Language Acquisition and Learning

Question 1

Language definition

Answer 1

A systematic and conventional use of signs, sounds or written symbols.

Question 2

What is the interactionist perspective of language acquisition?

Answer 2

Biology and social envrionment interacting: whole range of things contributing
* Children are internally motivated
* But are still motivated by their environment

Question 3

What is the nature perspective of language acquisition?

Answer 3

Neurological and genetic:
* Wernicke and Broca area development
* Evolving genes over time
Sensitive period:
* Dependent on stage of brain development
* Unlike critical period, just reduced or not receiving experience so not as proficient

Question 4

Conventionality of language

Answer 4

Language is only useful as a tool for communication if its meaning is shared by a group of people

Question 5

What is the nurture perspective of language acquisition?

Answer 5

• Language learned through imitation
• Language is reinforced socially

Question 6

What does the nurture perspective of language acquisition take into account?

Answer 6

• Children can say different things from what they’re taught
• Learning through imitation and reinforcement is an extremely slow process

Question 7

Why are words shared but special?

Answer 7

Words have shared meanings across individuals, but there are also words that are special to specific individuals (e.g. proper nouns or names).

Word meanings tied to linguistic communities.

Learning words are different from learning preference.

Question 8

Empirical evidence that infants know that words have correct meanings.

Answer 8

Subjects: 13 month olds
Procedure:
- Showing a familiar object, having two speakers look at and label it differently: duck or car
- Measuring babies’ responses
Results:
- Protest behaviour occurred more often the speaker saying car
- Babies didn’t have protest behaviour if it was just a disembodied voice on a speaker, needing the human speaker.

Question 9

Empirical evidence that words are shared across speakers (18 and 24 month olds).

Answer 9

Aim: To test the babies’ ability to generalise words and their meaning
Procedure:
- Training: four objects the toddler didn’t know the name of were in a box. The experimenter says “let’s find the Mido” before showing them the objects. Then finds the object that is the Mido and shows it to the toddler. They would also pick out a different object after asking the toddler “let’s find the one that I like”.
- Comprehension test: Asking the toddler to “show me the Mido”. Then a different speaker would come in and ask the same thing. Another test was done to see if the toddler could point out which was the original speaker’s preference and the different speaker’s preferred object.
Results:
- The toddlers could point out the Mido to both speakers.
- They could only point out the preference for the original speaker and not the different speaker

Question 10

Empirical evidence that words are shared across speakers (9 month olds).

Answer 10

Procedure:
- Habituation event: the speaker picked up one of the two unfamiliar objects and referred to it as a “modi”.
- Measured the infant’s looking time, and repeated the procedure until bored.
- Test phase had two conditions: Same or different speaker condition - - They would either pick up the target or distractor object and refer to it as the Modi.
Results:
- Infants would look longer when either speaker picked up the distractor object and calling it the Modi.

Question 11

Empirical evidence that words are special (9 month olds).

Answer 11

Procedure:
- Habituation event: Speaker shows positive emotive expression towards the “Modi”.
- Test phase: either the same or different speaker will show positive emotive expression towards either the target or distraction object
Results:
- No difference in looking times, so they either learned that every word is generalised, or that preferences are generalised.

Question 12

Empirical evidence that infants know that word meanings are shared within linguistic groups (13 month olds).

Answer 12

Procedure:
- Language introduction: exposed the infants to English and French speakers who sung nursery rhymes in their own language
- Then, the French speaker would conduct the habituation event with the “Medo” until the baby was bored.
- Test phase: either the same or different speaker would pick up either the target or distractor object and refer to it as “Medo”. The locations of the objects were switched.
Results:
- Same speaker condition: longer looking time for distractor test
- Different speaker: no difference in looking time for English speaker (no generalisation occurring)
- Different speaker (English then French speaker): no difference in looking time (no generalisation occurring)
Added note:
- Multilingual babies were surprised when French speaker used the same word as the English speaker (longer looking time)

Question 13

How do toddlers show selective word learning?

Answer 13

They don’t learn from speakers who lack perceptual access or don’t show relevant intentional cues.

Question 14

How do preschoolers show selective word learning?

Answer 14

They don’t learn from ignorant or inaccurate speakers, even when they are an adult speaker and the accurate speaker is a child. They also ignore dissenters.

Question 15

How to test children’s ability to pay attention to the relevant information?

Answer 15

Overload them with information and test if they can pay attention to the important and relevant information within that array.

Question 16

Empirical evidence that 4 year olds can determine word relevance.

Answer 16

Procedure:
- Two conditions: nearby location or faraway
- The child is read a letter from the experimenter’s friend, either going to Japan or close by, as a set-up for the experiment. Then the answering machine plays a voice note of the friend mentioning a Uzma as an object from the location they were at.
The experimenter ‘figured out’ which one of the objects given was the Uzma.
- Test phase: speaker on the computer screen asks the child to pick out from an array of object the Uzma. As a baseline comparison, the speaker conducted a guess trial by asking the child to pick out a blicket (unfamiliar object), and know trial with a car (familiar object).
Results:
- Guess trials were at chance accuracy.
- For test trials, the child was much more accurate if the friend was at a nearby location rather than faraway.

Question 17

Why is it important to know that preschoolers understand the conventionality of language in terms of relevance?

Answer 17

It provides evidence that the infant’s world is not confusing. It is relevant to the child becoming an active and culturally rich member of the community, and for the acquisition and transmission of culture.

Question 18

Empirical evidence of how children recall names of objects if the parent is ignorant of the label.

Answer 18

• Semi-structured observation
• Subjects: done with 2, 3, and 4 year olds.
• Aim: to see how parents changed their approach to name objects with different aged children
  Procedure:
• Four conditions: parents know the object label (and kid knows or doesn’t know) or parents don’t know the object label (both don’t know or homemade object).
• Results: When both know, using in-action statements while interacting with object. When parent knows, use label-ostension (obvious naming and pointing out). When neither knows, usually using questions, similes or ostension. When it’s a homemade object, the parent usually uses any of the four methods.
• Results for ages: parents used knowledge and ignorance cues when talking to 4 year olds, but less so for those younger