Word Learning

Question 1

What is linguistic communication?

Answer 1

natural language, automatic, comprehension then production

Question 2

What are the 4 cues that are used to segment words from a speech stream?

Answer 2

• pauses
• pragmatic and social cues (pointing and gaze)
• stress patterns
• transitional probability

Question 3

Issue with pauses as a cue to segment words

Answer 3

not reliable

Question 4

What is transitional probability?

Answer 4

the probability of one sound following another sound

Question 5

Stress patterns study (Jusczyk)

Answer 5

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

Question 6

What general vocab emerges around 1 year?

Answer 6

One word utterances e.g ‘up’ and ‘hot’
aka holophrase

Question 7

What is holophrase?

Answer 7

single word replacing larger sentences

Question 8

What is “Telegraphic” speech?

Answer 8

uses a limited no. of words

Question 9

What general vocab emerges around 18 months?

Answer 9

multiword utterances
e,g “mommy read”
has a specific word order

Question 10

What are heuristics?

Answer 10

biases

Question 11

What are the 3 word learning heuristics?

Answer 11

perceptual
conceptual
lexical

Question 12

What does perceptual heuristics mean?

Answer 12

shape bias

Question 13

What does conceptual heuristics mean?

Answer 13

whole object bias
e.g more likely to map a novel word to a whole object than part of an object
includes taxonomic assumptions

Question 14

What are taxonomic assumptions?

Answer 14

after a child learns a novel word to label a whole object, the child must learn how to apply the label to similar objects

Question 15

What does lexical heuristics mean?

Answer 15

mutual exclusivity
word knowledge

Question 16

What is cross situational learning?

Answer 16

hear ‘dog’ and ‘ball’
child knows what a ‘dog’ looks like so assumes other object is called a ‘ball’

Question 17

What are the external factors which influence vocab development?

Answer 17

socio-economic status
child directed speech
interaction style (responsiveness)

Question 18

socio-economic status study: Hart and Risley (30 million word gap)

Answer 18

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

Question 19

child directed speech: Rowe

Answer 19

amount and quality of CDS predicts children’s vocab development

Question 20

child directed speech: Casillas

Answer 20

found parents in urban countries use more child directed speech than parents in rural communities

Question 21

Responsiveness: Tamis-LeMonda

Answer 21

10min child-parent play
types of responsiveness included affirmations, descriptions and questions of objects
children with mothers who are more responsive learn more words

Question 22

Why do children with hearing loss struggle with word learning?

Answer 22

vocab size (more likely to have smaller vocab size)
lexical stresses

Question 23

What are lexical stresses?

Answer 23

emphasis placed on a syllable within a word