traiectorile limbii

Question 1

what are the early language milestones

Answer 1

0-3m
infants produce non-speech sounds.

3m
infants produce vowel like sounds

0-5m
infants discriminate phonetic contrasts of all languages.

6m
language specific perception for vowels

8m
detection of typical stress pattern in words

9m
recognition of language specific sound combination

10m
language specific speech production

11m
decline in foreign language consonant perception
increase in native language consonant perception

12m
first word production

Question 2

what are later milestones

Answer 2

12-18m
saying first words with meaning
understanding more words than they can say

18m - 12y
combining words in telegraphic speech - me go
using simple pronouns - me
naming objects they see regularly
responding to easy commands

2-3y
beginning to say longer sentences of 3 words
using some plurals and past tenses
talking about what they are doing as they do it

3-4y
speaking more clearly
asking who, why, what questions

4-5y
using more complex sentences with words like because, if
telling stories
being able to answer questions about stories
being able to follow requests

Question 3

how to we measure vocabulary

Answer 3

CDI scores
parents report how many words they child can produce

Question 4

what is language like in multilingual language learners

Answer 4

higher number of words for bilingual bc they know words in 2 languages

higher number of concepts for monolingual - they actually know what the word means

monolinguals are better at dominant language than bilinguals

Question 5

how are bilingual babies at language with older siblings

Answer 5

english and spanish

english (non-dominant) was better for kids with older sibling

due to more exposure to their non-dominant language

spanish (dominant) was lower if they had school aged siblings

so language is dependent on the environment

Question 6

why care about early vocab scores

Answer 6

language is critical for long term outcomes

preschool language predicts reading success

if you invest in high quality child care early on, you get better outcomes in education

by age 3 babies with university educated parents have been found to have vocabularies 2-3 times larger than those whose parents had not completed school

Question 7

what explains the huge variation in typical language trajectories

Answer 7

30 million word gap
controversy which looked at the longitudinal relationship between the amount of parental language directed to the child and children’s later vocabulary

RESULT
lower SES groups spoke less to their child
30 million word gap by age 3 between most and least privileged families

Question 8

are the amount of words more important than the quality of speech? quantity over quality?

Answer 8

fluency and connectedness and conversational turns seem critical

meta analysis found quality is stronger predictor than quantity of later language trajectories

Question 9

what are the problems with the 30 million word gap

Answer 9

included speech from only mother of infant

they did another study and they didn’t find less speech overall in the lower class samples than higher class samples

Question 10

what is language atypical development

Answer 10

there are many speech and language disorders:

developmental language disorder
dyslexia

Question 11

what is developmental language disorder DLD

Answer 11

children who have difficulties with all aspects of language

DLD is associated with higher risk of:
- reading, spelling, maths difficulties
- anxiety, depression
- social, emotional and behavioural problems at skl
- unemployment in adulthood

Question 12

what is dyslexia

Answer 12

Dyslexia is a learning difficulty that primarily affects the skills involved in accurate and fluent word reading and spelling.

Question 13

what is a root cause of atypical language trajectories

Answer 13

rhythm
prosody (stress and intonation) is important for learning language

Question 14

difficulty matching neural oscillations in brain to oscillations in speech sound

Answer 14

brains are constantly oscillating

how well does the brain signals lock onto the rhythm of the speech sound

if our brains are oscillating in time with speech it’s easier to detect where the rise is (prosody)

in atypical language trajectories, brain can’t lock onto the rhythms we are hearing

Question 15

what is amplitude envelope

Answer 15

the rhythm of speech can be determined by examining its amplitude envelope.
The amplitude envelope refers to the varying intensity or loudness of the sound wave over time.

to identify where syllables and words begin and end in speech, it’s important to detect the “rise time” of the sounds within the amplitude envelope.

When our brain waves match the rhythm of speech we’re hearing, it helps us understand speech better. This matching makes it easier to tell where syllables and words start and stop, helping us understand speech more clearly.

Question 16

speech intelligibility

Answer 16

adult MEG studies

removing rhythmic information from speech reduces its intelligibility.

This is because the brain relies on rhythmic cues, or “edges,” in the speech signal to understand it better.

When the brain’s own rhythmic patterns align with the rhythmic patterns in speech, it becomes easier to understand speech.

However, if the brain rhythms don’t synchronise well with speech rhythms, it becomes harder to comprehend what is being said.

Question 17

can infants match oscillations to speech

Answer 17

Infants as young as 4 months old can track the rhythm of stressed syllables in speech. This means they can detect and follow the patterns of emphasis in spoken language.

mTRF Modelling: to study how infants’ brains track the rhythm of nursery rhymes

Prediction of Vocabulary: infants who showed stronger cortical tracking of nursery rhymes at 11 months old tended to have larger vocabularies by the age of 24 months. This suggests that the ability to track speech rhythms in infancy may be related to later language development and vocabulary growth.

Question 18

what is rhythm like in dyslexia

Answer 18

children with dyslexia do not align the most important part of the speech signal

the oscillations are still tracking the stimuli but they are not at the optimal phase

Question 19

taping in typical development

Answer 19

typical developing adolescents were asked to synchronise their tapping with a metronome

Adolescents who tapped more consistently in time with the metronome, tended to perform better on tests measuring reading and attention skills. This suggests a correlation between tapping consistency and cognitive abilities related to reading and attention.

The variability in tapping performance was found to be inversely related to temporal precision within the auditory system.