Number & Language Flashcards
Object file system (OFS)
Analog magnitude system (AMS), Weber’s law
Keep track of small number of objects (less than 4)
Recognize approximate diffs between larger quantities of objects
- Weber’s law: Ability to detect diffs between two quantities is determined by their ratio
Counting principles (4)
One-to-one correspondence:
Each object labelled by single number word
Cardinality:
Number of objects in any set = Last number that was counted
Ordinality:
Numbers come in ordered scale going from smaller to larger
Abstraction:
Any set of discrete objects can be counted using count sequence
Children understand numerosity before they understand cardinality
- Explain w/ Give-a-number, Point-to-x, and How-many tasks w/ 2-4 year olds
Children counted up to 5-6 on How-many before succeeding on Give-a-number task
Grabbers vs counters
- Grabbers tend to give a bunch of toys
- Counters systematically count toys
(shift from grabber to counter w/ age)
Subset-knowers
Cardinality Principle (CP)-knowers
Know most numbers thru memorization only (until number 4)
- When asked to give certain number of objects, will usually give the number they most recently memorized
Understanding meaning of numbers and relationship between them
(Timing varies between cultures, order doesn’t)
Explain the matching experiment that shows that we number words are a useful cognitive tool
Children make no or few mistakes w/ exact matching and uneven matching objects w/ examiner’s
But mistakes increase w/ higher numbers on hidden matching
- If you don’t have a word for a number, harder to access number memory
Statistical learning
Visual habituation task
Domain-general learning mechanism for learning statistical structures
When looking at a pair of shapes that don’t fit the pattern, infants of all ages dishabituated
Probabilistic reasoning
Red vs Yellow ball experiment (4 and 6-8 month olds)
Candy jars (10-12 months)
Uses inductive inference to guide prediction and action
- Also important for social cognition (inferring preferences)
Expected event: Pulling more red balls out of box with more red balls
Unexpected event: Pulling more yellow balls out of box with more red balls
- 4 months, looked at both equally
- 6 months, looked more at unexpected (understanding that random samples represent population)
Infants choose candy from jar with higher ratio of candy they like
- Even if number is less, will still choose if probability is higher
- Psychological cause (wanting something specific) explain randomness
Language characteristics (4)
Productive:
We can create infinite number of sentences never spoken or heard before
Abstract:
We can talk about things that aren’t present, visible, tangible, or real
Arbitrary:
No inherent connection between sound and meaning
Universal:
Unique to humans
Phonemes vs Allophones
Voice onset time (VOT)
Phonemes: Sounds that change meaning
Allophones: Sound variations that don’t change meaning
VOT: Length of time between when air passes thru lips and when vocal cords start vibrating
- Phonemes are categorical
- 1-4 month olds dishabituate to same phoneme in different categories (/b/ at VOT 20 and /p/ at VOT 40)
Perceptual tuning
Infants can discriminate between non-native speech sounds
- Tested w/ conditioned head-turn (head turning when phoneme changes)
Unimodal vs Bimodal distribution
(Distributional learning)
Infants use distribution of sound frequency to learn where to draw boundaries between phonemes
Unimodal distribution: Probably 1 phoneme
Bimodal distribution: Probably 2 phonemes
How do infants use these to segment words?
Transitional probabilities
Prosody (prosodic cues)
Infant-directed speech (IDS)
Transitional probabilities:
- Looks at probability of which one syllable predicts the next syllable
- Transitions within words are systematic (high likelihood); Transitions between words are arbitrary (low likelihood)
- Also seen in artificial language
Prosody (stress patterns):
- Words tend to follow strong-weak stress pattern in english words
- Newborns can discriminate language based on rhythm, but must learn more to properly segment exceptions to rule (done by 10.5 months)
Infant-directed speech (motherese):
- Form of speaking parents use towards young children (uses clearer word segmentation)
Lexical development:
Intermodal Preferential Looking Procedure (IPLP)
Event-related potentials (ERP)
IPLP:
Show 2 stimuli at same time, one matching linguistic stimulus
- Look more at matching stimulus = Comprehension
ERP:
- N400 most common ERP signal for responding to words (negative deflection at 400 ms)
- Larger negative deflection between unusual words (vaby instead of baby) bcuz more unexpected
- Ability to differentiate phonetically similar words happens at 20 months
Features of lexical development:
One-word stage vs Two-word stage
Telegraphic
One-word stage: Producing one word at a time (seeing dog running and saying doggie)
Two-word stage: Pairing of words (seeing dog running and saying doggie run)
Telegraphic: 2-year-olds’ speech omits closed class words like articles/prepositions (the, that, etc)
- But they actually learn/understand better when parents include them in speech
Why do children overextend meaning of words?
Problem w/ production of words only, not comprehension
- Problem w/ limited vocab
