Speech Development Flashcards
Stark’s stages of speech development
Stage 1
The first 6-8 weeks
Reflexive crying
Vegetative sounds
Quasi-vowels
Stage 2
From 6-8 weeks
Produce proto-phones
Cooing
Laughter
Stage 3
From 16 weeks
Vocal play/expansion stage
Production of full vowels
Sounds with vocal tract closed, such as raspberries
Marginal babbling
Stage 4
From 36 weeks
Reduplicated/canonical babbling
Stage 5
From 48 weeks
Non-reduplicated/variegated babbling
Prosody (rhythm/melody) becomes apparent
At around their first birthday, children start to produce their first words
Reflexive crying
Fixed signals, unintentional
Vegetative sounds
Bodily functions such as burping and coughing
Passage of air through the vocal apparatus starts and stops
Quasi-vowels
Earliest vowels, produced with vocal tract in relaxed breathing position
Cooing
Move their vocal tract while they produce smooth voicing
Tongue comes into contact with the back of the throat
Early Laughter
Quick, sudden bursts in response to external stimuli, no repetition
Marginal babbling
Primitive ill-timed syllables
Reduplicated/canonical babbling
Produce adult-like syllables, in repetitive sequences
Non-reduplicated/variegated babbling
Produce adult-like syllables in non-repetitive sequences
Phonotactic knowledge
Speakers have a sense of how sounds can combine to form words in their native tongue
Prosody
The larger pattern of rhythm and melody produced when syllables and words are combined
Can be used to emphasize words, indicate a question or command, or indicate attitude (i.e. sarcasm)
Categorical perception
Sounds vary across continuous dimensions and yet they are perceived, not as continuous sound waves but as phones that vary categorically.
Cannot differentiate between sounds within categories
Two techniques that take advantage of kids’ novelty bias to determine if kids can discriminate between two sounds
High amplitude sucking technique
Sucking more means greater excitement
Head turn technique
Parent in headphones holding child on their lap
Two speakers
Train the child to look at a change in sound
Do infants perceive sound categorically?
Eimas et al
Used the high amplitude sucking procedure to determine whether infants perceive sounds categorically.
Varied voice onset time
From 20-40 ms, within /b/ /p/ change
From 60-80 ms, perceived as /p/
Children perceive sounds categorically
Nativist:
Babies have an innate ability to perceive sounds categorically
Discreteness is an innate feature of human language, so we must be specially designed to acquire language
However, categorical perception is not unique to language (chinchilla’s have it)
Not unique to sound (also shape or color)
How experience affects sound perception
(3 studies)
Kisilevsky
38-week-old fetuses had increased heart rate in response to their mother’s voice vs. a stranger
Suggests that even before birth they were sensitive to the sounds of their language.
Mehler
Played recordings of French and of Russian to newborns.
The newborns sucked more in response to French that to Russian.
Werker and Tees
6-8 month old English babies could discriminate between consonant contrasts that English does not have, but 10-12 month olds could not
Children whose native language has those contrasts are still able to distinguish them at 11-12 months
Suggests that children begin with the ability to perceive a wider range of sounds, but that their speech perception adapts to the sounds that are important in their language and they lose the ability to discriminate.
This emphasizes the importance of both innate abilities and adaptation.
Nativist
Humans are adapted specifically for language
Behaviorist
Just because categories are innate doesn’t mean that language is innate
Humans are meant to learn, but the ability to tell two things apart is not specific to language
Nativism
Children have innate knowledge of sounds, universal categories, and rules
Children must adapt by suppressing those that are not part of the target language
Behaviorism
The child is made by his/her environment
The development of speech production occurs in the following way:
Infants produce sounds either as part of the exploration of their vocal apparatus or by imitating others.
If they are rewarded then the will produce it again - through this reward and reinforcement process that children build up competence with their native language.
Concerned only with describing how children’s behavior is shaped by the environment, not with what they “know” about the language or what is going on in their heads.
Later in development children will be rewarded either indirectly through successful communicating their needs or directly by their caregivers for successfully developing language.
Constructivism/Cognitive Perspective
Children learn the sounds of their language as part of their larger attempt to understand their environment and take part in social life.
Before the child can create the sounds of the language, they must understand that others have minds and intentions; language develops because they want to use it for a purpose/to communicate
Concerned with how they mentally represent their language
Child is often assumed to be actively building and up knowledge of the sounds of the sounds they hear and attempting to translate them into procedures for producing sounds.
Children must identify the phonetic categories and rules of their native language and learn articulatory procedures to produce them.
Cons of the nativist model
Unfalsifiable because of the distinction between performance and competence
Cons of the behaviorist model
There are cultures that don’t speak to their kids until they are verbal
Parents don’t punish their kids for saying things incorrectly
Cons of the constructivist model
Children start babbling very early, but single phonemes don’t have meaning, so how can meaning be fundamental?
Olmstead behaviorist experiment
Food is a primary reward
When being fed children hear their mother’s voice
They begin to associate her voice with food.
Speech then takes on a “secondary reinforcing power” – it basically becomes a reward in and of itself
They hear their mother’s voice and experience same pleasure as ingesting food
Child will begin to sound like their mother
Are infant vocalizations affected by the language they hear?
Boyssen-Bardies
Nativism, Behaviorism, Constructivism Explanations
15 second samples of vocal productions from 8 and 10 month olds whose caregivers spoke French, Cantonese and Arabic to adult French native speakers.
These judges were very good at distinguish French exposed kids from Arabic exposed kids at both ages, and able to distinguish French from Cantonese exposed kids at 8 months but not 10.
Follow-up study presented recordings from French and Arabic exposed kids at 6 months.
Only trained phonologists were able to distinguish the difference.
Suggests that infant babbling is affected by the sounds they hear and that the effect of the environment becomes more pronounced with age.
Nativist explanation
Kids are learning to distinguish phonemes in their own language
Behaviorist explanation
The environment plays a gradual role
Constructivist explanation
The child has learned to imitate their parents because they want to communicate with them
Are infant vocalizations affected by the language they hear?
Locke
Nativism, Behaviorism, Constructivism Explanations
Little variation between the repertoires of sounds produced in babbling over children acquiring each of 15 languages.
For instance, /h/ is among the sounds most frequently produced by French children even though French contains no /h/ sounds
So aspects of speech development are independent of the environment
Nativist explanation
Kids already know all the sounds, just need to narrow it down to their language
Behaviorist explanation
Kids are exploring the sounds they can create, haven’t had behavior reinforcement yet
Constructivist explanation
Kids are exploring the sounds they can create, when they fail to communicate effectively, they will stop using those sounds
Are infant vocalizations affected by the language they hear?
Oller & Eilers
Nativism, Behaviorism, Constructivism Explanations
Deaf children do not produce canonical babbling in their first year, compared to 10 months for hearing kids
Suggests that hearing language determines whether one sees babbling
Nativist explanation
Just because they aren’t babbling doesn’t mean they don’t have the innate knowledge
Behaviorist explanation
Not hearing the sounds, so not producing them
Constructivist explanation
Sounds are not useful to them to communicate; they have other communication tools
Is children’s developing speech production affected by the social contexts in which it occurs?
3 Studies
Bloom
Infants increase their vocalizations when there is an adult vocally responding
Infants’ vocalizations were more “speech- like” when the adults’ vocalizations were contingent on the infants’ vocalizations.
Suggests that social context does affect children’s early speech behaviors
Similar pattern with non-verbal adult response (clicks)
Suggests that it is contingency and not the speech itself that is determining how the children behave
Behaviorist: rewards, kids learn through the positive reinforcement
Constructivist: Kids want to communicate, interact, have a purpose
Kuhl & Meltzoff
3 month olds imitate the pitch of adult vocalizations
Papoušek, M. & Papoušek
Analyzed recordings of a number of natural mother infants interactions
At 2 months of age 27% of infant vocalizations were produced as matches (similar in terms of pitch, rhythm or vowel or consonant use) of maternal utterances.
At 5 months of age 43% of infant vocalizations were produced as matches
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Constructivist: enjoy interacting with another mind
