week 4 - language acquisition

Question 1

What is the main transformation that occurs in children between birth and 5 years of age regarding language?

Answer 1

Children transform into linguistically competent individuals who have mastered the basic structure of their native language

Question 2

What two main processes are involved in acquiring a language?

Answer 2

• comprehending what others communicate
• producing language

Question 3

What are the four main areas of language competence?

Answer 3

• phonology
• semantics
• syntax
• pragmatics

Question 4

Define phonology

Answer 4

Phonology is learning the sounds and combinations of sounds used in the native language

Question 5

Provide an example of how phonemes can vary between languages

Answer 5

In English, ‘l’ and ‘r’ are separate phonemes, while in Japanese they are a single phoneme

Question 6

Define semantics

Answer 6

Semantics is learning the meanings encoded in words and sentences, including how utterances refer to objects, people, and events. It also includes the words we know, called the lexicon

Question 7

What preferences do infants show in relation to language even before their first productions?

Answer 7

Infants show a preference for their mother’s voice and can discriminate between familiar and unfamiliar languages, preferring the familiar one

Question 8

What happens to infants’ ability to discriminate between accents over time?

Answer 8

Infants initially discriminate between different accents, but later they are able to ignore these differences

Question 9

Think perceptual narrowing

How does infants’ perception of speech sounds change as they get older?

Answer 9

• Infants are born able to distinguish speech sounds from all the world’s languages, but with experience, they focus on the sounds of their native language.
• This leads to enhanced processing of their native language and a reduced ability to distinguish sounds of foreign languages, which is known as perceptual narrowing

Question 10

What is the challenge of word segmentation?

Answer 10

Word segmentation is the challenge children face in picking words out of the continuous speech stream and figuring out which sounds to put together to form a word
- how do they figure out which sounds to put together to form a word?
- most word boundaries not marked by pauses
- words do not typically appear in isolation

Question 11

What is statistical learning?

Answer 11

Statistical learning is the ability to perceive and track regularities (patterns) in language. This mechanism helps infants identify potential words in speech

Question 12

What did the Saffran et al. (1996) study demonstrate about infants and statistical learning?

Answer 12

The study showed that 8-month-old infants are sensitive to the statistical regularities of speech sounds, listening longer to non-words than to familiar “words” from a made-up language
- had a novelty preference for non words

Question 13

At what age to children typically comprehend their own name?

Answer 13

around 4.5 months

Question 14

When do children typically start to comprehend their first nouns?

Answer 14

around 6 months, typically common objects, body parts, and people

Question 15

When do children start to comprehend verbs?

Answer 15

between 10 and 13 months

Question 16

think reading

What is the importance of social experience on language skills? (Reese, 2019)

Answer 16

The amount of time caregivers read to 2-year-olds is positively related to their language skills at 4 years

Question 17

Around what age do children typically say their first words?

Answer 17

around 10 to 15 months

Question 18

What are the median vocabulary sizes at 16, 23, and 30 months?

Answer 18

• 16 months: 55 words
• 23 months: 225 words
• 30 months: 573 words

Question 19

What is the median vocabulary size of a six year old?

Answer 19

a 6 year old knows around 6000 words and can comprehend approx 14,000

Question 20

How is the comprehension of word meaning tested in the intermodal preferential looking paradigm (IPLP)?

Answer 20

In IPLP, two images are presented, and when a child hears a word matching one of the images, they will look longer at the image that matches

Question 21

What is a “vocabulary spurt” and when does it typically occur?

Answer 21

A vocabulary spurt is an acceleration in the rate of growth of productive vocabulary that occurs around 18 months, adding 8-24 new words to their vocabulary each week

Question 22

What types of words do infants tend to learn first during the vocabulary spurt?

Answer 22

• objects (especially those they can manipulate)
• relational words (referring to the state/location of objects)
• verbs

Question 23

What is “fast mapping” in word learning?

Answer 23

fast mapping is making an initial, quick guess about a new word’s meaning, which is then refined with more input. learning by exclusion

Question 24

Define underextension

Answer 24

underextension is when children use a word for an overly narrow class of referents, such as using “truck” only for a toy truck
- they havent yet generalised the word to all trucks
- earlier in development

Question 25

Define overextension

Answer 25

overextention is when children use a word for an **overly broad class of referents** such as calling all men "dad" - later in development

Question 26

How do cognitive biases guide children's acquisition of meaning?

Answer 26

assumptions or **cognitive biases** guide children's acquisition of word meanings - also known as lexical constraints

Question 27

What is the Whole Object Assumption?

Answer 27

the whole object assumption is the idea that a new word refers to a **whole object, rather than a part of it**

Question 28

What is the Mutual Exclusivity Assumption?

Answer 28

the mutual exclusivity assumption is the idea that a new word's meaning **does not overlap with the meaning of a known word** (can overcome whole-object assumption) - e.g. known = cup, handle = some part of the cup

Question 29

# Nurture What does the empiricist view argue about the nature of cognitive development?

Answer 29

- believes that knowledge is gained through **experience** - perceptual abilities, concepts are learned - there are no innate structures - believe children are **blank slates**, with similar mental processes to adults, but less experience of the world, so less knowledge

Question 30

What does the nativist view argue about the nature of cognitive development?

Answer 30

- knowledge and the ability to perceive are present at birth and **innately "programmed" to unfold** via maturation - believes children are **little adults**: norn with knowledge structures that unfold via maturation

Question 31

What does empiricism propose about language learning? (Skinner, 1957) (Saffron et al., 1996)

Answer 31

- language is learned through exposure and processes like **association, imitation, and reinforcement** and **statistical learning**, driven by **domain-general perceptual and cognitive processes** - e.g. adult holds bottle and says "bottle", creates association, child imitates word

Question 32

What does Nativism propose about language development?

Answer 32

- Nativism suggests that infants are born with an **innate capacity to acquire language** - Chomsky (1959) says language learning is not rquired, children have cognitive biases for word learning -nativism proposes an **innate language acquisition device (LAD)** in the brain, meaning humans are born with a specific innate component in the brain for language

Question 33

what is "poverty of stimulus" and how does it relate to the nativist view of language development?

Answer 33

- **poverty of stimulus:** refers to the idea that te speech children hear is unclear, contains errors, and lacks sufficient information for them to learn grammar, which supports the nativist view of **innate language capacity** - children make predictable grammatical error which **would not be predicted by learning theory** as adults do not make them

Question 33

What is the interactivist view of language acquisition?

Answer 33

proposes that children are **biologically prepared to acquire language** through experience

Question 34

How is language learning a social process?

Answer 34

learning language requires children to be part of a **community where people interact and talk to eachother**. - amound of Infant directed speech (IDS) heard is related to later language skills - social cues and a responsive social partner are important for word learning

Question 35

Is Infant directed speech (IDS) universal?

Answer 35

Yes, IDS is produced spontaneously and consistently across languages and cultures - 1615 recordings of infant- and adult-directed speech produced by 410 people in 21 urban, rural, and small-scale societies - IDS shares common acoustic features across cultures - Played recordings of IDS or ADS to 51,065 people from 187 countries, who guessed whether each vocalization was infant-directed - Cross-cultural recognition of IDS

Question 36

What is Infant directed speech (IDS)?

Answer 36

The characteristic way in which adults **modify their speech** when addressing young children - exaggerated intonation, higher pitch, elongated vowel sounds (Fernald & Kuhl, 1987)

Question 37

What are some of the developmental benefits of IDS?

Answer 37

- IDS draws childrens attention to speech (Fernald & Kuhl, 1987) - emphasises prosodic cues to facilitate speech segmentation - makes speech sounds easier to distinguish and learn (Kuhl et al.m 1997)

Question 38

Explain the study measuring amount of speech directed to infants in low-SES Spanish speaking families

Answer 38

- all day recordings of parent-infant interactions in the home - 29 infants at 19 months, language skills tested at 24 months - large variation in amount of IDS between families - children who **heard more IDS at 19 months had larger expressive vocabularies** and more efficient basic language processing at 24 months - speech not directed at infants unrelated to child outcomes

Question 39

What is social contingency and how does it influence word learning?

Answer 39

**social contingency is a reciprocal exchange between two people (e.g. adult and child)** - Mothers taught children 2 novel words in a within-participants design - Uninterrupted teaching - Teaching interrupted by mobile call - Children heard novel word the same number of times in each condition - Children learned the novel words in uninterrupted teaching condition only - interruptions to socially contingent interactions **disrupt learning**

Question 40

What is a simultaneous bilingual?

Answer 40

a child who learns two languages **roughly from birth**

Question 41

What is a sequential bilingual?

Answer 41

a child who learns a second language **after they have already learnt a first**

Question 42

Does language developemnt of children learning 2 languages differ from that of children only exposed to 1?

Answer 42

when **total vocabulary** for both languages is considered, bilingual and monolingual vocab growth rates match, though growth in each language is slower