Lecture 6: language aquisition1

Question 1

What skills are involved in learning language?

Answer 1

• Association: Linking sounds with words, words with meanings.
• Generalization: Applying knowledge to new items or speakers.
• Recognition: Identifying sounds, words, and meanings.
• Retrieval: Recalling learned sounds and meanings.

Question 2

What are the key developmental milestones in language acquisition?

Answer 2

• Recognize own language: Birth.
• Cooing: 1–4 months.
• Babbling: 4–10 months.
• Understands highly used words: 4–8 months.
• First word: 10–14 months.
• First sentence: 18–30 months.
• Uses grammar: 36 months+.

Question 3

How does comprehension differ from production in early language?

Answer 3

• Comprehension: Understanding what others say, sign, or write.
• Production: Speaking, signing, or writing to others.
• Comprehension precedes production.

Question 4

What did Caselli et al. (2012) demonstrate about comprehension and production?

Answer 4

Comprehension develops faster than production, with a significant gap in vocabulary size during early months.

Question 5

What is the Matthew Effect in language development?

Answer 5

Coined by Stanovich (1986), it describes how developmental gaps between high- and low-SES groups widen over time, leading to greater disparities in language and reading skills.

Question 6

What were the findings of Hart & Risley (1995) on SES and vocabulary growth?

Answer 6

• High-SES parents spoke more to their children, resulting in larger vocabularies by age 3.
• Low-SES children had slower vocabulary growth due to fewer language interactions

Question 7

What did Fernald et al. (2013) find about SES and language development?

Answer 7

By 24 months, children from low-SES backgrounds produced fewer words and had a 6-month language gap compared to high-SES peers.

Question 8

What is the significance of the DeCasper & Spence (1987) study?

Answer 8

• Fetuses can learn and recall the cadence of speech.
• Newborns preferred stories heard in the womb, showing early auditory memory.

Question 9

What did Saffran, Aslin, & Newport (1996) demonstrate about statistical learning?

Answer 9

• Infants used transitional probabilities to segment speech.
• They could differentiate between familiar words and less familiar part-words in continuous speech streams.

Question 10

What did Miller et al. (2017) find about ASD and early name recognition?

Answer 10

• By 9 months, infants later diagnosed with ASD showed differences in name recognition.
• Early failures in name recognition were linked to earlier ASD diagnoses.

Question 11

What is infant-directed speech (IDS)?

Answer 11

Speech directed at infants with higher pitch, exaggerated intonation, slower speed, and simple structures to aid language learning.

Question 12

How does IDS help in language learning?

Answer 12

• IDS enhances word segmentation (Thiessen, Hill & Saffran, 2005).
• It exaggerates vowel differences, aiding vocabulary learning (Liu, Kuhl & Tsao, 2003).

Question 13

How does child-directed speech (CDS) impact vocabulary development?

Answer 13

• Children exposed to more CDS have larger vocabularies (Schwab & Lew-Williams, 2016).
• CDS benefits both children and adults learning a new language (Ma et al., 2020).

Question 14

At what age do infants recognize their own names?

Answer 14

By 4.5 months (Mandel, Jusczyk & Pisoni, 1995)

Question 15

What did Tincoff & Jusczyk (1999) discover about infants’ word recognition?

Answer 15

By 6 months, infants recognize words like “mommy” and “daddy.”

Question 16

What were the findings of Bergelson & Swingley (2012) on early word understanding?

Answer 16

By 6–9 months, infants show understanding of some words for familiar objects like food and body parts.

Question 17

How does language influence categorization?

Answer 17

Language exposure (e.g., distinct words) helps infants form categories (Althaus & Westermann, 2016).

Question 18

What did Althaus & Westermann (2016) discover about categorization in silence vs. two-word conditions?

Answer 18

• In silence, infants formed one category.
• In the two-word condition, infants formed distinct categories.

Question 19

What is shape bias?

Answer 19

A tendency to categorize objects based on shape rather than material or size.

Question 20

What did Samuelson & Smith (2002) show about shape bias and vocabulary training?

Answer 20

Shape bias develops through word learning.
Training with shape-based nouns strengthened this bias.

Question 21

What role do transitional probabilities play in speech segmentation?

Answer 21

They help identify word boundaries by measuring how likely one sound follows another.

Question 22

What are the characteristics of infant-directed speech (IDS)?

Answer 22

High pitch, exaggerated intonation, simple structures, slower speed, and frequent repetition.

Question 23

What is the difference between domain-general and domain-specific learning in language?

Answer 23

• Domain-general: Uses general cognitive skills like pattern recognition.
• Domain-specific: Specialized mechanisms for language learning.

Question 24

What is a vocabulary spurt, and when does it occur?

Answer 24

A rapid increase in word learning, typically around 16–20 months.

Question 25

What did Huttenlocher et al. (1991) discover about talkative caregivers?

Answer 25

Children with talkative caregivers learn new words faster and have larger vocabularies.

Question 26

What are the key findings of Werker et al. (2009) on bilingual and monolingual development?

Answer 26

Monolingual and bilingual children develop similarly overall, showing flexibility and robustness in language acquisition.

Question 27

What did Thiessen, Hill, & Saffran (2005) find about IDS and word learning?

Answer 27

Infants learned words better with IDS compared to adult-directed speech (ADS).

Question 28

How does early exposure to language affect vocabulary growth?

Answer 28

Early and frequent exposure accelerates vocabulary growth and comprehension.

Question 29

What does the term “comprehension precedes production” mean?

Answer 29

Children understand words and phrases before they can produce them.

Question 30

How can recognizing words help diagnose developmental delays?

Answer 30

Early differences in word recognition patterns (e.g., name recognition) can indicate developmental issues like ASD (Miller et al., 2017).