Language Acquisition Flashcards
Major milestones
6 months - babbling 1 year - first word 1.5 - word spurt 2 - combine sentences and words There is lots of variability
Ways of using language
Comprehension - understanding
Production - actually speaking
Comprehension precedes production - understand more than can speak
What is there to learn? (5)
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
What are the theories of development?
Nativist argument
Behaviourist
Interactionist
Nativist argument
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
Behaviorist argument
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
Interactionist approach
Bates - language is genes and the environment. Perceptual and learning abilities molded by culture
How do we test how infants develop speech perception?
High amplitude sucking
24 hour infants, headphones and dummies hooked to a computer
DeCasper and Fifer 1980 - HAS
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
DeCasper and Spence 1987
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
What do infants prefer? Order
Mums voice filtered to how it sounded in the womb
Mother over father
Mum/dad over stranger
Stranger’s speaking language than another language
What is categorical perception?
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
Categorical perception of sounds
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
Can infants discriminate speech sounds
Yes all infants can do this
Development of distinguishing speech sounds
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
What do infants categories result from?
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
Segmenting the speech stream
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
Saffron et al 1996 - speech stream
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
Testing infants with words vs non words
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
What is infant directed speech?
highly grammatical simple structure exaggerated slower rate vary pitch and loudness
Why is learning words difficult?
The possibilities of word meanings are endless
How do they know what a word means?
Mutual exclusivity
Process of elimination
How to aid children’s word learning
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
Baldwin - do children use joint attention?
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
