Word Learning Flashcards
What is linguistic communication?
natural language, automatic, comprehension then production
What are the 4 cues that are used to segment words from a speech stream?
- pauses
- pragmatic and social cues (pointing and gaze)
- stress patterns
- transitional probability
Issue with pauses as a cue to segment words
not reliable
What is transitional probability?
the probability of one sound following another sound
Stress patterns study (Jusczyk, 1999)
7.5 month infants can segment words using stress patterns in native language
e.g stress on first half was listened to more than words with stress on last half
What general vocab emerges around 1 year?
One word utterances e.g ‘up’ and ‘hot’
aka holophrase
What is holophrase?
single word replacing larger sentences
What is “Telegraphic” speech?
uses a limited no. of words
What general vocab emerges around 18 months?
multiword utterances
e,g “mommy read”
has a specific word order
What are heuristics?
biases
What are the 3 word learning heuristics?
perceptual
conceptual
lexical
What does perceptual heuristics mean?
shape bias
What does conceptual heuristics mean?
whole object bias
e.g more likely to map a novel word to a whole object than part of an object
includes taxonomic assumptions
What are taxonomic assumptions?
after a child learns a novel word to label a whole object, the child must learn how to apply the label to similar objects
What does lexical heuristics mean?
mutual exclusivity
word knowledge
What is cross situational learning?
hear ‘dog’ and ‘ball’
child knows what a ‘dog’ looks like so assumes other object is called a ‘ball’
What are the external factors which influence vocab development?
socio-economic status
child directed speech
interaction style (responsiveness)
socio-economic status study: Hart and Risley, 1995 (30 million word gap)
professional parents used more words when talking to children (45mil) compared to W/C parents (26mil) and welfare parents (13mil)
professional parents more likely to use affirmatives
child directed speech: Rowe, 2008
amount and quality of CDS predicts children’s vocab development
child directed speech: Casillas, 2020
found parents in urban countries use more child directed speech than parents in rural communities
Responsiveness: Tamis-LeMonda et al, 2001
10min child-parent play
types of responsiveness included affirmations, descriptions and questions of objects
children with mothers who are more responsive learn more words
Why do children with hearing loss struggle with word learning?
vocab size (more likely to have smaller vocab size)
lexical stresses
What are lexical stresses?
emphasis placed on a syllable within a word
