language development Flashcards
what is the high amplitude sucking procedure? what are its two variations?
- test used on infants from birth to 4 months, relying on their sucking reflex
- more strong sucks = more interest
- discrimination: used to see whether infants can tell the difference between two auditory stimuli; variation of habituation paradigm: habituation phase followed by test phase
- preference: used to test infants’ preference for different stimuli; 2 different stimuli are played on alternating minutes, number of strong sucks during each minute is compared; if infants suck more during one stimulus minute than the other, it indicates preference for that stimulus
what are the general findings from high amplitude sucking paradigms? what do they tell us about newborns’ speech perception abilities?
suggests that language learning and speech perception starts in utero:
- prefer to listen to speech sounds over artificial sounds
- prefer mother’s voice over another woman’s voice
- prefer to listen to native language vs other languages
what is voice onset time (VOT)?
- length of time between when air passes through the lips and when the vocal cords start to vibrate
- often distinguishes similar speech sounds; key for categorical perception
- eg. /p/ has a longer VOT than /b/
what is categorical perception? why is it important
- perception of speech sounds as belonging to distinct categories, even though the differences between speech sounds is gradual
- often relies on voice onset time to distinguish between sounds
- it allows listeners to focus on sounds that are linguistically meaningful while ignoring meaningless differences
how does infants’ categorical speech perception ability differ from that of adults? how is this tested?
- it doesn’t—a 1 month old has the same categorical speech perception ability as an adult
- tested using discrimination high amplitude sucking paradigm
how does infants’ cross-language speech perception ability differ from that of adults? how is this tested? what are the implications of this?
- infants can make more distinctions between speech sounds than adults
- adults have difficulty perceiving differences between speech sounds that are not important in their native language
- tested using high discrimination amplitude sucking paradigm in 6 month olds
- infants are biologically ready to learn any of the world’s languages
when do infants lose the ability to discriminate between non-native speech sounds? what are the benefits of this?
- 10-12 months
- perceptual narrowing improves perception of speech sounds in native languages
what is word segmentation? when does it develop in infants? how is it learned?
- word segmentation: being able to discern where words begin and end in fluent speech
- begins around 7 months
- achieved through statistical learning, when infants pick up on stress patterning and distribution of speech sounds
what is the preferential listening procedure?
- a speaker is placed on either side of the infant’s head. when the infant looks at one of the speakers, a recording of speech plays. this recording is different in each speaker
- how long an infant spends looking in a particular direction indicates how much they like it
- familiarity effect: will listen longer to sounds they recognize
- novelty effect: if first habituated to a sound, they will prefer the new sound
how is word segmentation tested?
- preferential listening procedure is used to test infants’ understanding of the distribution of speech sounds
- novelty effect: infants listened longer to syllable sequences that rarely occurred together, compared to sequences that always co-occurred
what is the general timeline of speech perception in children?
- birth: adult-like categorical perception; able to distinguish between sounds not found in native language
- 10-12 months: lose ability to distinguish between non-native sounds
- 7 months: begin to perceive speech segmentation
what is the general timeline for speech production in children?
- 2 months: cooing and gurgling
- 7 months: babbling
- 12 months: first words
- 18 months: knows 50 words
- 2 yrs: first (telegraphic) sentences, know 150-300 words
- 5 yrs: identifying letters, creating longer sentences, mastered basics of grammar, begin to engage in sustained conversations
what is cooing? when does it emerge? what is its function?
- drawn out vowel sounds
- starts around 2 months
- helps infants gain motor control over their vocalizations
- elicits reactions from caregivers
what is babbling? when does it emerge? what is its function?
- repetitive consonant-vowel syllables, not necessarily from native language
- starts around 7 months (6-10)
- social function: practicing turn-taking in a dialogue
- learning function: signal that the infant is listening and ready to learn - infants learn more when an adult labels a new object just after they babble vs learning the word in the absence of babbling
at what age to infants understand high-frequency words? how is this studied? what are the implications of this?
- 6 months
- studied using eye-tracking: infants are shown pictures of common items, and then are monitored where they look when one of the pictures is named -> 6 month olds look to the correct picture more often than chance
- shows that infants understand more words than they can produce, and understand more than their caregivers may realize
at what age are first words produced? what types of words are often produced first?
- 12 months (10-15)
- first words are usually ones that refer to family members, pets, or important objects (this is true across cultures)
what are the patterns of mispronunciation that tend to occur in early spoken words?
- often omit difficult parts of words (banana -> nana)
- often substitute difficult sounds for easier sounds (rabbit -> wabbit)
- often re-order sounds to put the easiest ones first (spaghetti -> pisketti)
what are the two main problems that infants usually face in terms of communicating, when speaking their first words?
- overextension: using a word in a broader context than is appropriate (eg. “cat” refers to any 4 legged animal)
- underextension: using a word in a more limited context than appropriate (eg. “cat” refers only to the family’s pet cat)
at what age does a huge vocabulary spurt occur?
18 months: rate of word learning accelerated dramatically
how do children learn words?
- assumptions about language
- social context (caregivers, peers)
list the assumptions about language that children have when learning a new word.
- mutual exclusivity
- whole-object assumption
- pragmatic clues
- adult’s intentionality
- grammatical form
- shape bias
- cross-situational word learning
what is the mutual exclusivity assumption?
- an assumption that children have about language that helps them to learn new words
- assumption that a given object has only one name
- note: bilingual children follow this rule less
what is the whole object assumption?
- an assumption that children have about language that helps them to learn new words
- assumption that a word will refer to a whole object rather than to a part or action of the object
what are pragmatic cues?
- an assumption that children have about language that helps them to learn new words
- involves using social context to infer the meaning of a word
- adult gaze: when an adult says a new word, the child assumes it refers to the object the adult is looking at
what is the assumption of adult’s intentionality?
- an assumption that children have about language that helps them to learn new words
- if an adult uses a word that conflicts with a child’s word for that object, they will learn the new word if it is said with confidence
what is the assumption of grammatical form?
- an assumption that children have about language that helps them to learn new words
- the grammatical form of a word influences whether it’s interpreted as a noun, verb, or adjective
what is the shape bias assumption?
- an assumption that children have about language that helps them to learn new words
- children will apply a noun to a new object of the same shape, even if that object is very different in size, colour, or texture
what is the cross-situational word learning assumption?
- an assumption that children have about language that helps them to learn new words
- involves determining word meanings by tracking the correlations between labels and meanings across contexts
what caregivers’ speech factors influence word learning?
- infant-directed speech
- quantity of speech
- quality of speech
what is infant-directed speech? what is its purpose?
- distinctive mode of speech when talking to babies and toddlers
- common in a majority of cultures around the world
- includes greater pitch variability, slower speech, shorter utterances, clearer pronunciation of vowels, more word repetitions, more questions, accompanied by exaggerated facial expressions
- infants prefer IDS to regular adult speech, so IDS draws infants’ attention to speech, facilitating their language learning
what is quantity of speech? what does it have to do with language learning? what factor(s) -influence this?
- the number of words children hear used around them predicts their vocabulary size, especially when the speech is directed to the child
- children that hear more words have larger vocabularies
- children from higher SES families have larger vocabularies, showing that differences in language exposure contribute to an achievement gap between higher and lower SES children
what is quality of speech? what does this have to do with language learning?
- richness of adult communication with their children predicts children’s language ability
- “richness” is characterized by joint engagement, fluency, stressing and repeating new words, playing naming games, and naming an object when a toddler is already looking at it
what was the intervention used to close the word gap between high SES children and low SES children?
- grocery store intervention; focuses on increasing the amount of time parents spend talking to their child
- signs placed in grocery stores in low SES neighbourhoods encouraging parents to talk to their children about the foods in the store
- designed to increase quality and quantity of caregiver speech
what influence does peers’ language have on an individual’s language development?
- placing preschool children with similarly poor language ability in the same classroom negatively impacts their language growth
- better chance of “catching up” if they are placed with children with higher language ability, and if teachers use rich communication with students
at what age do children produce their first sentences? what do these sentences usually look like?
- 2 yrs
- telegraphic speech: 2-3 word phrases that leave out non-essential words (common in many languages)
at what age do children understand the basics of grammar? what does this entail?
- age 5
- allows children to express and understand more complex ideas
- we know they understand the basics of grammar when they can apply grammatical rules to a new word/context (eg. adding “S” to make a word plural) - often results in overregulation errors
what are overregulation errors?
- speech errors that children make, that indicate that they have learned grammatical rules but not the exceptions to the rules
- eg. “foots” instead of “feet”
- eg. “goed” instead of “went”
how is grammar learned?
- parents and caregivers generally model grammatically correct speech, but don’t usually correct children’s grammatical errors
- statistical learning
what is private speech? when does it occur?
- infants’ speech is often directed to themselves as a way of organizing their actions
- 1-4 years old, when kids are still struggling to engage in mutual conversation
what type of speech occurs between 1-4 years old, when children have trouble engaging in mutual conversations?
- private speech
- egocentric discussion between children
at what age can children successfully engage in sustained conversations?
5+ years old, at which age they can stick to the same conversation topic as their partner
what is the sensitive period for language acquisition?
- from birth to before puberty
- this is the period of time in which an individual can acquire a first language if exposed to adequate linguistic stimuli
- after this period, languages are learned with great difficulty and native-like competence is rare
who was genie? what does her case tell us?
- girl deprived of linguistic input from 18 months to 13 years
- her language ability never fully developed despite intensive training after age 13
- provides evidence of a sensitive period of language acquisition from birth until pre-puberty (but consider it could be due to inhumane treatment rather than linguistic deprivation)
what did research on deaf individuals tell us about the sensitive period in language learning?
- in groups that began learning ASL between ages 9 and 15, those with exposure to spoken language in infancy performed better on language tasks
- in groups that began learning ASL in early childhood, performance on language tasks was also high
- shows that exposure to language, regardless of the type of language (spoken or signed) in infancy is critical for full language development
in what ways is language development governed by nature vs nurture?
- nature: sensitive period
- nurture: language exposure is critical during this period
what is the monolingual brain hypothesis?
- belief that infants’ brains are programmed to be monolingual, and they treat the input from 2 languages as if it were one language
- bilingualism stretches the limited process of infants
- theory that if kids are bilingual from birth, they will confuse their languages in a way that results in developmental delays
- proven to be false
when does bilingual learning begin? how is this tested? how does this disprove the monolingual brain hypothesis?
- bilingual learning begins in utero
- preferential sucking procedure: while monolingual infants show a preference for english, bilinguals show no preference for either language
- discrimination sucking procedure: both bilingual babies and monolingual babies can tell the difference between two languages, despite bilingual babies showing a similar preference for both languages
- suggests that bilingual infants are developing 2 separate language systems rather than confusing the two, going against the monolingual brain hypothesis
list the evidence in favour of there being 2 separate linguistic systems (against monolingual brain hypothesis).
- language development in bilingual vs monolingual children is very similar
- children select the language they use based on their conversational partner
- language mixing is not a sign of confusion, but is normal among adults too
list the advantages of bilingualism.
- seems to delay onset of Alzheimers
- quickly switching between languages improves executive functioning skills and cognitive flexibility; perform better on executive functioning tests than monolinguals
