Language Acquisition

Question 1

Major milestones

Answer 1

6 months - babbling
1 year - first word
1.5 - word spurt
2 - combine sentences and words
There is lots of variability

Question 2

Ways of using language

Answer 2

Comprehension - understanding
Production - actually speaking
Comprehension precedes production - understand more than can speak

Question 3

What is there to learn? (5)

Answer 3

Phonology - unit of sound that distinguishes meaning (Bear vs Pear)
Grammer/synax - rules for combining words
Semantics - word meanings
Morphology - smallest units of meaning in language
Pragmatics - conventions, social rules

Question 4

What are the theories of development?

Answer 4

Nativist argument
Behaviourist
Interactionist

Question 5

Nativist argument

Answer 5

Believes language is too complex to be learned so quick by children
Chomsky - language acquisition device, module in the brain for learning, starts out with parameters and your language tunes them for development

Question 6

Behaviorist argument

Answer 6

Language is learned through CC and OC
Skinner: correct usage is reinforced, incorrect is not
But: challenged by: poverty of the stimulus (come up with this we’ve not heard) and negative evidence - parents don’t always say that’s wrong

Question 7

Interactionist approach

Answer 7

Bates - language is genes and the environment. Perceptual and learning abilities molded by culture

Question 8

How do we test how infants develop speech perception?

Answer 8

High amplitude sucking
24 hour infants, headphones and dummies hooked to a computer

Question 9

DeCasper and Fifer 1980 - HAS

Answer 9

Infants worked to produce mothers voice - learned cause and effect between sucking and hearing voice
Infants had a preference for mothers voice - could distinguish between mum and stranger

Shows prenatal auditory experience helps shape voice preferences and parent infant interactions after birth

Question 10

DeCasper and Spence 1987

Answer 10

Tested 55hr old infants, HAS procedure
pregnant mother read one Dr Suess story aloud twice a day during last trimester. Infants heard their own mother or another mother read the familiar story or novel story

Infants worked to produce familiar story - who read the story had no effect
Control group had no preference but preferred mothers voice

Prenatal learning occurs as no stories were read postnatally

Question 11

What do infants prefer? Order

Answer 11

Mums voice filtered to how it sounded in the womb
Mother over father
Mum/dad over stranger
Stranger’s speaking language than another language

Question 12

What is categorical perception?

Answer 12

The classification of continuous stimuli (colours e.g.) into distinct categories with sharp boundaries. There aren’t actual boundaries as it is continuous
The sounds that we hear are on a continuum

Question 13

Categorical perception of sounds

Answer 13

BA and PA are the same sound except for when people start making the sound. Only learn there is a difference because it means someone to us in language. early on we are sensitive to all differences but later on realise some don’t matter to us. We perceive anything with VOT>25 as P and VOT<25 as B

Question 14

Can infants discriminate speech sounds

Answer 14

Yes all infants can do this

Question 15

Development of distinguishing speech sounds

Answer 15

Around 6-8 months, infants can distinguish contrasts that aren’t used in their native language
This ability declines over the first year, by 12 months, only retain contrasts used in their native language - use it or lose it

Question 16

What do infants categories result from?

Answer 16

The distribution of phonemes in their environment
English adults can discriminate the Hindu phonemes with practise
Japanese can discriminate r/v with training
Need to be getting the input and listening

Question 17

Segmenting the speech stream

Answer 17

In words, can be seen as one long sentence
Hard to make sentences individual words
Infants find the breaks very quickly but without context, adults find it hard

Question 18

Saffron et al 1996 - speech stream

Answer 18

How do we know where the breaks are?
Prosody - changes in pitch
Pauses - in between words
Correlations - statistical regulations
Familiarised infants to 2 mins of speech stream with 3 repeating non sense words
The frequency of sounds that span a word boundary is lower than the frequency of sounds within a word
Eg: pretty baby pre-ty -within a word, higher frequency
Ty-ba - spans 2 words, frequency lower

Question 19

Testing infants with words vs non words

Answer 19

Words - Padoti and golabu
Part words - Sakura and bubida
Infants preferred the part words, they noticed a difference between part words and words, even though they were both familiar
Infants can use correlations from the environment to learn language

Question 20

What is infant directed speech?

Answer 20

highly grammatical
simple structure
exaggerated
slower rate
vary pitch and loudness

Question 21

Why is learning words difficult?

Answer 21

The possibilities of word meanings are endless

Question 22

How do they know what a word means?

Answer 22

Mutual exclusivity
Process of elimination

Question 23

How to aid children’s word learning

Answer 23

Adults - scaffolding: pointing, use voice, use routines, refer to previous experience, joint attention

Children - be active learners, follow adults gaze, point, pick up objects and ask, look at objects

Question 24

Baldwin - do children use joint attention?

Answer 24

Two novel toys to play with
1 in bucket, one in view
Experimenter waits for child to focus on visible toy, then labels: visible toy (follow condition) or bucket toy (mismatch condition)
Novel label (peri or toma) repeated 4 times
At test, presented both toys in a neutral location and asked ‘get the toma’

Follow in condition - easily learned the words
Mismatch - more errors
Child look at experimenter more in mismatch, mismatch of attention and experimenters voice - children are sensitive to joint attention

Question 25

What is fast mapping?

Answer 25

Ability to quickly link a novel name to a novel object, typically by applying known information

Question 26

Fast mapping experiment

Answer 26

‘Bring me the chromium tray, not the blue’ they picked the green tray-13/14
One week later asked ‘which one is chromium’- 9/13 chose green or olive green

Question 27

How longer do children remember words from mutual exclusivity for?

Answer 27

5 minutes

Question 28

Number of competitors

Answer 28

30 month old children show objects and asked ‘can you find the dite?’ using 2, 3 and 4 competitors
Only children with few competitor (2) retained the new words. Competitors hinder word learning via mutual exclusivity (fast mapping)
Replication with icub and same results found

Question 29

Number of illustrations

Answer 29

3-5 year old children, 12 naming tokens
Read children books with either:
two pages of illustrations
one page of illustrations
one a3 page
At test ‘can you point to the tamin?’

Children with fewer illustrations learned significantly more words than multiple illustrations
3D - did well
2 illustrations - didn’t do well

Question 30

Problems with shared story reading

Answer 30

Child doesn’t know what page the adult is on, so doesn’t know where to look etc, can’t have a joint focus of attention

Question 31

Solution to shared story reading

Answer 31

Gesture what page you are reading
Changed the results - 2 illustrations, could learn the words

Shows children can learn words in complicate ways, but they really do need support

Question 32

What is most children’s early vocab?

Answer 32

Nouns for object categories with are solid, shape based and names with count noun syntax (being able to count, eg 5 cookies)

Question 33

What is the shape bias?

Answer 33

The tendency to name things on the basis of a shape

Question 34

What is the shape bias a function of?

Answer 34

Vocabulary - before knowing 120 nouns (2 years) they don’t show a shape bias

If it is learned by learning words, we should be able to teach a shape bias by changing the words children know

Question 35

Samuelson 2002

Answer 35

Taught children 12 real nounss once a week for 9 weeks and a 1 month follow up
Multiple instances of each category, categories usually learned much later (26 months)
Used shape training: bucket, pear, ladder
Material training: lotion, jello

Results: showed a shape bias for shape nouns but not for material bounds
1 month later - if they were taught shape nouns they developed a precoscious shape bias
Teach material nouns - no material bias

Question 36

How do children learn syntax?

Answer 36

How words go together
Have to be able to represent something abstract about the words
What nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are
What the rules are about putting them together
Young children begin showing signs of syntax with simple sentences - usually two words, noun plus noun or verb
Telegraphic speech- saying as few words as possible to get your point acrosss
Noun and a verb

Question 37

Morphology

Answer 37

How do you change words to reflect subtle parts of meaning
Often hardest part
They go through phases off learning - past tense verbs

Question 38

Past tense verbs

Answer 38

We have an unusual way
Most common verbs are irregular, they do not follow the ed rule for past tense
Verbs kids learn early on - come came did do get got give gave go went

They tend to show a u shaped trend in past morphology
First correctly conjugate irregular words
Then over regularise irregular words
Finally return to correct usage

Question 39

WOGG test

Answer 39

Shows how children learn rules of language to nonsense words
Showing them images of something ‘there are 2..’ what are there?
See if they understand the tense
Using novel words makes it easier to see whether they are learning by using words they could’ve never heard before