Language and Development 1/2 Flashcards
Arbitrary
words have no obvious relation between the sign and its meaning
Systematic mapping
identifying units that make up a word or sentence
Communication system
a shared set of rules or conventions that establish a systematic mapping between words and the world
Recursive rule (and example)
a rule that can be reapplied to the output e.g. The man is chasing the dog [That is chasing the cat]
What are the 3 steps to language comprehension?
- recognise sounds/words
- retrieve meaning of sounds/words
- combine words into a message (by understanding relationships between words)
What are the 3 steps to language production?
- retrieve words from memory
- put words together to form a coherent sentence
- fine-grained motor planning
Aphasia
language impairment as a result of brain damage
Why do some people not possess language?
lose the ability to speak (brain damage)
never fully develop it
can not learn it
What is ‘Plato’s problem’ as explained by Chomsky?
How did he support this theory?
The fact that we know so much must be because some of the knowledge is innate/preexisting
asked a child questions leading him to conclude Pythagoras’ theorem despite knowing he had never learnt about it
Universal grammar
an innate system of combining units within the constraints of structural patterns of any human language
Give 3 issues with nativism
underestimates the impact exposure has on learning, some innate ‘language specific’ knowledge has actually been proven as general perception skills, certain patterns may arise naturally due to all languages trying to solve similar issues in communication, ‘universals’ cannot be that hard wired as some languages do not conform to the universal rules yet children still learn them easily
Give and explain 4 of Hockett’s design features
Semanticity - fixed association between language units and aspects of the world
Discreteness - units are separate and distinct
Displacement - Can talk about what is not actual or present
Productivity - new words and meanings can be created from what is already learnt
Duality of Patterning - meaningless sounds combine to produce meaningful words (e.g. P-A-T, T-A-P)
What are the 4 Ps that determine development?
Profound - changes to one’s outlook on the world
Permanent - not easily reversed, unlike learning
Progressive - usually brings about improvement rather than detrimental change
Pervasive - affect all areas of life
What did Rousseau say about the child?
“The child [is] the father to the man”
What is Haeckel’s maxim?
“ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”
- the development of the individual replays the development of the species
What are the 5 major debates in developmental psych?
nature vs. nurture, passive vs. active child, reliability of longitudinal stability, individual differences, how to investigate
Nativism
humans are genetically programmed to have a general capacity for language that has evolved as an adaptation
Descartes
innate potential for development
Empiricism
language learning is not genetically programmed but a by-product of cognitive abilities
Locke
emphasis on the environment
child’s mind is a ‘tabula rasa’
Extreme empiricism
Watson
children can be conditioned (e.g. little Albert and the white rat)
What 4 main issues are there in investigating development?
- methodological issues
- children not reliable participants
- early development inherently ‘noisy’ (multiple influences) - the ‘data problem’
- difficult to obtain quantitative measures while maintaining naturalistic context - establishing causal relations
- moving from how the mind develops to the causes of such developments
- difficult often to determine the direction of causation - choosing the right age
- ensuring tasks are age appropriate while assessing the same construct
Can animals learn a human language?
Yes, but lack vocal anatomy to be able to make relevant sounds:
Chimpanzee Vicky learnt 4 words w/speech therapy
Kanzi learnt to understand sentences and knew 100s of words HOWEVER could not use lang productively
Joint attention (what can it predict in infants?)
The focus of two individuals on one object at the same time (can predict vocabulary size up to 2 years later)
How is the language of bees not like that of humans?
it is non-arbitrary
can only communicate about one thing
Give a challenge to the nativist view
Language was actually just a side effect of higher cognitive functioning that gave us an edge over other species
Why do animals not understand pointing?
Do not comprehend the ‘intention to communicate’ - unaware that pointing is done to satisfy their goal rather than the pointer’s won
Why do babies babble?
To practice making sounds relevant to language even if they are not coherent words
Affective pathway
sound production as a result of arousal or emotion that is innate and generally inflexible
Cognitive pathway
controlled, malleable sound production requiring auditory learning and practice
the innate modular view of language
language is an instinct with an innate knowledge of universal language principles
What is the Poverty of Stimulus argument?
Language must be innate as the environment does not provide enough linguistic data for a child to be able to learn every feature of their language
the experience-based interactive view of language
social interaction provides feedback and allows language structures/patterns to be picked up over time
incentive to talk in order to interact
William’s syndrome
a genetic anomaly where language usually remains intact despite other cognitive impairments
Will’s syndrome
delayed language impairment accompanies general cognitive processing delays
Can we invent language?
Yes, feral children left without language will create their own
sign language - if learnt from birth will be just as competent as children that learnt spoken language
Universality of language
All humans have similar mental representations - languages just help to map these thoughts into words but do not affect perception
Linguistic relativity hypothesis
language may influence our mental representations and information processing
How can we test whether language affects perception?
Munsell colour test
e.g. English speakers cannot determine as easily between two shades of blue as Russian speakers as do not have two separate words to distinguish between them
Motion events
e.g. Spanish and Greek do not indicate HOW someone moves as we do in english - E:’He ran out’ vs. S/G:’He exited’
Wharf hypothesis
A language’s inventory of words has an effect on how speakers perceive of the world
code switching
Where bilinguals switch between two languages in one sentence to avoid planning and accessing troubling words
What are a baby’s ‘primary drives’ according to Freud?
hunger, thirst, need for warmth
What are a baby’s ‘secondary drives’ according to Freud?
attachment to caregivers
What did Bowlby controversially say about a infant’s attachment to caregivers?
That it is a primary drive
Why was Bowlby criticised?
He only thought monotropy was possible (one single attachment to a caregiver)
He overgeneralised clinical observations to normal children
He did not consider individual difference is attachment
Which of Bowlby’s theories did Ainsworth challenge? What evidence did she have?
Monotropy. Studied Ugandan communities where children formed multiple attachment to the caregivers and not just mothers
What did Schaffer&Emerson’s study support?
abandoning the secondary drive
challenging monotropy
What did James Roberston (1946, 1952) support?
abandonment of secondary drive
dynamic nature of attachment (can make and break easily)
What were Bowlby’s revisions?
Decided multiple attachments can form
Focussed on the dynamics of attachment relationships
What was Bowlby’s 1969 theory?
There is a goal-corrected system to attachment rather than an innate response. The goal is to maintain proximity to mother as she is the most notable environmental cue
What did Ainsworth’s strange situation assess?
The level of a child’s attachment to their parent
Between what ages can Ainsworth’s strange situation scenario be used?
12-24 months
What are the 3 main classifications of attachment types?
Avoidant
Secure
Resistant
Which 4 dimensions are assessed in the strange situation?
Proximity seeking
contact maintenance
avoidance
resistance
What did Main&Solomon have to say about Ainsworth’s theory?
They added a 4th category - insecure disorganised - for infants that showed bizarre or conflicting behaviour
In non-clinical middle class US families what was the most common form of attachment?
Avoidant
What can be used to assess behavioural attachment in 3-5yo?
longer separations than in the strange situation
no stranger present
What can be used to assess representational attachment in 3-5yo?
separation anxiety test
What can be used to assess attachment in 5-13yo?
self-report measures
OR
child attachment interview (8+ only)
What can be used to assess attachment in adults?
Adult Attachment Interview - Ainsworth
What are the classifications of the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI)?
Dismissing
Preoccupied
Autonomous
Unresolved
What did Belsky et al (1996) conclude about longitudinal stability in attachment?
There is no good evidence that the strange situation predicts classification in the AAI
What is a major predictor of an adults’s attachment style?
life events
What were the 3 themes of Piaget’s theory?
constructivism, adaptation, stages
What was Piaget’s theory of constructivism?
concern with how the child constructs the world around them - both innate and experience based
What was Piaget’s theory of adaptation?
The basic component of intelligence is schemas, objects become part of these schemas creating evermore satisfactory theories about the world
What was Piaget’s theory of stages?
There is a fixed sequence of stages in development 0-2y - sensorimotor 2-7y - preoperational 7-12y - concrete operational 11+y - formal operational
What are the 6 substages of the sensorimotor stage?
0-6Wks - practice of innate reflexes
6Wks-4mnths - repetition of body movements for their benefit
4-8mnths - repetition of reactions that have an interesting effect on the environment
8-12mnths - can combine actions to achieve results
12-18mnths - experiment to discover new means to ends
18-24mnths - can imagine consequences of planned actions
What is a key feature of the preoperational child?
They are egocentric
What did Billargeon&Grabor (1987) say about Piaget’s theory?
It underestimates children’s object permanence skills
What is animism?
belief that all things have a spirit
What does having ToM imply?
understand links between beliefs and behaviour
understand the logic of mental state language
understand that beliefs can be false as well as true
What makes a child more likely to have ToM?
regular contact with extended family
higher socio-economic status
mother more highly educated
child better at collaborative play earlier on
What is mind-mindedness?
A caregiver’s atunement to a child’s needs
What are 3 main issues with Piaget’s stage theory?
He does not take into account development in different domains can occur at different rates
Individuals develop at different rates
Undervalues the influence culture has on cognitive development
What are Vygotsky’s 3 key themes?
reliance on the genetic method, semiotic mediation, social origin of higher mental function
What did Vygotsky say about genetics?
Elementary mental functions are not specific to humans and are innate
Higher mental functions develop through social interactions and are specific to humans
What did Vygotsky say about semiotic mediation? And what is it?!
The mediation of thought processes by words or signs to create higher mental functions
It develops through interaction with others
What did Vygotsky say about social origin of HMF?
thinking is a ‘conversation in the head’
We can learn more about development of a child from what they can achieve when aided than when alone (ZPD)
What is the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)?
The distance between actual and potential development when aided by an ‘other’
What does the ZPD tell us about teaching?
teaching is good when it is slightly ahead of development as it arouses these functions which are in the stage of maturing
Tutors should be able to identify ZPD in order to pitch lessons accordingly
individual differences should be taken into account
What did Meins (1997) find about attachment type and pitching of teaching to ZPD?
securely attached mothers - pitch at ZPD
insecurely attached mothers - too vague or too intrusive
What is private speech?
When children talk to themselves - becomes slowly internalised
What was different about Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s views on social interaction?
Piaget thought it was the end goal, Vygotsky thought it was the means to individual intellect forming
In what situations does private speech increase?
When there is a challenging mental task
When something is frustrating
What happens if you prevent children from using private speech?
Cognitive ability slows
What were differences in Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s beliefs about private speech and my it disappears?
Piaget said we eventually grow out of it
Vygotsky said we just internalise it
What did Vygotsky not consider?
Individual differences in social interactions
