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.
What is Productive vocabulary?
The words an infant says—emerges later and increases more slowly than does receptive vocabulary
What is a Vocabulary spurt?
A naming explosion characterized by an accelerated rate in children’s production of new words, of 8–24 new words per week
What is Fast Mapping?
Children’s learning of a new word with only 1 or 2 exposures
STUDY: This term was introduced in a study in which researchers presented 3-year-old children with two trays, one red and one olive-green, and asked them to “bring the chromium tray, not the red one” (Carey & Bartlett, 1978). Children, who knew what “red” meant, needed just one exposure to the spoken request to infer that the unfamiliar word “chromium” referred to the color of the olive-green tray. Fast mapping is also seen in infants 2 years of age and younger, although young toddlers have difficulties retaining the new words that they learned..
Children who speak
English, French, Spanish,
Dutch, Hebrew, Italian, and
Korean..
Children who speak
English, French, Spanish,
Dutch, Hebrew, Italian, and
Korean, first words tend to
be simple nouns referring
to objects
What is Underextension?
The mapping of words to an overly narrow class of objects, for instance saying “cup” only to a sippy cup or “truck” only to a toy truck
What is Overextension?
by overgeneralizing words to an overly broad class of referents—such as saying “daddy” to all men or using the word “dog” to refer to animals that share the features of fur, four legs, and a tail.
What is Syntax?
The set of rules that govern the ordering of parts of speech to form meaningful sentences
What is Syntactic Bootstrapping?
The use of the syntax of a sentence to infer the meaning of unfamiliar words
What is telegraphic speech?
A form of communication used commonly by toddlers that is
characterized by simple, 2-word sentences
* E.g., “Daddy cook” “Mommy shoe”
What is Morpheme?
The smallest unit of meaning in language that cannot be divided further
- E.g., ‘ing’, ‘s’, ‘ed’
– Over-regularization
What are Proto-conversations?
Caregiver-infant interactions that include words, sounds, and gestures, which are well-timed and responsive to each other
What way can infants learn new words?
Infants use others’ gestures (pointing) and eye gaze to learn
new words
What are Proto-imperatives?
They are requests for objects or requests for someone to help with an action, as when an infant holds up a cup to ask for more milk
What are Proto-declaratives?
They are attempts to get someone to pay attention to an object or event, as when an infant points to or holds up an object to establish joint attention toward the object
What unique way do adults talk to infants?
- Higher pitch, more pitch variation (exaggerated intonation)
- Slow tempo with pauses
– Frequent changes to the amplitude (loudness) of speech
What is Lexical diversity?
Number of different words
What is Contingent Responsiveness?
Caregivers’ prompt, attuned
responses (typically verbal) to
infant behaviors
What did Hart & Risley (1995) study?
Hart & Risley (1995) conducted
a seminal longitudinal study of
parent-child talk in Kansas
– 10- to 36-month-olds
– Language inputs in low-income, working-class, and professional families
– The “30-million word gap”
What is Simultaneous bilinguals?
Children who hear two languages from infancy
What is Dual-language learners (sequential bilinguals)?
Children who learn 2 languages because they are exposed to a native
language at home that differs from the language of the community
What is Same total vocabulary?
Vocabulary in each language is smaller and proportional to how much they hear that language
What is Communicative accommodation?
The adjustments that caregivers make to language and behaviors when communicating with young infants
What are child-centered communications?
Middle-class, European American caregivers tended to engage in child-centered communications, in which parents interacted with their babies about whatever interested the child (such as toys for play), used child-directed speech, and treated infants like conversational partners.
What are situation-centered communications?
Kaluli and Samoan adults
tended toward highly situation-centered communications, which placed the burden on infants to figure out what was going on around them
