Learning Acquisition 1

Question 1

What skills are needed to learn a language?

Answer 1

Association (sounds w/ words, words w/ meanings)
Generalisation/ extension (to new items, diff. speakers, etc.)
Recognition (wounds, words, learned meanings)
Retrieval

Question 2

How do patterns linked with language acquisition?

Answer 2

Acquisition = learning patterns

Patterns for which sounds fit together to make a word

Patterns for which word types fit together in which order

domain-general learning processes.

Question 3

What are the language milestones?

Answer 3

Birth = Recognise own languages

1-4 = Cooing

4-8 = Understand highly used words

4-10 = Babbling

10-14 = First word

12+ = Understands hundreds of words

16-20 = Possible vocab spurt

18-30 = First sentence

30+ = Longer sentences

36+ = Uses grammar

Question 4

What does comprehension mean?

Answer 4

understand what others say (/sign/write)

Question 5

What does production mean?

Answer 5

actually speaking (/signing/ writing) to others

Question 6

True or False?

Comprehension precedes production in using language.

Answer 6

True - Caselli et al (2012)

Question 7

How does socio-economic status effect (SES) how babies use language?

Answer 7

Hart and Ridley (1995) = infants vocab size differs between Socio-Economic Status (SES) groups bc middle/ high SES are more talkative

Fernald et al. (2013) = @ 18mths, children from from ↓ SES backgrounds produce fewer words + @24mths, there is a 6mths language gap between SES groups

Huttenlocher et al. (2020) = children from ↓ SES backgrounds produce simple sentence

Question 8

What is the Matthew effect?

Answer 8

Shelley (1891) = the richer have become richer, and the poor have become poorer’

Gaps between groups widen over time e.g Wagovich et al. (2014) but other studies show gaps don’t widen.

Question 9

When children recognise language?

Answer 9

Foetuses can hear from 15-18 weeks. Sounds = muffled in the womb. Infants initially prefer muffled sounds + their mother’s voice

Later, infants prefer mother’s voice, parents over strangers +own language(s) over another language(s)

Question 10

What is a cadence?

Answer 10

rhythm of language/speech

Question 11

What does DeCasper and Spence (1987) show in their study?

Answer 11

Mothers recited stories twice/day in the last 6 weeks of pregnancy (3.5 hrs total exposure)

At 55 hours of age, infants “worked” to produce the story they had heard over a different story (control group did not + no preferences for story, preferred mothers voice)

Foetus and infants can learn and recall cadence (and learn contingencies)

Question 12

How do infants find breaks within words?

Answer 12

Pitch

Pauses

Statistics + correlations (patterns). Transitional probability (patterns) = Sounds that occur together often = ↑ likely to be from the same word. Jones et al (2018) = stat learning is domain general

Question 13

What is Saffron et al. (1996) study?

Answer 13

Shows infants can segment speech

8mths infants listen to a language of 3-multi syllable passwords for 2mins
No pauses/ pitch cues = only stats
Transitional probs within words = 1.0
Transitional probs between words = 0.33

Test = infants to indvdl words/ part words

Results = infants preferred part-words, could distinguish between words + part words (even though both had been heard before) + can use patterns to learn language

Question 14

What is infant direct speech?

Answer 14

Speech that has characteristics to help children isolate words

Question 15

What are the characteristics of infant direct speech?

Answer 15

↑ pitch + wide range of pitch
Exaggerated intonation
Simple structure

Fernald (1995) = infant-directed speech is ↑ pitch than adult-directed speech across languages

Thiessen et al. (2005) = when presented w/ identical speech streams, 7mths infants learned the ‘words’ significantly better if IDS was used . Infant direct speech aids segmentation

Question 16

What did Fernald (1995) say about IDS?

Answer 16

infant-directed speech is ↑ pitch than adult-directed speech across languages

Question 17

What did Thiessen et al. (2005) say about IDS?

Answer 17

When presented w/ identical speech streams, 7mths infants learned the ‘words’ significantly better if IDS was used . Infant direct speech aids segmentation

Question 18

Can older children be helped to learn words w/ child directed speech?

Answer 18

Yes

Leung et al. (2021) = parents adjust their speech based on words they think their children don’t know

Foursha-Stenson et al. (2017) = 5 years understand sentences in CDS

Ma et al. (2020) = CDS helps adults learn words in new languages

Question 19

How do infants recognise words?

Answer 19

Mendel et al (1995) = @4.5mths infants recognise their names

Tincoff and Juscyzk (1999) = @6mths infants understand the words ‘mommy’ and ‘daddy’

Bergelson and Swingley (2012) = @6-8mths infants show understanding for some words for familiar objects e.g food + body parts

Kartushina and Mayor (2019) =. Failed replication of the study

Question 20

What happened in Miller et al.’s study (2017)?

Answer 20

‘Orient to name’ task given to infant siblings of children w/ + w/out ASD

Tested + retested = 6, 9, 12, 15, 18 + 24mths = 36mths children = 3 groups
 Groups w/ ASD
 ↓ risk group
 ↑ risk group

Results
 From 9mths ASD behaved diff. from other groups
 Children w/ ↑ repeated failures diagnosed w/ ASD earlier than other children w/ ASD
 Name recognition @9mths = could be useful for prescreening  application (Earlier responses examined w/ new insight )

Question 21

How are infants successful in speech-processing tasks?

Answer 21

Werker et al (2009)

Monolingual + bilingual children develop similarly in learning word association + differences in categories
Macrostructure = flexibility + robustness of language acquisition
Microstructure = insights how children learn language

Question 22

How does language affect categorisation?

Answer 22

Samuelson and smith (1999)
Input children hear = for categories (nouns)
Most children’s early vocab = words for solid, shape-based categories w/ count noun syntax (count noun syntax: noun that can be made plural)

Althaus and Westermann (2016)
Present 10mth infants w/ dragon drawings = same dragon morphed several times
Prototype dragons = can be categorised  little wings (4), big wings(16), all dragons (10) + completely new
In silence condition = infants formed 1 category (all prototypes familiar)
o 1 word condition = infants formed 1 category
o 2 word condition = infants formed 2 categories
o Shows anguage influences categorization

Question 23

Why do categories help w/ learning?

Answer 23

Smith et al.’s (2002) 4 step process
1. Early on children = learn words for indvdls words
2. Buckets are bucket shaped, hammers are hammer shaped
3. Object is object shaped
4. Pencil shaped thing is a pencil

Samuelson (2002) = 17mths children learned 12 real nouns for 9 weeks + 1mth follow up

Shape bias = learned through learning words
o Taught through vocab training

Names for categories = learned later after 26mths
o Shape training = bucket, pear, ladder, boot…
o Material training = lotion, chalk…

Results
o Children trained on shape categories = precocious shape bias
 Children trained on shape categories overgeneralised to non-solid substances
o Children trained on material categories didn’t develop any bias
o Shows that categorisation influences language
 Shape bias = product of word learning.