Vocabulary and Terminology Chapter 8 Flashcards
High Amplitude Sucking (HAS)
experimental technique used to study sound discrimination in infants from birth to about six months; infants are given special pacifier that is connected to a sound-generating system; each suck generates a noise, and sucking behavior is used to draw conclusions about discrimination abilities
Conditioned Head-Turn Procedure
experimental technique with two phases: conditioning and testing; babies are conditioned to associate a change in sound with the activation of visual reinforcers; looks at whether a child learns to anticipate the reinforcers
Articulatory gestures
a movement of a speech organ in the production of speech, for example, the movement of the velum for the production of a nasal consonant
Canonical babbling
the continuous repetition of sequences of vowels an consonants like [mamama] by infants; also called repeated babbling
voice onset time (VOT)
the length of time between the release of a consonant and the onset of voicing, that is, when the vocal cords start to vibrate
Variegated babbling
production of meaningless consonant-vowel sequences by infants
holophrastic stage
stage in first-language acquisition during which children can produce only one word at a time
telegraphic stage
phase during which children use utterances composed primarily of content words
overgeneralization
a relationship between child and adult perception of word meaning; a process in which children extend the application of linguistic rules to contexts beyond those in the adult language
overextension
a relationship between child and adult perception of word meaning; the child’s application of a given word has a wider range than adults’
complexive concept
a term used in the study of child language acquisition; a group of items (abstract or concrete) that a child refers to with a single word for which it is not possible to single out any one unifying principle
Reinforcement Theory
theory which says children learn to speak like adults because they are praised, rewarded or otherwise reinforced when they use the right forms and are corrected when they use the wrong forms
innateness hypothesis
a hypothesis that humans are generally predisposed to learn and use language
Imitation theory
child language acquisition theory that claims that children acquire language by listening to the speech around them and reproducing what they hear
transfer
the influence of one’s native language on the learning of subsequent languages
code-switching
Using words or structural elements from more than one language within the same conversation (or even within a single sentence or phrase)
Infant-directed speech
speech used when communicating with infants; in the West, generally slow, high-pitched, repetitive, simplified
Active Construction of a Grammar Theory
theory of child language which says children acquire a language by inventing rules of grammar based on the speech around them
Connectionist Theories
language acquisition theory which claims children learn languages through connections in the brain; caused by exposure to and use of language
linguistic universals
property believed to be held in common by all natural languages
Social Interaction Theory
theory that claims that children acquire language through social interaction.
universal grammer
the theory that posits a set of grammatical characteristics shared by all natural languages; also the name of this set of shared characteristics
critical period
age span, usually described from birth to puberty, during which one must have exposure to language and must build the critical brain structures in order to gain native speaker competence in a language
underextension
Application of a word to a smaller set of objects than is appropriate for mature adult speech or the usual definition of the word.
