Word Learning

Question 1

What is linguistic communication?

Answer 1

It is the language that comes natural to us (oral, written, sign) and is automatic and effortless in first language learning with most children being able to comprehend a word before they can produce it.

Question 2

What is non-linguistic communication?

Answer 2

Things such as facial expressions and body movements

Question 3

What is infant/child-directed speech?

Answer 3

Mothers/baby talk, louder voice, slower speech, accentuates boundaries between words and phrases, simpler words, repeat and expand on child’s utterances and recasting.

Question 4

Why is child-directed speech preferred?

Answer 4

As it tends to attract their attention

Question 5

What kind of cues/information can you use to segment words from a speech stream?

Answer 5

Pauses between words, stress patterns and transitional probability

Question 6

Why is pauses between words not the best cue?

Answer 6

Not very reliable, often no pauses in between words but however can be used to segment first and last words in a sentence.

Question 7

What did Jusczyk find out about stress patterns?

Answer 7

That 7.5 month old infants can segment words using predominant stress patterns of their native language such as kingdom.
Infants that were familiarised with these sort of words listened longer to passages containing these words compared to control passages.

Question 8

What did Saffran find about stress patterns?

Answer 8

Infants can learn to use a different/new stress pattern in word segmentation.
Trochaic : emphasis on first syllable e.g DIti
Iambic : emphasis on last syllable e.g diTI

Question 9

What is transitional probability?

Answer 9

The probability of one sound following another e.g in a word

Question 10

When do one-word utterances tend to appear?

Answer 10

Emerge around 1 year and they tend to be simple words that the infant hears a lot in their everyday life e.g mummy

Question 11

What is a holophrase in correlation to one word utterances ?

Answer 11

A single word standing in for a larger sentence e.g saying ‘up’ for ‘pick me up’

Question 12

When does the two-word stage appear?

Answer 12

Emerges around 18 months

Question 13

How is the two-word stage learned?

Answer 13

By rote (habitual repetition) and it is inflexible.

Question 14

What is telegraphic speech texting speech?

Answer 14

For example when an infant says ‘man clean car’ meaning that a man is cleaning the car showing how they keep in the most important information and leave out the rest

Question 15

What do early words usually consist of?

Answer 15

Concrete nouns and basic-level category names

Question 16

What is fast mapping?

Answer 16

Quickly mapping a novel word to its meaning

Question 17

When does pointing and gaze occur?

Answer 17

P - before 12 months
G - 15 months

Question 18

Who was the 30 million word gap investigated by?

Answer 18

Hart and Risley

Question 19

What was the participants of the 30 million word gap experiment?

Answer 19

42 families - 13 professional, 23 working class and 6 welfare

Question 20

When were children and parent interactions recorded in the 30 mil experiment?

Answer 20

Monthly between 7 months and 3 years

Question 21

What was the differences in affirmatives (encouraging words) and prohibitions?

Answer 21

Professional 32 v 5 (6:1)
Working class 12 v 7 (2:1)
Welfare 5 v 11 (1:2)

Question 21

How was test performance differences in 3rd grade tested?

Answer 21

Through receptive vocabulary, language development and reading comprehension

Question 22

Where do the substantial differences in language come from (Fernald)?

Answer 22

Genetics, physical conditions of everyday life, access to crucial resources, social and psychological support, stress level and stability in the family

Question 23

Where did Casillas et al collect data from?

Answer 23

From a small scale, subsistence farming community in the highlands of Chiapas - southern Mexico

Question 24

What did Casillas find about infant directed speech?

Answer 24

More used in urban areas compared to rural so it is to universal

Question 25

What child behaviours did Baumwell et al look at when studying responsiveness?

Answer 25

1. bidding to or looking to mother
2. exploring an object
3. vocalising
4. playing with a ty

Question 26

What were the 6 categories of responsiveness in Baumwell et al’s experiment?

Answer 26

1. Affirmations of childs actions
2. Imitations of a childs vocalisation
3. Descriptions of an object, event or activity
4. Questions about an object, event or activity
5. Play prompts or demonstrations
6. Exploratory prompts

Question 27

What did Tamis-LeMonda et al found that maternal responsiveness predicts?

Answer 27

The timing of children’s achieving language milestones, first imitations, first words, 50 words in expressive language, combinatorial speech and the use of language to talk about the past