Topic 11: Language Development

Question 1

How do spoken words emerge?/How does language acquisition take place?

Answer 1

Through sensitive periods.
Lennenberg’s Critical period hypothesis: only acquire language in period from infancy to puberty.
E.g. adult proficiency linked to age of first exposure, not length of exposure.

Babbling

Using words as referents (word mapping)

Question 2

What are the language acquisition theories?

Answer 2

Nativist view: Language structure is acquired through a primitive form that must be innate. Biological adaptation for language is hardwired into the brain. (Chomsky)

Behaviourist view: Language learned through rich language input and basic principles of learning. (Skinner)

Interactionist view: Focus on mechanics of learning (how) what is process of learning language?

Question 3

Is early babbling a precursor of speech and language?

Answer 3

Vihman: If louder at 6 months, more complexity of babbling, more consistent and more use of consonants, this leads to greater vocabulary.
This supports the fact that babbling is indeed a precursor.

Question 4

What are the stages of babbling?

Answer 4

Universal steps in human vocal development
Complexity and volubility increase with age

1) First vocalisations (prior to babbling)
2) Canonical and reduplicated babbling
3) Variegated babbling
4) First words

Question 5

How can a heritable condition impact language acquisition? (Study)

Answer 5

• Exploration of the KE family
• Had an unusual language difficulty called atypical verbal apraxia
  This is a genetic mutation to the FOXP2 gene which is expressed as speech and language difficulty.
  This is not a gene for language but more so a genetic modification that influences brain circuitry for learning aspects of speech and language.

Question 6

What is the evidence to show that babbling is linked to speech output?

Answer 6

Experimental question: If left hemisphere specialisation for language, then are there asymmetrical clues in speech gesture?

Question 7

How does language develop after babbling?

Answer 7

Goes from babbling to protowords
e.g. nana for banana

Question 8

Is babbling universal?

Answer 8

Yes.

Question 9

How do infants find their first words?

Answer 9

Infants recognise familiar first words earlier than they produce first words.

E.g. Mandel et al. looked at recognition of infant’s own name - they listen attentively in communicative settings where their own name frequently comes up and used modified head turn preference.
They found that early preference for their own name more than prosody.

Question 10

How do infants then move from familiarity of words/recognising words to finding the meaning of words?

Answer 10

They start to use words as referents. (use of word mapping)- mapping words to objects in the world.

E.g. study by Tincoff and Jusczyk - Recognition of parent names - and map to video of referent (mommy or daddy)
By 6 months familiarity increases looking times i.e. preference for looking when word, ‘mommy’
But overall looked more at videos of other parents due to novelty.
Looked more at familiar video of named parent rather than unnamed parent.

Question 11

When do infants start mapping familiar syllables to objects in the world?

Answer 11

Tested infants at 6 months:
Through the Audiovisual habituation switch paradigm (Zamuner and Johnson) ‘Ba’ and ‘Da’ had to be paired to objects and they compared looking times.
Then they switched the pictures referring to ba and da around.
And if the infant’s looking time increased on the switch, that meant that they were able to successfully map syllables to object so familiarity increased.

Question 12

When can infants segment speech using statistical frequency of sound combination?

Answer 12

By 7-8 months

Question 13

What did Gogate et al. find when exploring whether infants can map sounds to objects in the world?

Answer 13

Found that mapping across unfamiliar sound emerges at 7-8 months but only when multiple cues engage attention to object.

Question 14

What did Werker et al find when exploring whether infants can map unfamiliar sounds to unfamiliar objects?

Answer 14

infants at 14 months able to map across unfamiliar sound - object pairs without multiple cues but only for syllables with dissimilar phonetic contrast.
Infants at 16 months with similar phonemes.

Question 15

When does vocabulary learning take place?

Answer 15

vocabulary learning happens quickly
9 months = 1 word
16 months = 55 words
23 months = 240 words
6 years = 6000 words

Shows an exponential curve
Not exponential per day though, new words come in ‘fits and bursts’ - very individual though
rapid increase in vocabulary acquisition appears as a ‘spurt’ - but different in all children.

Question 16

How do infants solve the Gavagai problem by Quine?

Answer 16

Through using multiple cues e.g whole object bias, shape bias

Through fast mapping - using ‘lexical contrast’ to determine which of many referents make a fast inference that maps novel sound to object. - they guess, then modify the guess as more input comes in.

Through situational context - offers multiple cues e.g carers using communicative behaviour to draw attention to labels of object e.g. gaze following, salient speech cues etc.

Question 17

What evidence suggests that there is an infinite number of word-object mappings?

Answer 17

The Gavagai problem.