LECTURE 8- LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT 2 Flashcards
What are the four key challenges in language learning for children?
Segmentation, learning word order rules, marking verbs, and generalizing appropriately.
What is the segmentation challenge in language learning?
Identifying individual words from a continuous stream of speech with no clear boundaries.
How do infants segment words in speech?
By using transitional probabilities and language-specific cues like stress patterns.
What are transitional probabilities?
The likelihood that one syllable will follow another, helping infants identify words.
What did Saffran, Aslin & Newport (1996) study?
How 8-month-olds use transitional probabilities to distinguish words from non-words.
How was the head-turn preference procedure used in segmentation research?
Infants listened longer to non-words or part-words, indicating they could discriminate words from the speech stream.
What did Fló et al. (2019) find about newborns?
Newborns show different brain responses to words and part-words, indicating early sensitivity to transitional probabilities.
What stress pattern is dominant in English words?
Trochaic stress (STRONG-weak), like “CAN-dle” or “DOC-tor.”
What did Jusczyk et al. (1999) demonstrate about stress patterns?
English-speaking 7.5-month-olds recognize trochaic-stressed words better than iambic-stressed words.
What errors do English-speaking children make due to stress biases?
Simplifications like “RAFFE” for “gi-RAFFE” or “PU-ter” for “com-PU-ter.”
When do infants become sensitive to language-specific cues like stress?
By 7.5 months old.
What is the challenge of learning word order rules?
Children must understand how word order conveys meaning (e.g., SVO in English).
What is the Verb-Island Hypothesis?
Children initially learn specific verbs in isolation and gradually generalize word order rules.
What did Akhtar & Tomasello (1997) find about verb-general knowledge?
2-year-olds often lacked verb-general knowledge, performing at chance in novel word order tasks.
What method did Gertner, Fisher & Eisengart (2006) use to study word order comprehension?
A preferential-looking technique to test if children looked longer at correct sentence interpretations.
At what age do children show verb-general knowledge of SVO word order?
By 21 months, as shown by looking-time studies.
What is the challenge of marking verbs?
Learning to mark verbs for agreement (e.g., “-s”) and tense (e.g., “-ed”).
What did Brown (1973) observe about early verb marking?
Children’s early speech is often telegraphic, omitting verb markings like “-s” or “-ed.”
What is Developmental Language Disorder (DLD)?
A language deficit affecting around 7.5% of children, marked by difficulty with verb marking and other areas.
How do children with DLD struggle with verb marking?
They show significant deficits in marking past tense (“-ed”) and 3rd person singular (“-s”).
What is MOSAIC?
A computational model simulating how children learn from child-directed speech, focusing on verb errors.
Why do English-speaking children make frequent verb errors?
They rely on more frequent verb forms (e.g., “see” over “sees”) and learn from the right edge of sentences.
What is the generalization challenge in language learning?
Children must learn patterns like adding “-ed” for past tense without overgeneralizing to irregular verbs.
What are past tense overgeneralization errors?
Applying the “-ed” rule to irregular verbs, e.g., “bringed” instead of “brought.”
