Language Flashcards
What is communication?
A sound emmitted by organism is preceived by and influences the behaviour or another organism.
Many animals communicate but human communication is special.
Humans communication with intentions and are sensitive to the state of the receiver. In other words, we are aware of the other person’s beliefs, knowledge and goals.
How do infants read others’ intentions?
- Gaze following
- By 8 months, infants reliably follow the gaze of others.
Babies also need to make their intentions and goals known, how do they do this?
Babies point or make sounds to transmit their intetion.
What is language?
An intricate system of sounds or gestured symbols that people use to communicate.
Generativity:
By using a relatively small set of linguistic compnents and rules, we can create an infinite number of expressions.
Natural Language
Natural language is acquired without intentional effort.
Notice that you can acquire more than one natural language.
Nearly all children acquire language that way.
Components of Language
- Phonetics and Phonology
- Semantics
- Syntax
- Pragmatics
Phonetics and Phonology
Learning about the sound system of a language.
Semantics
Learning about expressing meaning.
Syntax
Learning the rules that determine how words go together in a sentence
Pragmatics
Learn how language is used in social context
Humans are meant to have language.
Give an example that supports this.
Children tend to create their own language when they are in an environment with not language.
Trajectory of Language Development
- Develops fast, children go from not talking at birth to formulating complete and complex sentences when they are 3 years old.
- But to understand the trajectory we have to think of two processes:
- Development of Comprehension
- Development of Production
Comprehension Development
- Fetuses can learn about auditory stimuli
- In a study, full-term fetuses were played a recording of their mom and one of a stranger. Changes in their hearbeat indicated that they could differentiate the voices.
- By using the Head-turn Preference Procedure, researchers determined that
- 5 months old would prefer to listen to their own name
- 6 months old would prefer to listen to faminial words
- They also understand the meaning of the words
- 8 months old
- understanding of basic sentences
- 10 months old
- percptive vocabulary of 11 to 154 words
At 6 months old, infants understand the meaning of words.
Describe a study where this was sudied.
Babies would sit on their caregiver’s lap. They were then showed two videos. One was a video of the mother and the socond one a video of a dad.
They would then hear the word “mom” or “dad”.
Children reliably looked longer at the named parents.
Production Development
- 0 to 2 months old:
- reflexive vocalizations
- 2 to 3 months old:
- cooing
- 4 to 6 months old:
- experimenting with their voice
- 6 to 10 months old
- Babbling:
- Canonical babbling (real syllables)
- Reduplicated babbling (repetitve)
- Variegated babbling (many syllables)
- Babbling:
- 12 months:
- iconic gestures (flapping wings)
- First word
- 18 months
- around 50 words
- holophrases
True or False
When babies start to talk, they stop babbling.
False,
even when babies start talking, they continue babbling a bit.
Gestures
Holding, pointing (declarative and imperative).
By 9 to 12 months old, babies start recognising others’ gestures too.
Gestures are linked with language production. The more a baby gestures, the more they will produce later.
Holophrases
Sentences formed of only one word.
First Words
- The majority of childre’s first words are nouns. They are easier to imgine.
- Children will conbine gestures and words
Putting words together
- At 18 months old, infants are aready putting 2 or 3 words together.
- Slide W5E2 (4)
- here we can see that infants put words together in the correct order!
Learning the Rules
- Syntax:
- order of words
- Other rules:
- plurals
- verb conjugation
- Children learn how to use the rules of their language implicitly.
Give an example of a correct use of plurals
In a study, preschool chidrena and first grade children, were presented with two sentences that they needed to complete with the plural of a new word.
76% of preschoolers gave the correct answer,
97% of first graders gave the correct anser
Overregularization
- Once children know the rule, they begin to apply it in novel circumstances, so much so that they get irregular forms incorrect.
- Overregularization is an example of a U-shaped developmental curve. This means that children are figuring out a new way to do something.
- Notice:
- it occurs but it is not common
Why does overregulirization occurs?
Dual-Mechanism Model
- Rule
- Memory
The interaction of rule and memory might be affected by the blocking principle and failure of retrieval
Blocking Principle
Retrieval of irregular form blocks application of the rule
Retrieval Failure
To retrieve successfully, you need repeated encounters with the form.
This is mostly for when you have to memorise an irregular form
Notes on Overregularization
- Adults overregulirize and are unsure of what to do with the verbs that they use less.
- Children overregularize less with the verbs that their parents use more
- Children are more likely to judge overregularizations as “silly” than the correct past tense form
How do children learn language?
Behaviourism
- Language develop from operatn conditioning
- Inputs: lots
- Domain specific: No
-
Weakneses:
- Reinforcement is rare/not necessary/often ineffective
- This thery predicts that children learning multiple languages at once should be slower and they are not!
How do children learn language?
Connectionism
- Languages results from environmental input but the brain can handle many kinds of information simultaneously. It can generate rules, even when that rule was never explicitly stated.
- Inputs: lots
- Domain Specific: no
How do children learn language?
Nativist Approach
- Humans have a specific brain system specialized for acquiring any natural language. People will create language. Animals do not learn language.
- Poverty of the argument: Language we hear is not good eough to really learn a language.
- Claim:The brain is a Language Aquisition Devise
- It can acquire all natural languages
- It does not need specific rules
- It includes abstract principles that guide learning in any language
- Input: very little!
- Domain specific: Yes!
How do children learn language?
Statistical Learning Approaches
- Children figure language out by getting input and then working out the patters.
- Input: Not a lot (in experiments just took 2 min)
- Domain specific: no. It does not require special learning structures that are only for language
Word Segmentation
- The ability to segment speak into words.
- Notice that there no invarian cue to word boundaries that is present in all languages so there can be word segmentation errors for example:
- The ambulance vs The yam balaced
- Infants learn to make the word segmentation correctly thanks to the patterns in sounds:
- There are some sounds that go more likely togehter in a word than others.
- This is called transitional probabilty which is the likelihood of one sound given the previous sound
Transitional Probability
- Likelihood of one sound given the previous sound.
- The transitional probabilities are higher within words and lower spanning word boundaries.
- How ofter sounds occur together gives you a clue to where the words are.
Can infants detect statistical regularities in speech?
Study 1 by Saffran et al. (1996)
- 8 month old ifants exposed to American English
- The babies were exposed to 2 minutes of continuous speech stream
- Three-syllable nonsense words were reapeated in random order.
- Words: tupiro, bidaku, padoti, golabu
- bidakupadotigolabubidaku
- Cues to the words are the transitional probabilities, which are higher within words than on the boundaries.
- bi always followed by da
-
Test: Presented with repetition of 3 syllable nonsense words
- Two of the nonsense words were already heard by the babies
- two were novel (same syllables but in a different order.
- They would measure the time of attention of the infants
-
Resutls:
- infants listened longer to the new words
- They could tell the difference between words they have heard and new words.
Study 2: Saffran et al. 1996
Q: What if we played them novel words comprised of syllables in the order that crossed the boundary between words.
- Similar to the first study, 8 month olds exposed to American English were exposed to 2 min of nonsense words repeated in random order.
-
Test:
- Words: pabiku, tibudo, golatu, daropi
- Part-words: pigola
- Results: Here again, infants looked reliably longer at the part words.
What was that Saffran et al. managed to demonstrate with both studies in 1996?
They demonstrated that infants are rapidly able to segment a speech stream basedd on statisticl information.
What else does statistical learning model claim that the infants can learn?
- Infants can learn rules this way
- Familiarize infants with patterns of syllables
- Study by Marcus et al. 1999
- For example, if the infants were familirized with the pattern ABA: ti-ga-ti
- They would recognize fe-wo-fe and would look longer at the novel sequence fe-fe-wo
- For example, if the infants were familirized with the pattern ABA: ti-ga-ti
Give an example of why Statistical learning is not domain specific.
- Statistical learning is also used in musical tones for example.
- Moreover, statistical learning has also been observed in non-human primates
Definition of word
A word is a unit of langauge that represents a concept or an idea
Words are social conventions.
What is required to learn a word?
- We have to be able to identify the arbitrary relationship between the word and it’s meaning.
- We also have to be able to memorize the meaning to use later.
Is direct learning necessary for word learning?
- Direct learning is when you show the object or meaning of the word and name the word to the student
Counter examples to direct learning
4 facts about children learning words
- Average 6-year old knows between 10 000 and 14 000 words.
- There are soieties in which caregivers do engage in direct teaching of language and children in these communities develop rich vocabularies.
- Children learn at least some words from speech they overheard.
- Children can learn the meaning of words when they were not initially payin attention to the object.
Learning Through Incidental Exposure
Fast Mapping
Fast mapping:
Process of rapidly learning a new words through incidental exposure rather then direct teaching.
Carey and Bartlett 1978
- 3-year olds were asked to do a task that had nothing to do with word learning
- The kids were asked to walk over two trays of different colours
- a blue one
- an olive coloured one
- The experimenter would ast the child: “Bring me the chromium tray. Not the blue tray. The chromium tray.”
- All of the children retrieved the olive coloured tray
-
Test:
- 6 weeks later, most children rememberred that the word for this try was “chromium”
Notes on fast mapping
- 2-year olds can also learn words through fast mapping
- We can also learn words through fast mapping
Is Fast Mapping Specific to Learning the Meaning of Words?
Study by Markson and Bloom 1999
- 3- and 4-year olds and undergraduates
- used 10 different objects
- 4 familiar objects
- 6 novel objects
- Participants were asked to use the objects to measure other objects
- While they were participating in the measuring tasks, participants:
- Were taught a new word for one of the objects (koba)
- Taught a new fact about one of the objects (my uncle gave me)
- Watched as a sticker was placed on an object (put a sticker on one of the objects)
-
Test:
- Participants were shown the original tray of items and asked to identigy
- The koba
- The item given to the experimenter by her uncle
- Put a sticker where it should go
- 1/3 tested immediately
- 1/3 1 week later
- 1/3 1 month later
- Participants were shown the original tray of items and asked to identigy
Is Fast Mapping Specific to Learning the Meaning of words?
- No! Fast mapping is not limited to word learning
- Maybe limited to linguistically presented material
- Children do not do better than adults
True or False
Children are able to learn new words with limited exposure and without direct exposure.
True!
- Kids make assumptions about the meaning of words
- Kids use social information
Riddle of reference
How do you know what a word refers to?
Shape bias
Assume that things that have the same shape, have the same name
Whole object bias
Prefer to label whole objects rather than their parts
Mutual Exclusivity Bias
Each object only have one label
Using Social Information to Learn Words
When someone says a novel word, what they are looking at is a very good clue to what it means.
When 18-month olds hear a novel label for a word, they spontaneously check and follow the speaker’s gaze, ant they link the labek with what the speaker is looking at, not what they are looking at themselves
Can children learn language from television?
- This is an important question since it would open a lot of possibilities
- This could helpt to learn a second language!
- It would also tell us more about what children need to learn language
Phonemes discrimination
- In infancy, exposure to one language causes loss of sensitivity to others
- Young infants can discriminate between phonemes in many different languages
- This ability declines sharply between 6 and 12 months of age
- Adults cannot do it
Can children learn to discriminate phonemes through videos?
Study by Kuhl et al. 2003
- 9 and 10 month olds exposed to American English
- Randomly assigned to learn Mandarin from:
- videos
- audio input only
- Same amount of exposure as infants in previous study.
- Results: Infants exposed to audiovisual or auditory input only couldn’t discriminate the Mandarin phonemes
Study 1: Kuhl et al. 2003
Does exposing the infants to Mandarin stop the loss of sensitivity to Mandarin phonemes?
- 9 and 10 month olds exposed to American English
- Randomly assigned to Mandarin or English language sessions
- This was done to make sure that the language sessions did not influence the results
- Results: Infants who heard Mandaring were able to discriminate the Mandarin phonemes. The infants who heard English could not.
Can children learn new vocabulary by watching television?
Study 1
Study by DeLoache et al. 2010
- 12 to 18 month olds assigned to one of 4 groups:
- video with interaction
- video without interaction
- Parent teaching
- Control (no intervention)
-
Results: Slide 13 W6E1
- Parent teaching worked better
- Video with interaction was second
- Control was the same result as video with no interaction
Can children learn new vocabulary by watching television?
Study 2
Study by Rice and Woodsmall 1988
- 3 and 5 year olds who watched a 15 min tv program
- Randomly assigned:
- 20 new vocabulary words
- no new vocabulary words
- before the viewing, the two groups did not differ on a comprehension test of the new words
- Results: After viewing, children in the experimental group did better
Sesame Street
Producers of Sesame Street hired a developmental psychologist to develop educational goals
Can children learn new vocabulary by watching television?
Study 3
Study by Rice et al. 1990
- 3 and 5 year olds
- Followed for 2 years
- Every 6 months, parents completed diaries about how often their children would watch tv and what they were watching and specially how much time they would watch Sesame street
- Results: More time viewing Sesame Street predicted greater receptive vocabulary.
- Watching other shows dis not predict greater vocabulary increase
Can children learn new vocabulary by watching television?
Study 4
Study by Mares and Pan 2013
- More broadly, 24 studies conducted with more than 10 000 children in 15 countries suggest that watching Sesame Street is associated with positive developmental ourcomes including greater literacy, numeracy, and greater health and safety knowledge
- Effects were observed in low, middle and hight income programs
Social Interaction is Important for Infant Language Learning
- Kuhl et al. (2003) and Deloache et al. (2010) documented that social interaction was necessary for infants to learn to discriminate phonemes and to learn new words.
- Infants’ vocalizations more closely approximate speech after responses from caregivers
- When adultsrespond to infants’ pointing by explaining the functioning of an object, infants learn the function better than they do when adults demonstrate the function of an object that the infant did not point to
Do children learn language equally well from all speakers?
Infant-directed Speech (IDS)
- The way that you talk to an infant
- Louder voice
- Slower speech
- Accentuate the boundaries between words
- fewer words
- Repeat and expand on children’s utterances
- Infants prefer it
- May help with some aspects of language learning
- May make word segmentation easier
- Enables learning of new words that children did not learn when they heard them in adult-directed speech (ADS)
- Younger infants remember words they heard in IDS better than those they heard in ADS
Are children choosy about from who they learn language?
Study 1
Study by Koeing, Clement and Harris (2004)
- 3 and 4 year olds
- they would watch videos of two actors labeling familiar objects
- one actor would give the correct label and the other one didn’t
- Children were shown the videos in which the same actors labelled unfamiliar objects
- Children were able to track the actor that was unreliable
- Children who identified and actor as reliable were more likely to endorse that actor’s label fro the novel object.
-
Conclusion:
-
When learning a language children prefer:
- Knowledgeable speakers
- Adults to children but prefer reliable child than unreliable adult
- Older 4 year olds prefer a speaker who uses correct grammar
-
When learning a language children prefer:
Is there a critical period for first language learning?
- This is a difficult question to answer because most children are not deprived of language
- If they are deprived of language they are often deprived of other things too
- Through some studies made with deaf children we noticed that:
- Not having early exposure to language hurts language outcomes
- Not totally clear on what the upper boundary on the critical period is
Case of Genie
- She was deprived of language until she was 13
- Language skills lagged behing other cognitive skills
- When esposed to language she was able to learn new words
- Had difficulty mastering syntax
This suggests that there might be a critica period for langauge learning but this is hard to conclude since Genie was deprived of many other things.
Sign Language
- American sign langauge is the predominant sign language of deaf communities in the United States and Anglophone Canada
- Notice: There are many other sign languages throughout the world
Sign Language
Study 1
- 5 to 10 % of children who are deaf are born to parent who are also deaf
- This means that children are typically exposed to sign language
- Most children who are deaf are born to parents who are hearing
- The exposure to sign language of these children vary in their age
Sign Language
Study 2
Study by Elissa Newport (Georgetown University)
- She compared children who were exposed to ASL at different ages:
- from birth (native learners)
- from age 4 to 6 (early learners)
- after age 12 (late learners)
-
Conclusion:
- Age of exposure mattered for mastering some aspects of ASL
- They had mostly problems with syntax as they were exposed to language later
native > early > late
Is there a critical period for second language learning?
- Is there a critical time to reach native-like fluency?
- In general, critical period for second language learning is thought to end at around puberty (12 - 13 years)
- Multiple critical periods depending on the aspect of the language
