language acquisition 1 and 2 Flashcards
lecture 6 and 7
skills involved with learning languages
association - sounds with words, words with meaning
generalisation/extension - to new items, different speakers
recognition - wounds, words, learning meanings
retrieval - recalling sounds, words and meaning
elements need to master a language
recognise your own language
recognise individual words - segment speech
understand and remember word meaning
extend word meaning to new items
speak words
combine words
understand/ use syntax
language acquisition
uses domain gene general skills
as a lot of it is just learning patterns
such as patterns for which sounds fit together to make a word
when do children learn language (milestones)
recognise own language - birth
cooing - 1 to 4 months
understand highly used words 4 to 8 months
babbling 4 to 10 months
understands 100’s of words 12 months +
first word 10 to 14 months
first sentences 16 to 30 months
sentence and grammar use 30 months + up to 3 or 4
comprehension precedes production - caselli et al 2012
comprehension precedes production meaning that at certain ages a child may only be able to say a small amount of words but they will be able to understand and know the meaning of a lot more words
e.g. at 14 months may only be able to say 20 words but can comprehend 125
differences in early vocabulary growth rates - hart and risley 1995
vocabulary size differs between socio-economic status groups
with those from a high SES having a biggest vocabulary size and those from a low SES having the smallest
comprehension definition
understanding what others say or sign or write
production definition
the ability to speak or sign or write to others
word gap
is used to describe the gap between high SES and low SES children’s vocabulary
between 18 to 24 months there is a word gap between the groups
courses of the word Gap
middle and high SES parents are more talkative - Hart and Risley 1995
children with more talkative caregivers learn words faster - huttenlocher 1991
at 18mo children from low SES backgrounds produce fewer words
children from low SES backgrounds produce less complex sentences
by 24mo there is a 6mo language gap between SES groups
the matthew effect
the rich have become richer and the poor have become poorer
(referring to the word gap)
the term was populasied by stanovich
gaps between groups will widen over time
several studies document the effect particularly in children’s learning to read
recognising language
at 15 to 18 weeks foetuses can hear
sounds are muffled in the womb
infants prefer muffled sounds due to this
infants prefer their mothers voice
- parents over strangers
- own language over another language
recognising Cadence
candence is the rhythm of language or speech
decasper and spence 1987
-mothers recited a stories twice a day in the last 6 weeks of pregnancy
- at 55hrs of age the infants worked to produce the story they had heared over a different story - control group did not
- sucked quicker
foetus and infants can learn and recall candence and learn contingencies (positive effects)
what is cadence
is the rhythm of language and/or speech
speech perception - learning when there are breaks in language
is speech streams there isn’t stops always after a word there we have to learn then the breaks are
can be done through ..
-pitch
- pauses
- statistics and correlations e.g. patterns
what is transitional probability
sounds that occur together often are more likely to be from the same word
e.g. ba by el e phant
saffran aslin and newport 1996 - segment speech methods
8mo old infants listened to a language of 3 multi-syllable pseudo-words for 2 mins
(no pauses or changes in pitch)
so could only use patterns in this fake language
the transitional probability within words was 1.0
the transitional probability between words was 0.33
at test infants listened to the individual words or part-words
saffran aslin and newport 1996 - segment speech results
infants preferred the part words
infants could distinguish between words and part words - even though both had been heard before
infants can use statistical regularities or patterns to learn language
what is infant directed speech
IDS - is the way adults talk to babies
has characteristics that help children isolate words
characteristics of infant direct speech that befit infants
higher pitch
wider range of pitch
exaggerated intonation
simple structure
highly grammatical
slower speed
lots of repetition
liu, kuhi and tsao 2003 - infant direct speech
IDS exaggerates differences between vowels, which helps children learn words
not just in English this also happens in different languages
fernald 1995 - infant directed speech
IDS is higher pitched than adult directed speech across languages
so not just English
is universal
infant directed speech aids segments
when presented with identical speech streams, 7mo infants learn the words significantly better if IDS was used
thiessen hill and saffran 2005
child directed speech
older children who hear more CDS have larger vocabularies - schwab and lew-williams 2016
parents adjust their speech based on words they think their children do not know - leung, tunkei and yurovsky 2021
5yrs understand sentence better in CDS - foursha-stevenson et al 2017
recognising words
by 4.5 mo infants recognise their own words
by 6mo infants understand the word mommy and daddy
by 6 to 9 mo infants show understanding of some words for familiar objects- food and body parts
miller et al 2017 - recognising words - methods
orient to name tasks given to infant siblings of children with ASD and without ASD (autism)
tested and retested at 6, 9, 12, 15, 18 and 24 mo
at 36 mo children were classified into 3 groups
1. group with ASD
2. low risk group
3. high risk groups -siblings
then their earlier responses were examined with this new insight
miller et al 2017 - recognising words - findings
from 9mo ASD group behaved differently from other groups
children with more repeated failures were diagnosed with ASD earlier than other children with ASD
name recognition at 9mo could be useful for ASD prescreening
success in speech processing task -werker et al
overall monolingual and bilingual children develop similarly
macrostructure shows flexibility and robustness of language acquisition
microstructure may give insights into how children learn language
language influences categorisation - althaus and westernmann 2016
continuum of dragons used
4 is the prototype of the little wings and 16 is the prototype of the big wings and 10 is prototype of all of them
- only saw them at test
show one novel one
if one category 10 will be considered familiar and therefore boring
however if 2 categories were shown for 4 and 16 then they were boring/familiar instead making 10 interesting
10mo infants presented with either one or two words
in silence condition infants formed 1 category
in 1 word condition infants formed 1 category
in 2 word condition infants formed 2 categories
samuelson and smith - categorisation influences language
most of the input children hear is for categories (noun)
the first 300 words children learn tend to be nouns
most of children’s early vocabularies are words for solid, shaped-based categories with count noun syntax
if the shape bias is learned by learning words, we should be able to teach a shape bias through vocabulary training
samuelson 2002 - categorisation through shape
17 mo children learned 12 real nouns for 9 weeks + 1 mo follow up
names for categories usually learned much later ( 26 mo after)
- shape training - bucket, pear, ladder, boot
heard the word 20 times in 2 min with the item in front of them.
samuelson 2002 findings - categorisation through shape
children trained on shaped categories developed a precocious shape bias
children trained on shape categories even over-generalised the shape bias to non-solid substances.
children trained on material categories did not develop any bias
at the beginning of the experiment all the children were matched in ability but at the end of the experiment the shape group had a significantly bigger vocab than the material and control groups
not just the list but how vocab benefited
only typically developing kids
fast mapping (carey 1978)
ability to quickly link a novel name to a novel object, typically by applying known information
all children at stage of learning colors
a blue tray and a green tray - told kids to bring them not the blue one but the chromium one
this provides context and contrast for the kid to use
fast mapping (carey 1978) findings
13 out of 14 children brought the olive green tray
one week later when playing with color chips the children were asked which one was the chromium one
9 our of 13 children chose green or olive green chips
word learning as a dynamic system
word learning is the product of ( nested timescales)
- what the child is seeing/doing now
- what the child just did
- and the child’s developmental history
examples of word learning; now
its easier to point to something than to say a new word - gordon and Mcgregor 2014
its harder to choose a known object in an unfamiliar colour - pink cow and cow looking pig - perry and saffran 2017
its easier to choose the correct object if nothing else was named - axelsson and horst 2013
remember the thing that is different
Horst, parsons and Bryan 2011 - method
showed children a 9 children books
each book depicted 2 novel objects
in total they will have seen and heard the names of these objects 12 times by the end of the experiment
2 conditions - one had the same story 3 times on each day for the 3 days and the other had 3 different stories a day over the 3 days
- counterbalanced across children
all children tested on immediate recall and on retention for words from days 1 and 2
done by pointing at the objects
Horst, parsons and Bryan 2011 - findings
children who heard the same stories learned words significantly better than children in the different stories condition
children who heard the same stories also retained words significantly better
recall and retention was better for same story plus less guessing
why repeation helps
focus on finer details second time like words they don’t know due to already knowing who characters are or the plot
study on past impacting word learning - williams and horst
do children learn words better from naptime stories
read 3.5yr children storybook 3x in 1 week
tested immediate recall for novel words
tested retention for novel words (nap in the middle then test next 24 test and the 7 days test)
half children naped half didn’t
results - both story repetition and sleep facilitated word learning
different story and no sleep never caught up with the other groups performance
babbling and starting to speak
begins at 6 mo
caonical babbling is a string of adult like consonant vowel sequence
onset of canonical babbling predicts onset of first words
children who begin babbling later have smaller productive vocabularies relative to their peers
vocabulary explosion or spurt
at first glance at graphs it appears that children have a vocab explosion between 18 to 20 months
during this word spurt, children may say about 20 new words a week
however the sudden increase is really due to learning multiple words at the same time and some words are more difficult than other so take longer to learn
combining words
children start speaking their first sentences at around 24mo
children begin showing signs of syntax with telegraphic speech
- simple sentences
- usually 2 words - noun + noun or noun and verb
- no function words
late talkers
late talkers learn 3 to 5 words/week
late talkers are children in the bottom 15th percentile for language
at 24 mo they say fewer than 50 words and or do not combine words
could be late bloomer or have developmental language disorders
2 children per reception class have clinically significant language delays - often undiagnosed
weaker language skills put children at risk of poor social abilities, self-regulation, victimisation or/and poor self esteem
overextension
extend a known word to something beyond current vocabulary
typically occurs between 12 to 30 mo
clark
3 types of over extension
categorical relation - put two different items in the same category dog and cat
analogical relation - perception - apple and red dot put together
predicate based relation - put words together that are related for example key and door
grammar: syntax and morphology
grammar usage requires children represent something abstract about words
- what nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs are
- what the rules are about putting them together
what is syntax
how do words go together in sentences
what is morphology
how to change words to change meaning
over- generalisation of English past tense
- correct irregular usage - few irregulars
- overgeneralisation
- correct usage
masken et al 2004 - overgeneralisation of past tense
brain overgenerlised about 14% of irregular verbs, overall.
most overgenerlised verb was go but he had heard went correctly > 1000 times before making error
