Week 5 - developing lexicon Flashcards
What are the 3 theories of language acquisition?
Behaviourism, Nativism, Functionalism (construct information onto schemas)
What is the Gavagai problem?
The concept that there is a potentially infinite number of possibilities for its meaning
What is the Mapping problem?
Even if something is explicitly labelled ‘look dog’, how does the child know specifically what the word refers to? A part of the dog like head?
What is the Extension problem?
Over and under-extension of words e.g. dogs for all 4 legged animals (overgeneralisation)
How far does the word apply?
What is Joint Attention?
Sharing object of interest where child knows where adult is looking
How does joint attention help learning words?
Can understand the speaker’s communicative intent
What age for active joint attention?
- actively attending to eye gaze and gestures at 10-12 months
What is Fast Mapping?
Trial and error - fast map between a new word and its likely meaning or process of elimination
Who called children ‘Lexical Vacuum Cleaners’?
Pinker
What age are 10 words used functionally?
13 months (8-16 months)
What age are 50 words used functionally?
18 months (15-24 months)
What age are 300 words used functionally?
24 months
What is Whole Object Assumption?
Tendency to associate word meanings with whole objects
What are BIASES?
Tendencies to assume words are used in certain ways
How are objects taxonomically related?
If they belong to the same category e.g. cow & pig
NOT thematic relations such as river and bridge
What is taxonomic assumption?
Assuming one word applies to objects taxonomically related such as knife and blade
What is Mutual Exclusivity in words?
Each object will have only one label (word)
What is Mutual Exclusivity Assumption?
When faced with a new word, the assumption that it cannot label a known word - must be a specific part of it or mean something different
- must overrise mutual exclusivity bias
At 18 months, 50 words are used? What kind of words?
Common nouns associated with routines such as bath, meal times
- nouns first, then verbs
What is the Noun Bias?
European countries suggest noun-before-verb preference
Kor. shows opposite
What are salient nouns?
Nouns in languages where they cannot be omitted like Eng (can be omitted in Jap)
What is the Word Spurt theory? (Benedict)
- After the first word, children add average of 8-11 words to vocab each month
- After 50 words (approx. 18 months) increases to average 22-37 new words pm
- not necessarily permanent additions
What is the MacArthur CDI?
A questionnaire to ascertain and track child’s comprehension and language (development in UK)
