Language Development Flashcards
What is language? Is it symbolic? Is it a combinatorial system? Why?
Symbolic system- each word means something or stands for something
Combinatorial system- combine elements into a number of different ways, communicate NOVEL messages
What is the importance of language in academia?
Can help children to develop other areas
Such as literacy and maths
What is the importance of language in social contexts?
friendships and bullying
Poor language skills can lead to peer victimisation at a young age
And bully perpetuation
What is the importance of language on wellbeing?
Poor language ability can impact adults as well
Higher rates of anxiety disorders
Higher prevalence of drug abuse and antisocial behaviours
What is the difference between language production and comprehension?
Language production- speaking to others
Language comprehension- understanding what others say
What is a phoneme?
Smallest unit of sound
Distinguish one word from another
e.g. k/g are phonemes, so kill or gill
When does phonological development begin? When does it stop?
Born with the ability to discriminate sounds in language - ‘universal listeners’
Ability declines after the first year of life
At what ages (in months) do babies start to produce phonology?
0-2 months: Not communicative, nonspeech noises e.g. crying, fussing
2-4: cooing, more diverse vowels, beginning of syllables
4-8: more obvious syllables like maaa, mma
6-12: canonical babbling
12-15: first words
15-24: complex babbling
What is vocabulary spurt?
A point in language development where the rate of acquisition of new words is thought to accelerate rapidly
What are the 2 common errors in language?
Overextension, e.g. generalises ‘dog’ to mean dogs, lions and horses
Underextension, e.g. generalises ‘dog’ to just his dog
What is a morpheme?
Smallest unit of language
e.g. pigs ‘s’ means more than one
At what age do you omit morphemes?
Toddlers may omit morphemes
e.g. I eating rather than I am eating
What are regular and irregular morphemes? What is overgeneralisation?
Morphemes may be past tense, these can be regular (e.g. +ed) or irregular (e.g. drank, went)
Overgeneralisation: children treat irregular words as if they were regular e.g. we holded the baby rabbits
What is the U shaped development graph? What are the 3 stages?
Rote-learning (irregular verbs are correct e.g. held, went)
Overgeneralisation (irregular verbs are wrong e.g. goed, writed)
Overgeneralisation decreases overtime
U shape graph
What is syntax?
rules which allows the organisation of words into sentences
e.g. Sentences are split up by noun phrases, verb phrases, adjectives, verbs, determiners
At what ages (in months) do children understand syntax compression?
12-18 months: simple sentences are understood with familiar objects and actions e.g. put the ball in the box
18-24 months: understands simple sentences with familiar objects and actions but with more complex contexts and without adult scaffolding
e.g. feeding bear with spoon when the adult suggests the bear is hungry
What happens in the high amplitude sucking procedure?
Pacifier is given to baby
Infants are exposed to a sound
habituation phase
Initially frequency and intensity of sucking is high, but in habituation it’s lower
Sound changes by increasing frequency and intensity
How can processing speech be tested? Does processing speech change?
Difference between knowing something and processing something
Processing speed gets faster when children get older
Young children need the whole sentence: Where’s the doggie?
Older children need: Where’s the d-?
At what ages (in months) do children produce syntatic language? What are holophrases? What is telegraphic speech? What is negation, modifying phrases and imperatives in sentences? When do children start using more morphemes?
Holophrases: rote-learned chunks such as allgone, alongside their first words
24 months: majority of children know 2 word combinations, known as telegraphic speech as some non-essential elemnts are missing e.g. mummy tea
30 months: children use a range of sentence types: negation (I not got shoes), modifying phrases (I want bunny on bath), imperatives (show it)
Children gradually include more morphemes
What are pragmatics?
How language is used and interpretated in context for the purpose of a social interaction
What 3 skills are needed for pragramatic development?
Talking in different registers e.g. talking to a friend VS in a job interview
Understanding inferences
e.g. adult says dinner’s nearly ready in response to a child asking for ice cream
Using the right expressions when referring to something e.g. he VS the dog
How does the quantity of language input affect development?
Adults vary when talking to children in terms of how many words they say or how many sentences they say
How does the quality of language input affect development? What is meant by meaning and timing?
Contingent talk
Directed speech based on where the infant is focusing their attention
- Meaning: what the infant is attending to
- Timing: in response to the infants vocalisation
Can Television be a good tool for language development in young children?
Children between 2 to 3 and a half years
Learn words from Tv if someone is live sitting beside them and describing it
How does background Television relate to language in young children? Is it positive or negative? How does this impact toys or parents?
Negatively related
Amount of time playing with toys was less when the TV was on in the background VS when it wasn’t on
Parents less responsive to children’s bids of attention
Reduced language input and less ‘richness’ of language by parents
How can parents and teachers help children’s language development?
Parents who use diverse sentence structures promote child word and grammar learning
Teachers speaking in complex sentences helps children sentence comprehension
What is socio-dramatic play? How can this help children develop language?
Adults model good sentence structure for children
Peers can influence their friends’ language by using different words or forming different structures
What is interactive book reading? How can this help children develop language?
For open-ended questioning: children need to answer whole sentences
Children can hear various sentence models about the same context or story
What brain areas are involved in learning language?
Auditory and visual system
Memory system
Attention system
Processing system
Inferencing system
At the ages of 4-5 years what should a child be proficient in when it comes to language? What happens at 24 months if simple sentences can’t be understood?
Comprehension of a range of abstract semantic concepts e.g. first, above, below
Fluency with a range of sentence forms e.g. it was broken by Tom
Using arrange of connectives appropriately e.g. but, because
If at 24 months children don’t understand simple phrases, the baby should be assessed by a speech and language therapist
