Vocabulary File 8.0 Flashcards
Innateness Hypothesis
A hypothesis that humans are genetically predisposed to learn and use language.
Imitation Theory
Theory of language acquisition that claims that children acquire language by listening to the speech around them and reproducing what they hear.
Reinforcement Theory
Theory of language acquisition that says that 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 ones.
Active Construction of a Grammar Theory
Theory of language acquisition that says that children acquire a language by inventing rules of grammar based on the speech around them.
Connectionist Theory
Theory of language acquisition that claims that children learn language through neural connections in the brain. A child develops such connections through exposure to language and by using language.
Social Interaction Theory
Theory of language acquisition that claims that children acquire language through social interaction- in particular with older children and adults- and prompt their caregivers to supply them with the appropriate language experience they need.
Linguistic Universal
Property believed to be held in common by all natural languages.
Universal Grammar
The theory that posits a set of grammatical characteristic shared by all natural languages.
Critical Period
Age span, usually described as lasting from birth to the onset of puberty, during which children must have exposure to language and must build the critical brain structures necessary in order to gain native speaker competence in a language.
Neglected Children
A child who is neglected by caretakers, often resulting in significantly lower exposure to language as a child.
Feral Children
A child who grew up in the wild without care by human adults, often with animals.
Homesign
A rudimentary visual-gesture communication system (not a language) that is developed and used by deaf children and their families when is signed language is not made available for their communication.
Child-directed speech
Speech used by parents or caregivers when communicating with young children or infants. In many Western societies, child directed speech is slow and high-pitched and has many repetitions, simplified syntax, exaggerated intonation, and a simple and concrete vocabulary.
High Amplitude Sucking (HAS)
Experimental technique used to study sound discrimination in infants from birth to about six months. Infants are given a special pacifier that is connected to a sound generating system. Each suck on the pacifier generating noise, and infants’ sucking behavior is used to draw conclusions about discrimination abilities.
Conditioned Head-Turn Procedure (HT)
Experimental technique usually use with infants between 5 and 18 months with two phases: conditioning & testing. During the conditioning phase, the infant who learns to associate a change and sound with the activation of visual reinforcers, first presented at the same time and then into session, such that the infant begins to anticipate the appearance of the visual reinforcers and look at them before they are activated. During the testing phase, when the infant looks to the visual reinforcers immediately after a change and sound, it suggests that the infant has perceive the change and sound, thereby demonstrating the ability to discriminate between the two sounds involved.
Voice onset time (VOT)
The length of time between the release of a consonant and the onset of voicing, that is, when the vocal folds start vibrating.
Articulatory Gestures
The movement of a speech organ in the production of speech, for example, the movement of the vellum for the production of a nasal consonant.
Babbling
A phase in child language acquisition during which the child produces meaningless sequences of consonants and vowels. Generally begins around the age of six months.
Canonical Babbling
Continuous repetition of sequences of vowels and consonants like “mamama” by infants, also called repeated babbling.
Variegated Babbling
Production of meaningless consonant-vowel sequences by infants.
Holophrastic Stage also known as One-Word Stage
Stage in first-language acquisition during which children can produce only one word at a time.
Telegraphic Stage
A phase during child language acquisition in which children use utterances composed primarily of content words.
Overgeneralization
In the study of child language acquisition, a relationship between child and adult application of rules relative to certain context; a process in which children extend the application of linguistic rules to contexts beyond those in the adult language.
Complexive Concept
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