Week Nine - Language Acquisition (Theories & Talking)

Question 1

Behaviourism/Learning Theory?

Answer 1

Language is acquired just like any other learned behaviour

Question 2

Behaviourism/Learning Theory says language develops via?

Answer 2

adults reinforcement
adults gradual shaping of babbling
childrens application of general learning rules

Question 3

3 ways of learning in learning theory

Answer 3

classical conditioning (eg milk bottle)
operant conditioning (imitation and shaping- becoming selective)
social learning (observes others)

Question 4

Weakness of learning theory

Answer 4

Children say things they’ve never heard before

mute/intellectually disabled children still learn to comprehend

Question 5

Connectionist Model?

Answer 5

language is acquired via a general associative learning mechanism
- input
- interconnections
- output
language emerges as a product of basic associative capacities to process information (ie associate meaning to a word)

Question 6

weaknesses of connectionist model?

Answer 6

children learn numerous linguistic forms at one and don’t always get feedback that is helpful

Question 7

Around 1 year old, children do what?

Answer 7

make gestures at desired object, face expressions, persistent, babbling

Question 8

Why do infants babble? 2 hypith

Answer 8

Continuity hypothesis: direct precursor to speech

Discontinuity hypothesis: initial stage has many consonants and second stage has native sounds only

no clear evidence for either

Question 9

How are first words phonologically simplified?

Answer 9

omit final consonant
reduce consonant clusters
omit unstressed syllables
repeat syllables

often a holophrase

Question 10

First words are often __ rather than __ words and often they are ___

Answer 10

content rather than function words and often nouns

Question 11

The mapping problem?

Answer 11

constraints on learning names for things or events

Question 12

3 mapping problem constraints?

Answer 12

Whole-object assumption: labels apply to whole objects
Taxonomic constraint: a word refer to a category of similar things
Mutual exclusivity assumption: each object only has one label

Question 13

Strategies for mapping problem?

Answer 13

assume novel name maps onto object for which you don’t have a name yet (N3C)

syntactic cues (that man in john)

explicit definitions

joint attention

Question 14

What is overextension?

Answer 14

use a word to refer to overly large category of object (eg car for all things with wheels)

Question 15

What is underextension?

Answer 15

Word used to refer to fewer concepts than is appropriate (eg bear is only childs toy)

Question 16

Mismatch in word learning?

Answer 16

child misunderstands word-object match on first occasion

Question 17

How do children learn which words can do what?

Answer 17

They need to learn what syntactic category the word belongs to so that they know how to use it = window onto learning

Question 18

How do children learn syntactic categories? 3

Answer 18

1. just allocate words to innate syntactic categories (ready for input with rules)
2. semantic knowledge develops into syntactic categories (asyntactic and make gross distinctions)
3. notice regularities in the language about which words do what

Question 19

How to assess early syntactic production?

Answer 19

observational studies
experimental studies
- rule application to novel word
- imitation of complex phrase

Question 20

How to assess early syntactic comprehension?

Answer 20

Ask children to act out sentence with toys or point to appropriate picture

Question 21

Telegraphic speech?

Answer 21

Only using content words

Question 22

What is the mean length of utterance? (MLU)

Answer 22

Mean number of morphemes per average utterance at a given time