Week 6: Language Development Flashcards
What is phonology?
The rules governing the structure and sequence of speech sounds eg. discriminating the sound of “ba” and “pa”
What are the 4 components of language?
- Phonology
- Semantics
- Grammar
- Pragmatics
What is semantics?
Vocabulary, the way underlying concepts are expressed in words and word expressions eg. understanding the meaning of “car” in a sentence
What is grammar?
Syntax: The rules by which words are arranged into sentences.
Morphology: The use of grammatical markers indicating number, tense, person, gender etc
What is pragmatics?
Rules for engaging in appropriate and effective communication with others.
What are the 2 theories of language development?
- The Nativist Perspective
- The Interactionist Perspective
What does the nativist perspective suggest?
Suggests that language is a uniquely human accomplishment. That the rules for sentence organisation are too complex to be taught to or discovered by a cognitively advanced young child. That all children have a language acquisition device (LAD)
What is LAD?
An innate system that permits children, once they have acquired sufficiently vocabulary, to combine words into grammatically consistent, novel utterances and to understand the meaning of sentences they hear. Within the LAD, we have a universal grammar, a built-in storage of common rules across all human languages.
What are the 3 main evidences supporting the Nativist Perspective?
- Animals can’t acquire language
- Language areas in the brain
- A sensitive period for language development
Evidence that animals can’t acquire language
Even after years of training of artificial languages and American Sign Language (ASL), common chimpanzees are unable to produce three or more symbol strings that conform to a rule-based structure.
What are the 2 language areas in the brain?
- Broca’s Area
- Wernicke’s Area
What does the Broca’s Area do?
Supports grammatical processing and language production
What does the Wernicke’s Area do?
Involved in the comprehension of written and spoken language
Does the Broca’s Area and Wernicke’s Area work together?
Yes, they actively communicate through nerve fibers
Is language laterised in the human brain?
Yes, language is highly laterised in the human brain. However, the brain is not fully laterised at birth, and it is highly plastic and it develops as children acquire language.
Is language development higher when you are younger?
Yes
What are the 3 challenges to the Nativist Perspective?
- The universal grammar has not been clearly specified.
- Chomsky’s innatism in grammatical learning does not fit with certain empirical observations
- Chomsky’s theory doesn’t account for the pragmatic aspect of language learning
What is the Interactionist Perspective?
Emphasises interactions between inner cognitive capacities and environmental influences
What is categorical speech perception?
Refers to the ability to distinguish between different speech sounds (phonemes) in a way that reflects the categories used in human language.
What are the characteristics of Infant-Directed Speech?
- Short sentences
- High pitch
- Exaggerated expression
- Clear pronunciation
- Distinct pauses
What is joint attention?
The moments when a child and an adult are focused on the same thing; it involves the child and adult coordinating mutual engagement with their mutual focus on a third entity.
What happens during prelinguistic development?
Infants initiate and respond to joint attention. Gains in joint attention predict vocabulary learning. Deficits in children with autism spectrum disorder.
What is phonological development?
A complex process that depends on the child’s ability to attend to sound sequences, produce sounds, and combine them into understandable words and phrases.
When does word comprehension start?
Middle of the first year
On average, when do children say their first word?
At around 12 months
By age 6, how many words do children know the meaning to?
About 10,000 words, grows exponentially
Does comprehension or production ability develop first?
Comprehension
How does comprehension and production grow between 8 to 16 months?
Rates of learning accelerate for both, but the increase in vocabulary size is much more rapid in comprehension than in production.
What are some cultural and individual difference factors in vocabulary learning?
- Child’s temperament
- Quantity of caregiver-child conversation
- Richness of adults’ vocabulary
- Family SES
- Unique styles of language learning ie. referential vs expressive
What is telegraphic speech?
When young toddlers begin to product 2-word or few words utterances because they are not capable of constructing a full sentence yet
