PSY2004 W6 Learning to use sentences & Atypical language development (L)

Question 1

What is Grammar?

Answer 1

most powerful tools of langauge. Enables us to combine the words of our langauge in different ways so that they can convey different meanings. No limit on the nb of different utterances we can produce. There are two key components to grammar syntax adn morphology.

Question 2

What types deafness exist?

Answer 2

sensorineural deafness, auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder, conductive deafness

Question 3

What are developmental language disorder?

Answer 3

A language impairment that cannot be explained by hearing loss, other developmental disorders or brain injury and is causing a functional problem is classified as Developmental Language Disorder

Question 4

What is syntax?

Answer 4

The branch of grammar dealing with the organisation of words into large structures.

Question 5

How is syntactic development tested?

Answer 5

Novel words are used to test knowledge of syntax. Two years old, the child can already understand the role of word order in a sentence.

Question 6

What is morphology?

Answer 6

The branch of grammar dealing with the analysis of word structure.
In English we use inflectional morphology to mark things like: tense, person, number, possession

Question 7

How do you know when children understand the function of inflectional morphemes?

Answer 7

Eliciting natural speech that calls for different morphemes and to notice if they are using those.

Question 8

What is the usual developmental trajectory of morphological productivity?

Answer 8

1. discover an inflection (before which time they make errors of omission)
2. begin to over apply the inflection (He blewed it up, I like mouses – overregularalisations)
3. manage to balance applying inflections productively and remembering exceptions
   Developmental trajectory reflects the statistical structure of the input (ring-rang, sing sang). Neural Network (connectionist) models capture this sequence.

Question 9

What is the nativist appraoch?

Chomsky

Answer 9

Reacted against the ideas of Saussure, Skinner and Piaget.
Argued children cannot learn by creatively copying what they hear around them because of:
* The poverty of the stimulus problem
* The no negative evidence problem

Question 10

What is universal grammar?

Nativist approach

Answer 10

Grammatical categories and principles (rules) used to generate the grammatical sentences of the world’s languages.
UG is constantly being revised but is still proposed to be innate and available to guide language acquisition from the start.

Question 11

What are some problems of the unversial grammar concept?

Answer 11

what innate knowledge makes up UG (just recursion?)
how children could use it to learn the specific language(s) they are exposed to (out of >6,000 world languages).
Little consideration of possible learning algorithms or child as social being.

Question 12

What does the contructivist appraoch argue for?

Answer 12

Argue there is no problem of the poverty of the stimulus nor of no negative evidence: grammar is learnable based on children’s considerable capacity for statistical learning from social interaction (therefore the proposal of an innate grammar is redundant)
Gained popularity as larger corpora (databases of transcribed speech) have become available along with the computational linguistic tools to analyse them

Question 13

What does the constructivist appraoch emphasises on?

Answer 13

social context of development.
learning mechanisms: Intention reading, imitation, statistical learning, generalization, analogy making

Question 14

What is the problem with the constructivist approach?

Answer 14

While increasingly popular, no fully worked out account of how different learning mechanisms interact to allow children to creatively produce language based on what they have previously heard.

Question 15

What are pragrmatics?

Answer 15

That component of language whereby we vary the linguistic forms we use according to the people we are speaking with and the context we find ourselves.
Effective and appropriate language use with a social partner - using language in such a way that one’s communicative goals are achieved without giving offense or causing misunderstanding (Ninio & Snow, 1996)

Question 16

What is morris’ semiotic triangle?

Answer 16

Real world condition <> Signs <pragmatics> Speaer/Listerner <></pragmatics>

Question 17

What do pragmatic skills involve?

Answer 17

Context, intentions and information processing

Question 18

How is context involved in pragmatic skills?

Answer 18

Tuning into the interlocutor’s state and aspects of the physical context relevant to our current endeavour and to what is in common ground

Question 19

How is intention involved in pragmatic skills?

Answer 19

Being mutually aware of the effect our communicative acts have – understanding communicative intentions. Inferring what someone meant given what they said

Question 20

How is human information processing involved in pragmatic skills?

Answer 20

Making multiple communicative moves in sequence as a conversation unfolds over time. The nature of human information processing is such that there are more or less efficient ways of talking about something and languages have even evolved special devices that help us to manage a steady information flow over the course of a conversation.

Question 21

How do children respond to feedback?

Reference in context

Answer 21

Although children often refer to things ambiguously, they respond well to requests for clarification.
Repairing utterances helps them to learn (how) to be more explicit in future.
Might also help development of Theory of Mind

Question 22

What are some evidence of querving intentions?

Answer 22

5-year-olds query why someone said what they did if it does not fit their predictive model of language (Morisseau et al. 2013 – see video example). Children are able to make inferences from what is being said.

Question 23

Why does atypical language development appear?

Answer 23

Some problems arise due to sensory impairment, such as hearing loss
or difficulty in producing speech sounds (e.g., due to a cleft palate)
Sometimes language delays can be the result of a learning disability, e.g., Down Syndrome
Difficulty with social communication (pragmatics) is one of the diagnostic features of Autism

Question 24

How many children have DLD?

Answer 24

2 in 30
hidden but common, support makes a difference, difficulties with taking and or understanding

Question 25

What is sensorineural deafness?

Answer 25

is a hearing loss in the inner ear - usually means that the cochlea isn’t working well

Question 26

What is auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder?

Answer 26

occurs when sounds are received normally by the cochlear, but become disrupted as they travel to the brain

Question 27

What is conductive deafness?

Answer 27

means that sound can’t pass efficiently through the outer and middle ear into the inner ear. Often caused by blockages such as wax in the outer ear, or fluid in the middle ear (glue ear). Glue ear - otitis media - is very common in children. While usually temporary, it can affect speech development

Question 28

What are the measures of hearing loss?

Answer 28

British Society of Audiology definitions of hearing loss (decibel hearing level range):
o mild (21–40 dB)
o moderate (41–70 dB)
o severe (71–95 dB)
o profound (95 dB)
Can have different hearing levels at different frequencies (e.g., more difficulty hearing higher frequency sounds). Hearing loss can be bi-lateral or unilateral (one ear only).

Question 29

When is deafness identified?

Answer 29

Often identified through Newborn Hearing Screening (started ~ 2005 in the UK) – screens for sensorineural loss.

Question 30

What are some deaf stats?

Answer 30

Permanent bilateral childhood hearing loss occurs in about 1 in 1000 live births in developed countries.
~95% deaf infants have hearing parents.

Question 31

What are cochlear implants?

Answer 31

Convert sound into electrical signals and send them directly to auditory nerve
Children with severe/profound HL, no benefit from hearing aid
Often fitted during infancy
Don’t completely ‘fix’ hearing

Question 32

What are some struggling hearing parents face with deaf chidlren?

Answer 32

Deaf infants with deaf parents learn to look to their parent more
Hearing parents often struggle to support joint attention
Often a delay in early communicative development

Question 33

What are some consequences of language delays?

Answer 33

Delays in Pragmatics –e.g., understanding deception or sarcasm can be delayed into adulthood.
Include delays in Social Cognition– Theory of Mind.
Important to support children’s access to language.
However, support for families in the UK is currently patchy (Rees et al., 2015) and there isn’t a strong evidence base regarding what kinds of support are most effective.