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Intro to Psycholinguistics > Lecture 3 - Language Development > Flashcards

Lecture 3 - Language Development Flashcards

1
Q

What type of processing is the left hemisphere responsible for?

A

Analytic time-based processing

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2
Q

What type of processing is the right hemisphere responsible for?

A

Holistic spatial-based processing.

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3
Q

Most language processing occurs in which hemisphere of the brain?

A

Left.

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4
Q

How does the distribution of language processing across the two hemispheres differ between men and women?

A

Women have less lateralisation than men, so have more processing in the left hemisphere

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5
Q

What is aphasia?

A

Language impairment as a consequence of brain damage.

Impairment in production and/or comprehension

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6
Q

What is the function of Broca’s area?

A

Speech production/articulation.

Controlling the use of inflectional and functional (by, the, for, she) morphemes.

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7
Q

What type of disorder is Broca’s aphasia?

A

An expressive disorder.

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8
Q

What are the language effects/deficits in Broca’s aphasia?

A

Slow, impaired and halting speech.

Lack of inflections and functional morphemes in sentences.

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9
Q

What remains functional/at a good level in people with Broca’s aphasia?

A

Comprehension.

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10
Q

What is the function of Wernicke’s area?

A

Involved in comprehension and the selection of words.

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11
Q

What type of disorder is Wernicke’s aphasia?

A

Receptive

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12
Q

What are the effects/language deficits in Wernicke’s aphasia?

A

Difficulty understanding speech from others - poor comprehension.

Difficulty repeating words or sentences.

Fluent and syntactically correct, but makes no sense.

Lexical errors and nonsense words.

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13
Q

What is the Wernicke-Geschwind model?

A

One of the main models in linguistics.

Proposes the path of activation in brain areas between visual or auditory cortices to Broca’s area.

It can therefore attempt to explain how we might reproduce spoken word in repeating others, or producing it from written stimuli.

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14
Q

Describe how we repeat spoken word, according to the Wernicke-Geschwind model.

A

Information about the sound is analysed by primary auditory cortices and transmitted to Wernicke’s area.

Wernicke’s area analyses this to determine the word that has been said.

This information is passed onto Broca’s area via the arcuate fasciculus

Broca’s area forms a motor plan to repeat the word and sends it to the motor cortex.

The motor cortex implements the plan, manipulating the larynx and related structures so that the word can be articulated.

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15
Q

Describe how we speak written words according to the Wernicke-Geschwind model.

A

The visual cortex analyses the image and transmits the information to the angular gyrus.

The angular gyrus decodes this information and matches the visual forms of words with the spoken forms in Wernicke’s area.

Information about the word is transmitted to Broca’s area via the arcuate fasciculus.

Broca’s area forms a motor plan to articulate the word and sends it to the motor cortex, where it is implemented.

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16
Q

What is the arcuate fasciculus?

A

The bridge between Wernicke’s and Broca’s area.

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17
Q

What occurs if damage to the arcuate fasciculus is sustained?

A

Conduction aphasia, meaning that the individual will be able to understand speech, but won’t be able to repeat it.

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18
Q

What is the angular gyrus?

A

The path from the visual cortex to Wernicke’s area.

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19
Q

What occurs if damage to the angular gyrus is sustained?

A

Inability to repeat written words, but ability to repeat spoken words remain.

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20
Q

What are the criticisms of the Wernicke-Geschwind model?

A

It is too simple:

  • More brain areas are involved than the model suggests. For example, the cerebellum is involved in meaning processing and lexical prediction
  • Brain damage effects are not predicted by the model with sufficient accuracy.
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21
Q

Who proposed the critical age hypothesis for language development?

A

Lenneberg, (1967)

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22
Q

What did Lenneberg (1967) propose?

A

The critical age hypothesis for language development.

Biological events related to language can only occur within a limited maturational period.

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23
Q

What evidence is there for the critical age hypothesis?

A

GENIE. A 13 and a half year-old child who was locked in the back of a house for 12 years. Had no grammar concept, could only understand around 20 words and produced only 2.

Many words were trained, but her grammar never developed past that of a 2/3 year old child.

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24
Q

What does research on GENIE tell us?

A

There is a critical period for which grammar and implicit language understanding to develop. If this is missed, it can never be recovered.

25
Q

What are the two critical age hypotheses that attempt to explain the ease of learning a second language at younger ages?

A
  • Maturational state hypothesis

- Exercise hypothesis

26
Q

What does the maturational state hypothesis theorise about critical age theory?

A

We have a superior capacity for acquiring languages early in life, which decline as we age. Children will always be better at learning a second language than adults.

Use it then lose it.

27
Q

What does the exercise hypothesis theorise about critical age theory?

A

If the capacity for a second language is exercised, language capacity will remain intact. Adults can be as good as/better than children at learning a second language if they use the relevant systems enough.

Use it or lose it.

28
Q

Which facts investigate whether adults are worse than children at learning a second language?

A

5% of adults can learn a second language perfectly (supports exercise hyp)

Adults are better initially, but kids learn better in the long term

On average, there is a continuous decline in L2 learning abilty with age (maturational state).

29
Q

Is the critical age hypothesis correct?

A

A strong version of it can be rejected, as children can still acquire some language after the critical period - GENIE.

A weak version can be accepted - someaspects of language develop better within a critical period.

30
Q

What does the LAD stand for and what is the alternative name for it?

A

Language acquisition device.

Universal grammar (UG).

31
Q

What are some universal features of language?

A
  • All have nouns and verbs

- All have a preferred word order.

32
Q

What is the LAD and what does it do?

A

An innate device that provides the rules and principles that allow a child to learn any language in the world.

33
Q

UG has a limited number of ____ and a limited range of _____.

A

Limited number of principles and a limited range of parameters.

34
Q

The principles and parameters of UG allow what?

A

The child to determine which language is theirs, according to features of the language such as preferred word order and pro-drop (whether pronouns can be left out or not).

35
Q

What are 4 main theories of language development/acquisition?

A
  • Behaviourism (Skinner)
  • Nativism (Chomsky)
  • Cognitive (Piaget, Vygotsky)
  • Social (Bruner)
36
Q

What do behaviourist theories generally argue about language development?

A

Children learn language through imitation and reinforcement.

New-borns are a blank slate (tabula rasa)

37
Q

What do nativist theories generally argue about language development?

A

Language capacity (UG and parameter setting) is innate.

Children don’t need explicit instruction and do not rely on imitation and/or reinforcement.

38
Q

What do cognitive theories generally argue about language development?

A

Cognitive development drives language development.

39
Q

What do social theories generally argue about language development?

A

Proposes the LASS - language acquisition socialisation system, which says experience of language in social and interactive contexts must compliment exposure to language, in order for language to develop.

40
Q

According to Chomsky, why is the stimulus/language input for children not appropriate?

A

Input is

  • degenerate: full of deficiencies, mispronunciations, incomplete sentences, slip of the tongues.
  • insufficient: children are not exposed to enough examples of grammatical construction to work out the underlying rules.
41
Q

What does CDS stand for?

A

Child-directed speech

42
Q

What is CDS?

A

The specific way that parents tend to talk to their children. It is:

  • slower
  • more repetitive
  • higher in pitch
  • exaggerated intonation
  • shorter and simpler sentences
  • restricted to the here and now
43
Q

What is the typical language development for each age group?

A

15 months: 25 words/word fragments

5 year-olds: 10,000-15,000 words

Adults: 15,000-75,000

44
Q

What are the 4 stages of language development?

A
  • Babbling
  • One word (holophrastic)
  • Two-word
  • Telegraphic style
45
Q

What are the age ranges for the babbling stage, an example of what might be said, and a feature of the stage?

A

4-9 months.
Gagagaga.
Sounds are universal - same regardless of language spoken.

46
Q

What are the age ranges for the one-word (holophrastic) stage, an example of what might be said, and a feature of the stage?

A

9-18 months.
Mama, juice
Names and objects in the baby’s life.

47
Q

What are the age ranges for the two-word stage, an example of what might be said, and a feature of the stage?

A

18 months - 2 and a half years.
More juice, mama go
Normally noun-noun or noun-verb. Beginning of syntax.

48
Q

What are the age ranges for the telegraphic stage, an example of what might be said, and a feature of the stage?

A

2 and a half - 4 years
I drinked juice
Grammatical markers and function words often omitted.

49
Q

Do infants begin to learn language before birth?

A

To an extent, yes. Foetuses can hear sounds in the womb. High frequencies are blocked by amniotic fluid, but rhythm, stress, intonation and duration of language can be detected.

50
Q

What evidence supports the ability of infants to learn language before birth?

A

DeCasper & Spence (1986).

16 mothers read the cat in the hat twice a day for the last 6 and a half weeks of pregnancy.

New-borns were tested after birth, and preferred the familiar story, showing that they could distinguish between the prosodies of the two stories whilst still in the womb.

51
Q

What is syntactic bootstrapping?

A

Children’s use of knowledge of word formation rules and syntactic class to derive meaning of (new) words.

52
Q

What is stimulus-driven distributional analysis?

A

One theory as to how children learn syntax. It proposes that children learn syntactic regularities in their input.

53
Q

What is categorical perception?

A

Hearing sounds in either one way or another, rather than changing in a linear fashion.

54
Q

At what age can infants perceive categorically?

A

Before the age of 1. But sensitivity to the different sounds begins to fade after a year.

55
Q

What are the 4 predispositions infants have about word meaning?

A
  • Whole object.
  • Mutual exclusivity assumption
  • Taxonomic constraint
  • Basic level category
56
Q

What is the whole object predisposition that infants have?

A

They assume a word is a label that refers to the whole object, rather than just it’s parts or colours.

57
Q

What is the mutual exclusivity assumption?

A

An object can only have 1 label. Leads infants to assign labels to objects that they don’t know the meaning for.

58
Q

What is the taxonomic constraint predisposition?

A

Infants’ assumption that a word refers/applies to a category of similar things.

59
Q

What is the basic level category predisposition?

A

Infants’ assumption that a word refers to the basic level (dog), rather than the superordinate (animal) or the subordinate (poodle).

Intro to Psycholinguistics (10 decks)

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