in all utterances / total number of utterances
- Used for determining developmental stage (more accurate than age)
