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20 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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how is language learned?
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the language acquisition of all children occurs gradually through interaction with people and the environment crucially, language acquisition occurs because humans have certain cognitive endowments that allow us to learn language
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how do we assess what infants who cannot yet speak know or are learning about language?
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sucking habituation paradigm
head turn technique preferential looking |
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what is the sucking habituation paradigm and how is it used to assess infants and their understanding/knowledge of language?
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- babies prefer novel stimuli
- when they habituate to a stimuli their sucking rate decreases - when detect change in the environment their rate of sucking increases - can use this technique to show discrimination and category boundaries |
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what is the head turn technique and how is it used to assess infants and their understanding/knowledge of language?
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- babies trained so that they know when there is something new in the environment an enticing object will appear to one side
- once babies trained, will automatically look in direction of enticing object when detect change in stimuli - if onset of enticing object is slightly delayed, babies’ head turns will anticipate onset - can use this technique to show discrimination and category boundaries |
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what is preferential looking and how is it used to assess infants and their understanding/knowledge of language?
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- there are two screens
- see where children look when they hear stimuli like ‘The rabbit and the duck are gorping’ OR ‘The rabbit is gorping the duck’. |
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How do infants break into the speech signal and begin to recognize individual words in the speech stream?
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Perceive contrasts (e.g. /pa/ vs. /ba/) (e.g., Eimas, 1974)
- approx. 1-4 months, have categorical perception for voicing, place, and manner of articulation as adults - have categorical perception for distinctions not in the adult language (e.g., Aslin et al, 1981) - after 6-8 months only retain categorical perception for distinctions present in input language - similar pattern in production (e.g., Mehler et al, 1988) Sensitive to prosodic cues like stress Stress in English is primarily STRONweak in bisyllabic words. - 9-month-olds listen more to bisyllabic words with STRONGweak (HOR.net) than weakSTRONG (poLICE) (e.g., Jusczyk et al, 1993) - shows that by 9 months infants have discovered the predominant stress pattern in English Four-day-old infant can distinguish between utterances of their maternal language and other languages - prefer language(s) spoken by parents - again, likely that the discrimination and preference based primarily on prosodic cues Sensitive to sound patterns (phonotactic constraints) in the language exposed to Able to figure out that certain sequences are typically found in certain positions (e.g. Friederici & Wessels, 1993). - [br] is generally found at the beginning of a word - [rt] is generally found at the end of a word - infants heard nonwords with sequences that occur at beginning of word [bref] vs. [febr] and sequences at the end [murt] vs. [rtum] - 9-month-olds, but not 4.5 or 6, listened more to nonwords with permissible sequences - indicates familiarity with permissible sequences and their position - this skill could help infants locate word boundaries We clearly have mechanisms that allow us to break into the speech signal and learn language. In what follows we are going to look at exactly what children are learning throughout the language acquisition process |
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Developing linguistic skills (pre-linguistic skills)
Birth to first word - approx. 0-12 months |
perceptual/motor skills developing
- able to volitionally control motions cognitive skills developing - developing categories & concepts - object permanence emerges social skills developing - can get across communicative intent (speech acts - declarative, request, interrogative, etc.) - eventually this will link up with communication linguistic developments - series of babbling, from very simple to more complex a) reflexive crying & vegitative sounds (0-8 weeks) - done mostly to breathe b) cooing & laughter (8-20 weeks) - [ku:ku:ku:] and [ha:ha:ha] sounds made - sometimes in response to speech and can serve a social function c) vocal play (16-30 weeks) - done for play NOT as a reflex - begins making speech sounds - long vowels, syllables, play with intonation - vocalizations expand to a wide range of sounds (preferences vary among infants) d) reduplicated babbling (25-50 weeks) - repeats the same sound/syllable, e.g., [bababa] - has sentence-like intonation - is spontaneous - usually NOT done in imitation of adults - at first limited to a small range of consonants [p,t,n,m,y] and vowels, then expands to large range of sounds (even to sounds NOT in the language the child is exposed to) e) non-reduplicated babbling (approx. 9 months) vocalizations are varied in syllable structure [tadi] infants begin to produce large number of speech sounds begin playing with voice quality, pitch, etc. function is to practice motor skills and link them up with perceptual sounds sounds like child is saying sentences, but with no real words (later when child has a few words will incorporate into jargon for phrase length utterance) child begins to be imitative at around 11 months sounds and intonation pattern narrowed down to those used in the language the child is exposed to All infants go through the universal stages of babbling, even deaf infants. It appears to be preprogrammed/innate. By the end of this stage hearing infants differ from deaf ones – the sounds a hearing infant recognizes and produces are only those used in the language the infant is exposed to. |
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development of words in children
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words are produced at approx. 1 yr.
- new words are added slowly in the first year - by 18 – 24 months have approx. 50 words - at this point a vocabulary explosion occurs - word development is dependent on cognitive development (at early stages can only map word meaning onto concepts already have) - we will look at the mapping problem how children map meaning to words |
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disucss overextension
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- most common when child is 1-2 years old
- occur less often and harder to detect when children are older -can account for nearly one third of all productions from 1-2 years Fairly easy to detect in production, but may be less common than underextensions. - Child uses word that is inconsistent with but in some way related to adult meaning of the word. - Sense/reference: Child’s meaning extends beyond adult category. - Words used appropriately AND inappropriately e.g., child calls dog, cat, and cow ‘doggie’. Overextensions can be guided by a ‘perceptual’ and ‘functional’ factors. e.g., calling wooden rod ‘penny’ when shoved it into slot where child usually shoves penny e.g., calling both picture of and ring of telephone in another room ‘phone’ |
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no overlap
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No Overlap
Word is ‘accidentally’ used in some regular context by adult, so child misanalyzes what it refers to, and uses it to mean something different from adult meaning. e.g., child used ‘pretty’ to mean ‘flowers’, since mom regularly said ‘Look at the pretty flowers.’ e.g., child used ‘gap’ to mean ‘belly button’, since she regularly had a gap between her shirt and pants where her belly button showed. e.g., child used ‘too short’ to mean ‘I don’t like it’, because when he wanted to put on a tape at night to go to bed to, Mom always want to put on a long one so he’d be asleep before it was over. If he picked out a short one, Mom said it’s ‘too short’. He took that to be a way of saying ‘I don’t like it’. Cases of no overlap are somewhat hard to detect. - need to detect absence of use of word, e.g., ‘flower’, pointing at flower and saying ‘pretty’ might not be detected as mismatch between adult and child’s use - can detect more if do comprehension studies e.g., tell child ‘go get my shoes’ and child at age 9 months only comes back with No overlap may be more common than we think. - need to construct study that carefully observes when children use a word and when they DON’T, which is hard. Cases of no overlap may be short-lived. e.g., child quickly broaden meaning of ‘pretty’ when heard adults use word in other contexts. Or cases of no overlap may persist for a long time, as categories slowly develop due to more knowledge of the world. |
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underextension
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Underextension
A word is used for a limited reference, not to the full range of items which adult uses it for. e.g., child used ‘doggie’ for just his/her own dog, no other dogs e.g., child used ‘car’ only for moving cars seen out of window e.g., child used ‘baby’ just for picture of herself, ‘papa’ just for her daddy, ‘ticktock’ only her fathers’ wristwatch e.g., child used ‘round’ only for balls Amount of under-extension may be under recorded because if a child uses ‘round’ to label balls, the label is essentially true. |
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Why in some instances does the mapping of a child’s meaning not match the adult’s?
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Children want to be able to talk about lots of things.
They are going through the process of ‘lexicalization’ (acquiring words to represent all the things they want to talk about). Before they have the adult lexicon and meanings worked out, they have to develop hypotheses about the boundaries of the meanings of words, as well as use the words they have already to talk about things they don’t have words for yet. |
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Syntactic Development
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Once children can say words we can start talking about the development of syntax.
All children learn syntax before they go to school. They are not consciously aware of syntactic “rules”, but they already know what sentences are grammatically acceptable and which are not. How do they do this? - by listening to adults - by constructing sentences - by hypothesis testing How do children go from using individual words, to being able to combine words to express more than one element of an event or scene? |
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One-Word Stage (approx. 12-18 months)
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Communicate using one word at a time
- use holophrase (one word is entire speech act) e.g., cookie for ‘I want a cookie’ |
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What do children need to move out of the one-word stage?
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- need two words that can be used to discuss same situation
- at about 18 months they have spurt in vocabulary growth - begin to have more control over motor production - plan and execute longer spans of speech |
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Methods for “easing” into two-word stage:
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Methods for “easing” into two-word stage:
1. Vertical Construction - juxtapose two words about the same propostion - each word has its own intonation pattern e.g. Mommy? Cookie? 2. Phonological Dummies - use phonological fillers that are NOT real words, but which allow child to practice a longer utterance e.g. Mommy wida - Here the child practice producing larger utterance, but only has to activate one meaning. 3. Memorize formula which is actually two words - These can be the basis for segmenting units and figuring patterns. e.g. child says wuwiup for hurry up - Eventually the child realized that this has the word up in it. - Then the child can combine other words with up. |
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Two-Word Stage (approx. 20-24 months)
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By age 2 most children know about 300 words, so they have enough words for two-word utterances.
- big increase in % of verbs, but lots of nouns too - begin to acquire function words (prepositions, conjunctions and pronouns), e.g. light off - acquire more interactional words e.g. nono, allgone Use two words to express a proposition (a true statement about something) - can express more than one element of a “scene” usually only lasts a month or two still contains many one word utterances may contains longer formulaic utterances may contain phonological dummies |
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Telegraphic Stage
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For English, need to realize that word order is important to meaning.
‘Minnie kissed Mickey’ means something different from ‘Mickey kissed Minnie’ word order becomes stable, so syntax develops - in languages with freer word order, but lots of morphology, order of morphemes becomes more stable - start reserving slots: ___ ___ ___ subject verb object agent experiencer entity increased use of function words & inflectional morphology - consistent order of morpheme acquisition as child gets older works on - discourse, social factors, literacy, metalinguistic ability (ability to think and talk about language itself) |
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Morphological Development
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generally up until the two-word stage there is NO morphological marking on words
for example, nouns appear without plural marking, verbs without tense/aspect suffixes, etc. once children start acquiring morphology research shows that acquisition of morphemes occurs in a certain order (this is in English only) present progressive -ing on verbs plural -s on nouns past -ed on verbs possessive -’s on nouns third person -s on verbs |
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How do we assess children’s, knowledge of morphology?
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- Jean Berko Gleason (1958) showed children aged 4-7 drawings of people and cartoon-like animals performing actions.
- the cartoon-like animals were given non-sense labels like wug, kaz, mot, etc. - children were then tested on plural and past tense morphemes by being asked to complete a sentence |
