Week 5 - developing lexicon

Question 1

What are the 3 theories of language acquisition?

Answer 1

Behaviourism, Nativism, Functionalism (construct information onto schemas)

Question 2

What is the Gavagai problem?

Answer 2

The concept that there is a potentially infinite number of possibilities for its meaning

Question 3

What is the Mapping problem?

Answer 3

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?

Question 4

What is the Extension problem?

Answer 4

Over and under-extension of words e.g. dogs for all 4 legged animals (overgeneralisation)
How far does the word apply?

Question 5

What is Joint Attention?

Answer 5

Sharing object of interest where child knows where adult is looking

Question 6

How does joint attention help learning words?

Answer 6

Can understand the speaker’s communicative intent

Question 7

What age for active joint attention?

Answer 7

• actively attending to eye gaze and gestures at 10-12 months

Question 8

What is Fast Mapping?

Answer 8

Trial and error - fast map between a new word and its likely meaning or process of elimination

Question 9

Who called children ‘Lexical Vacuum Cleaners’?

Answer 9

Pinker

Question 10

What age are 10 words used functionally?

Answer 10

13 months (8-16 months)

Question 11

What age are 50 words used functionally?

Answer 11

18 months (15-24 months)

Question 12

What age are 300 words used functionally?

Answer 12

24 months

Question 13

What is Whole Object Assumption?

Answer 13

Tendency to associate word meanings with whole objects

Question 14

What are BIASES?

Answer 14

Tendencies to assume words are used in certain ways

Question 15

How are objects taxonomically related?

Answer 15

If they belong to the same category e.g. cow & pig
NOT thematic relations such as river and bridge

Question 16

What is taxonomic assumption?

Answer 16

Assuming one word applies to objects taxonomically related such as knife and blade

Question 17

What is Mutual Exclusivity in words?

Answer 17

Each object will have only one label (word)

Question 18

What is Mutual Exclusivity Assumption?

Answer 18

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

Question 19

At 18 months, 50 words are used? What kind of words?

Answer 19

Common nouns associated with routines such as bath, meal times
- nouns first, then verbs

Question 20

What is the Noun Bias?

Answer 20

European countries suggest noun-before-verb preference
Kor. shows opposite

Question 21

What are salient nouns?

Answer 21

Nouns in languages where they cannot be omitted like Eng (can be omitted in Jap)

Question 22

What is the Word Spurt theory? (Benedict)

Answer 22

• 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

Question 23

What is the MacArthur CDI?

Answer 23

A questionnaire to ascertain and track child’s comprehension and language (development in UK)