Language Acquisition and Cognition

Question 1

Intonation patterns of caregivers’ speech help infants:
a) Segment the stream of speech
b) Identify their dialect
c) Identify the speaker
d) Decide what and who to listen to
e) Perceive different phonetic features

Answer 1

d) Decide what and who to listen to

Question 2

Facial expressions of speakers are used by listeners to:
a) React to messages
b) Perceive truthfulness
c) Comprehend irony
d) Process the verbal message
e) Perceive additional information from the speaker

Answer 2

a) React to messages

Question 3

Gesture in communication:
a. Is universally recognized
b. Is used differently in different cultures
c. Involves use of the hands only
d. Is used for emphasis
e. Is used only by young children

Answer 3

b. Is used differently in different cultures

Question 4

The word or phrase receiving the most stress or emphasis in a declarative sentence can always be used by a listener to identify:
a. The speaker
b. The addressee
c. The act in the message
d. The important features of the message
e. None of the above

Answer 4

d. The important features of the message

Question 5

The meaning of a spoken message is conveyed by:
a. Stress
b. Intonation
c. Rhythm
d. Facial expression
e. All the above

Answer 5

e. All the above

Question 6

Infants attend first to which of the following aspects of spoken communication?
a. Loudness and pitch of speech
b. Prosody of speech and facial expression of the speaker
c. Individual phonemes in speech
d. Phrase and clause structure
e. All the above

Answer 6

b. Prosody of speech and facial expression of the speaker

Question 7

In the literature,
“style of speech” refers to:
a. Formal and informal
b. Teenagers’ way of speaking
c. Differences in way of speaking among different cultural groups
d. Suprasegmental differences among speakers
e. Dialect variation among different speakers

Answer 7

a. Formal and informal

Question 8

Learning the ways in which a culture communicates:
a. Is developed over time
b. Depends on practice
c. Requires sensitivity to prosodic features
d. Is shaped by environmental experience
e. Is acquired unconsciously

Answer 8

b. Depends on practice

Question 9

Some children without any neurophysiological problems have difficulty in learning others’ communication rules because of:
a. Lack of experience
b. Stubbornness
c. Other interests
d. Interference of own rules
e. Socioeconomic differences

Answer 9

d. Interference of own rules

Question 10

What aspects of the communication situation do young children use to help them acquire word knowledge?
a. Speakers’ pointing
b. Eye gaze
c. Word stress
d. Phonological cues
e. All the above

Answer 10

e. All the above

Question 11

Children begin to recognize words:
a. At 15 months of age
b. At 12 months of age
c. At 24 months of age
d. Before 12 months of age
e. Between 24 and 30 months of age

Answer 11

d. before 12 months of age

Question 12

Phonological rules:
a. Refer to allowable segmental sequences in a language
b. Play an important role in word production
c. Are dependent on motor abilities
d. Are dependent on perceptual abilities
e. Refer to allophonic variations of a phoneme

Answer 12

a. Refer to allowable segmental sequences in a language

Question 13

Discrimination of distinctive features is necessary for word acquisition:
a. Because minimal pair distinctions are needed
b. Because it is used to mark differences between words
c. Because of the need to produce accurate speech sounds
d. Because of the need to develop auditory percepts of developing sounds
e. For none of the reasons above

Answer 13

e. For none of the reasons above

Question 14

Recognition of the syllabic structures in a language has been found:
a. To be the same in different languages
b. To be the most important factor in speech sound acquisition
c. To change as the child develops knowledge of the language
d. Not to appear sometimes during the first year of life
e. Not to occur in language acquisition

Answer 14

c. To change as the child develops knowledge of the language

Question 15

Some speech sound combinations are difficult for children to acquire and therefore appear later in development. Which of the speech sound combinations listed below generally appear later?
a. Prevocalic consonant clusters
b. Postvocalic consonant clusters
c. Medial consonant clusters
d. Clusters with /s/ as a component
e. Clusters with /r/ as a component

Answer 15

c. Medial consonant clusters

Question 16

Speech and language production can be delayed for a number of different reasons. What is one of the first things that should be determined in children who appear to be developing normally except for delayed speech and language?
a. Hearing acuity
b. Stage of fine motor development
c. Stage of cognitive development
d. Stage of gross motor development
e. Stage of social development

Answer 16

a. Hearing acuity

Question 17

Which of the plural markers listed is generally used first by a child acquiring speech and language normally?
a. Plural /z/
b. Plural /iz/
c. Plural /s/
d. Number words such as “two” or “more”
e. None of the above

Answer 17

d. Number words such as “two” or “more”

Question 18

Children who are acquiring English as a second language may continue to have sound production problems, depending on which of the following?
a. The age at which the second language is acquired
b. Distinctions between the phonological elements of their first language and those of English
c. The frequency with which their first language is spoken at home
d. Confusion in speech perception
e. All the above

Answer 18

e. All the above

Question 19

A period of very rapid development of word production, a so-called vocabulary spurt, occurs for many children; however, some children do not experience it, although they are developing normally. Which of the following reasons have been found to best account for the difference between these two groups of children?
a. Differences in phonological perception
b. Sophistication of phonological production
c. Types of words known
d. Cognitive differences
e. None of the above

Answer 19

b. Sophistication of phonological production

Question 20

Infants’ perception of speech sound differences during the first year of life have been studied. Which os the following statements best describes the course of development in monolingual infants?
a. A gradual expansion of speech sound differentiation across different languages during the first year of life
b. An equal ability in detecting perceptual speech differences across similar languages during the first year of life
c. A marked change in the latter part of the first year of life toward better discrimination of sounds in the native language
d. An inability to perceive differences in nonnative languages beginning shortly after birth
e. A preference for the native language at birth that does not change during the first year of life

Answer 20

c. A marked change in the latter part of the first year of life toward better discrimination of sounds in the native language

Question 21

Researchers have found that children understand the basic relations of subject, verb, and object as given by the word order rules by the time they are what age?
a. Three years
b. Five years
c. Two years
d. Ten years
e. Seven years

Answer 21

c. Two years

Question 22

Which choice best describes the word order rules of the basic relations among subject, verb, and object in different languages?
a. The verb is always after the subject
b. The verb is always before the object
c. The verb is always in the middle of the sentence
d. The order of these basic relations varies among languages
e. None of the above

Answer 22

d. The order of these basic relations varies among languages

Question 23

Why do children rapidly acquire knowledge of the word order of their language?
a. The order of subject-object-verb of the language is the form least frequently used by caregivers
b. Caregivers correct word order errors before other
errors
c. Caregivers do not stress the order of the words in a sentence
d. Early sentences used in communication with the child are simple, are used frequently, and expose the child to exemplars that make clear the order in their language
e. All the above

Answer 23

d. Early sentences used in communication with the child are simple, are used frequently, and expose the child to exemplars that make clear the order in their language

Question 24

Imitation is an important strategy for language learning.
Physical imitation requires which of the following?
a. Turn-taking
b. Attending to the action
c. Replicating the features of the action
d. a and b
e. a, b, and c

Answer 24

e. a, b, and c

Question 25

Bilingual children learn the syntax or word order of both languages. Which of the following factors account for the order in which the syntax of the first or second language is acquired?
a. The syntax of the language used by their caregivers
b. The syntax of the language that is easiest
c. The syntax of the language that they hear most frequently
d. The syntax of the language used by the members of their family
e. The syntax of the language used in the child’s educational environment

Answer 25

c. The syntax of the language that they hear most frequently

Question 26

What causes the differences in the syntactic structures of various dialects in the United States?
a. Environmental differences
b. Different histories of language change across language communities
c. Impoverished grammars in certain language communities
d. Speech sound differences among different language communities
e. Differences in morphological use

Answer 26

b. Different histories of language change across language communities

Question 27

What is the definition of a speech act?
a. The production of an utterance
b. The paralinguistics of an utterance
c. The context in which an utterance is produced
d. The communicative intent of an utterance
e. The listener’s comprehension of the message

Answer 27

d. The communicative intent of an utterance

Question 28

When and how do children indicate differences in speech acts?
a. At age 3 years, they use a basic grammar
b. At age 2 years, they can express basic semantic relations
C. During infancy, they use different intonation patterns to covey different meanings for single words
d. When they can express different sentence particles for questioning or negative responding
e. All of the above

Answer 28

C. During infancy, they use different intonation patterns to covey different meanings for single words

Question 29

What is the minimal distance principle as it relates to the comprehension of utterances?
a. How far away the speaker is from the listener
b. The amount of distance between the subject and the main verb of the sentence
c. How the main verb is related to the dependent clausal verb
d. The distance between subject and object
e. The distance between the subject and complement of the sentence

Answer 29

b. The amount of distance between the subject and the main verb of the sentence

Question 30

How do children create comprehensible question sentences early in development?
a. By adding question markers to simple sentences
b. By changing the stress pattern in words
c. By gesture and facial expression
d. By change in intonation
e. All of the above

Answer 30

d. By change in intonation

Question 31

What is the first category of words that English-speaking infants typically acquire in their lexicons?
a. Possessives
b. Nominals
c. Verbs
d. Locative words
e. Function words

Answer 31

b. Nominals

Question 32

Which factor is thought to affect the rate of lexical acquisition after acquisition of the first 100 words?
a. Frequency of use by caregiver
b. Reference to the here and now
c. Pointing to referent
d. Growth in cognitive development
e. Growth in social development

Answer 32

d. Growth in cognitive development

Question 33

Word association tasks are frequently used to assess the development of the meanings of words. Which of the following sequences of word knowledge development is the one observed by researchers?
a. Paradigmatic and then syntagmatic
b. Syntagmatic and then paradigmatic
c. Antonyms and then synonyms
d. Referential meaning and then relational meaning
e. None of the above

Answer 33

b. Syntagmatic and then paradigmatic

Question 34

Word definitions change over time, which indicates interactions between language and cognitive development. Which of the following researchers studied word definitions over time?
a. Lev Vygotsky
b. Noam Chomsky
c. Roman Jakobson
d. Jean Piaget
e. Lois Bloom

Answer 34

a. Lev Vygotsky

Question 35

Tests of word recognition assess children’s vocabulary skills. What specific vocabulary skill in fact do these tests assess?
a. Vocabulary knowledge
b. Word association knowledge
c. Lexical retrieval
d. Visual recognition
e. All the above

Answer 35

e. All the above

Question 36

In instances of different types of vocabulary acquisition, different cognitive abilities are called upon. For example, knowledge of different kinds of verbs and their use has been found. Which type of verbs do children learn first?
a. Transitive verbs
b. Intransitive verbs
c. Modal auxiliaries
d. Stative verbs
e. All the above

Answer 36

a. Transitive verbs

Question 37

Short-term memory has been found to be critically related to the number of units in a sequence that can be recalled. What is the number of units that can be recalled by anyone?
a. Thirteen
b. Five plus or minus two
c. Seven plus or minus two
d. Nine plus or minus five
e. Ten

Answer 37

c. Seven plus or minus two

Question 38

What is the age at which children can use short-term memory effectively and recall the number of items said to be the limit?
a. During preadolescence
b. During infancy
c. After infancy
d. Before adolescence
e. During adulthood

Answer 38

c. After infancy

Question 39

The ability to categorize words on the basis of their semantic relatedness is necessary to the understanding of what?
a. Referential word meaning
b. The syntax of utterances
c. Relational word meaning
d. Morphological word differences
e. None of the above

Answer 39

c. Relational word meaning

Question 40

Of the following long-term memory factors, which one or more are crucial in comprehension and production of connected discourse?
a. Remembering the meaning of words over time
b. Remembering how sentences are put together
c. Remembering the relation between what is seen and what is heard
d. Remembering the structure of different types of discourse
e. All the above

Answer 40

e. All the above