Lecture 4 - Responsiveness to Speech

Question 0

how early does experience have an effect?

Answer 0

• prior to birth (adults on Charlie Brown): pitch, basic timing properties

Question 1

Early

Answer 1

what it is that kids are doing as they develop langauge

Question 2

DeCasper and Fifer 1980

Answer 2

they would rather listen to their mother’s voice than a strangers: exposure to mother’s voice inutero = preference

Question 3

DeCasper and Spence 1986

Answer 3

had stories read to fetuses in 3rd trimester, newborns showed recognition of read story

newborns picking up on timing properties on the book they had read, therefore it appeared more familiar

Question 4

Nazzi et. al 1998

Answer 4

french newborns prefer french to japanese

Question 5

Kisilevsky et al, 2003

Answer 5

measured fetal heart rate in response to tape recording of mother or stranger

detected different responses to the two voices

not strong, convincing measures

Question 6

Responsiveness to speech

Answer 6

how we assess responsiveness of speech in infants = small toolbox to test their language capabilities

comprehension precedes production

a lot happens before they start talking

Question 7

Neonate (new borns)

Answer 7

startled by loud sounds
can turn head to look at sound
like voice (calming)
prefers familiar voice (mom)
discriminate wide range of speech sounds (they can tell apart pairs of sounds in a simple way: dishabituation paradigm: play a sound over and over and then change it, they will perk up: if you change the sound they will pay attention and not be bored anymore)

Question 8

1-2 months

Answer 8

smiles when talked to

Question 9

3-7 months

Answer 9

can distinguish different speech emotions (intonation) - they don’t know what they mean, they can just tell that they are different

Question 10

8-12 months

Answer 10

respond to name, “no”, game phrases, social routines

know a few words

Question 11

are prelingual infants even interested in communicating things?

Answer 11

the make sounds we might interpret as communicative, but how to asses this?

- compare vervet monkey: produce alarm call when I'm in danger, don't produce it when my kid is in danger, does alarm call REALLY REFERE to a snake/cat/eagle? if they were really refering to it they would do it when their kid was in danger

Question 12

criteria for intentional communication

Answer 12

make eye contact with conversational partner while talking/gesturing

gesture or vocalization is consistent, fixed in usage

kid waits for partner to take turn

keeps trying to communicate if not understood (may modify actions to do so)