Language Development

Question 0

What happens during the development of behavioural and cognitive functions?

Answer 0

They become lateralised to specific areas of the brain from being diffuse

Question 1

What happens during structural brain development?

Answer 1

Massive reorganisation into early adulthood

Development of neurons, synaptic connectivity and myelination (grey matter thins, white matter increases)

Synaptic pruning:
Initial overproduction of neurons and synaptic connections
Massive destruction of neurons and their connections:
Strengthening of functional synapses regularly used
Elimination of unused neurons and synapses

Functional reorganisation

Question 2

What happens to brain structure during word learning?

Answer 2

Activation of the right hemisphere gradually diminishes

NOT that the left hemisphere develops

Therefore lateralisation or hemispheric specialisation

Question 3

When does lateralisation occur?

Answer 3

Evidence of some lateralisation from birth

Most between 5 and 20 years

Question 4

What is lateralisation able to tell us about later language abilities?

Answer 4

Earlier it is focused and lateralised the more likely to have greater language ability

Question 5

What are the consequences of focal left hemisphere damage in early life?

Answer 5

NO serious long term consequences specifically for language (if unilateral and early in life)

Question 6

What are the consequences for language development of focal right hemisphere damage in early life?

Answer 6

Reports of transient difficulties

Slower receptive language development/ gesture

Major involvement of the right hemisphere in language processing in very young children

Question 7

What is plasticity/ flexibility?

Answer 7

Ability to recover/ reorganise after damage

Question 8

What are the influences on brain structure/ development?

Answer 8

1) genes

2) environment:
stimuli and experience
trauma

These can influence each other:

Environment is affected by genetic code - i.e. access to stimuli and experience (hearing difficulties etc)

Genes can also be affected by environment - someone may have typical genes but if not exposed to environment by a certain age will never be able to access it

Question 9

What evidence can we look to regarding the critical period hypothesis?

Answer 9

1) feral children: we must remember we cannot control for other factors lots of other things may have affected the children would need just linguistic stimuli to prove anything
2) second language acquisition: easier to learn when younger but again has no control just observation. Other evidence has proved adults can learn just as well given same intensive environment

Question 10

Why is the critical period hypothesis important for SLT?

Answer 10

Need to know when to fit cochlear implants

Question 11

What is nativism?

Answer 11

Suggests some aspects of language development may be innate:

Intentions/ desire to communicate

Innate ability to perceive and discriminate phonemes

Innate constraints to aid the word learning process

Innate grammatical knowledge

Question 12

What is emergentism?

Answer 12

Child develops linguistic capacity because it has mechanisms that keep it on a developmental growth path that (as it so happens) leads to that capacity

Question 13

How can emergentism explain early behaviour?

Answer 13

1) disposition to pay attention to talking people:
Helpless infant
Lots of facial and vocal stimulation whilst cortical areas of the brain are developing

2) joint attention, vocal attention, lexical imitation
Pleasurable - later communicative functions

3) store vocal utterances
Predict caregiver behaviour - are they behaving normally?

Question 14

What is the phonological loop?

Answer 14

Short term memory

Allows us to store phonological information for long enough to develop a long term representation

Even if we are not asked to remember words we will store information in the working memory in phonological form

Question 15

How might we assess the phonological loop?

Answer 15

Non word repetition

Important we don’t use real words as these can be assisted by semantics

Question 16

What affects storage of representations in the phonological loop?

Answer 16

Polysyllabic words are remembered more poorly

Phonologically similar words are remembered more poorly

Question 17

What can non word repetition tell us about new word learning?

Answer 17

Children with good NWR learn new words faster

Question 18

How do lexical representations shift during development?

Answer 18

Shift from under specified and global to efficient and phonological

Question 19

What is inference?

Answer 19

The ability to go beyond literal meaning

Integrate additional understanding from context, knowledge and experience

Question 20

What is elaborate inference?

Answer 20

Extend literal meaning with world knowledge

Question 21

What is bridging inference?

Answer 21

Extend literal meaning with previous linguistic material

Referring back to something we read eariler

Question 22

What linguistic elements can have inference?

Answer 22

Pronouns

Intended meaning of multiple meaning words

Figurative meaning

More or less any word can have a non literal intended meaning dependant on:
Context
How they say it
Nonverbal signals

Question 23

What do we use inference for when reading?

Answer 23

Intent

Appearance

Location

Emotions/ mental state

Make predictions

Mental imagery

Question 24

What is constructive processing?

Answer 24

Meaning progressively elaborated with literal and inferred meanings

Identify and flag important points in memory

Build a long term representation of the whole

Question 25

What do we hold in long term representation?

Answer 25

Visual image of jist

Question 26

What helps you form a robust long term information?

Answer 26

Interest

Familiar and rich content

Question 27

How do young children form long term representations for creating narratives?

Answer 27

Form scripts of routine actions and familiar repeated sequences (story grammar) that scaffold comprehension and expression

Question 28

What are pragmatics?

Answer 28

Rules governing the use of language

Defined by social and linguistic context

Interaction with other domains of language

Relationship with non verbal aspects of communication

Relationship to social cognition

Question 29

What is social cognition?

Answer 29

Social cognition is the study of how people process social information, especially its encoding, storage, retrieval, and application to social situations.

Question 30

What is theory of mind?

Answer 30

Others have thoughts different to your own

Being able to reflect on the contents of your own and others minds

Question 31

What is the importance of ToM for language?

Answer 31

Fundamental reason to communicate: we are aware that s/o else does not know something we do for example

Effective use of language:
Infer subtle meanings about mental states
Gage listener knowledge/ preference
Understand deceptions, tricks cooperation

Question 32

How do we test ToM?

Answer 32

Sally Anne test -false belief

Meta representation test

Question 33

Are ToM tests valid measures of ToM for young or impaired populations?

Answer 33

Also testing:
Narrative skills: need to be able to tell story of what has happened

Attention: need to pay attention to what happened, may have a history of failing tests so may not bother paying attention

Memory: need to remember what has happened - can be a long story need to hold it in short term memory

Comprehension: may not even understand question to answer

Question 34

What is the social attribution test?

Answer 34

Measure of social inference

Need to be able to put human emotion on something not man

Need to be able to imagine how humans would react in that situation

Question 35

What meta skills exist in language?

Answer 35

Meta cognition: thinking about thinking

Meta representations: thinking about representations

Meta linguistic: thinking about language

Implicit/ explicit
Self regulation
Comprehension monitoring
Modify/ repair/ correct
Meta representation
Sarcasm/ jokes

Question 36

Why are meta skills important for SLT?

Answer 36

Children may need to be aware of where they are making mistakes before we can change anything. Need to understand there is a problem

Intervention may be to make social communication rules explicit for children with autism