Lecture 5: Infant Language Development Flashcards
What is Phonological
Development?
Phonological development refers to the mastering of the sound system of a language, including how speech sounds combine into words..
What is Semantic
Development?
Semantic development refers to learning the meanings of words and word combinations
What is Syntactic
Development?
Learning the rules for combining words (i.e., grammar)
What is Pragmatic
Development?
Learning how language
is used in social context
What are phonemes?
The smallest distinguishable sound units of a language—its consonant sounds and vowel sounds—are phonemes
What sounds do new infants prefer?
Infants display a preference for
the sounds of their native
language from birth
What did Janet Werker study about phonological development?
6- to 8-month-old English- learning infants can distinguish among sounds that are phonemic in Hindi but not in English but lose the ability to do so by the end of their first year, when they show a pattern of phoneme detection more specific to English
What are Phonotactics?
The permissible structure of syllables, groups of
consonants, and sequences of vowels in a language
What is Statistical learning?
The ability of infants to
perceive and learn regularities in language, such as which speech sounds make up
words
How does Crying change for infants across the first year?
Infants cry for a variety of reasons, including hunger and pain, which alerts others to their distress and ensures that their survival needs are met. But, all cries are not equal. Across the first year, crying changes from primarily signaling distress to increasingly being a communicative signal to get caregivers to respond in specific ways, such as when a 10-month-old extends an arm and whine-cries for a bottle that is out of reach
What other sounds do babies make in 2-3 months of age?
Around 2–3 months of age, infants produce vowellike vocalizations—cooing— such as “ahhh” and “oooo.”
What sounds do babies make at 6-7 months of age?
At around 6–7 months, infants begin to make sounds that approximate those of their language, what some people refer to as baby talk. LIKE: “ma,” “ba,” “pa,” “da,” and “ta.”
at 12 months of age, what happens to an infants language development?
infants incorporate the same consonants and vowels they produced in babbling into their first words, they start saying conventional words,
What is receptive language?
The ability to understand language and the meaning of words and phrases
When do infants learn their first words?
Infants understand their first words by around 6 months (common objects, people)
What is the intermodal preferential looking paradigm?
Researchers present infants with two images side-by-side along with a word or phrase. The word or phrase matches one of the images, and researchers measure whether the infants look to the correct image. For example, infants may see pictures of a boat and a shoe while hearing “Where’s the shoe?” If the infant looks at the matching picture, researchers conclude that the infant understands the word shoe.
