child language development (speech) Flashcards

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1
Q

What is Skinner’s claim?

theory

A

that children learn language through copying and imitating others

SKINNER’S IMITATION THEORY

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2
Q

what is the evidence for Skinner’s imitation theory?

theory

A
  • Brown’s fis phenomenon
  • Katherine Nelson’s children’s 50 first words
  • Phonemic contraction
  • Melodic utterance
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3
Q

What is the evidence against Skinner’s imitation theory?

theory

A
  • Rewards given to children when applying the correct grammar or lexis
  • When children produce language that they have never heard before e.g. combining words to make new sentences and making grammatical errors that adults wouldn’t.
  • Virtuous error: applied their own knowledge
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4
Q

What is Chomsky’s claim?

theory

A

that the ability to learn is Innate and children possess it from birth
* suggests that children acquire language by using their innate ‘language acqusition device (LAD)’ which allows a child to recognie basic structure and rules surrounding language
* innate, deep structures form part of a childs instinctive knowlege of universal language structure
* language differs because variable surface structures of their mothers tongue which they must learn
* defines this as UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR

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5
Q

What is the evicence for Chompsky’s innateness theory?

theory

A
  • Overextensions
  • Burko’s WUG experiment
  • Preverbal stages (biological noises, cooing, vocal play & babbling)
  • Children tend to make the same grammatical errors at the same age
  • Nicaraguan sign language
    Brown’s u-shaped regression model
  • Kaluli tribe
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6
Q

what is the evidence against Chomsky’s innateness theory?

A
  • The case of Genie (ONLY FOR AGAINST CHOMPSKY)
  • Jim
  • There is no mention of input and interaction; children need input in order to TRIGGER the LAD device.
  • Children need interaction to acquire language, not just passive absorption.
  • Child directed speech: Parents adjusting the nature of their speech for their child (children need interaction to learn conversational skills such as turn-taking which is important in language)
  • Protoconversation
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7
Q

what does Piaget’s cognitive theory claim?

A

believed that children’s thinking progresses along an observable and describable rate.
* Child moves from: sensory-motor stage, to pre-conceptual stage, to concrete operations, to formal operations
* a child cannot operate in a later mode before mastering all the earlier stages
* applies to EARLY DEVELOPMENT

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8
Q

what is evidence for Piaget’s cognative theory?

A
  • object permanence
    this caused a sharp increase in vocab after the object-permanance stage is reached.
  • Under-extensions: The child makes this until the child understands the concept of language, they cannot use the language accurately. E.g. child naming their own shoe as the concrete noun “shoe” but not anyone else’s.
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9
Q

what is the evidence against Piagets cognitive theory?

A
  • the fact that some children whose mental development is delayed- can still use language more fluently than the cognitive theory suggests (e.g. Autism)
  • clear correlation between stages of interlectual development & language acqusition
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10
Q

what is Bruner’s claim?

A
  • stresses thye importance of the role of interaction in language acqusition
  • interaction with parents is very important, it is not enough to simply hear their mother’s tongue: must be a 2 way feedback
  • parents become highly skilled at adjusting the nature of their speech to their children and their needs
  • he called this system LANGUAGE ACQUSITION SUPPORT SYSTEM
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11
Q

what is the evidence for Bruner’s input/interaction theory?

A
  • Proto-conversations
  • Kaye’s CDS features (child directed speech): language used by carers to children shows features such as redundancy features and lexical features. These features include repetitions, interactions, higher pitch and greater range of frequency.
  • Case of Jim: Jim’s parents were both deaf which meant that he did not have enough interaction. However, when a speech therapist talked to Jim they realized the significant delay in his language development compared to his peers.
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12
Q

what is some evidence against Bruner’s input/interaction theory?

A

Kaluli tribe- Papua New Guinea
children in these environments do not seem to be impended by the lack of verbal interaction.

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13
Q

what is some research to support/ link with Bruner’s theory?

A
  • proto-conversations
  • child directed speech
  • functions of childrens langauge
  • acquisition of interactional/ communication skills.
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14
Q

what is Tomasello’s claim?

A

tomasello’s usage based approach

  • children learn language through using it
  • learn language through social interaction and gain practice by using established sentence constructions & patturns- no need for universal grammar
  • childrens brain systems use general learning mechanisms and classify words into catagories.
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15
Q

what is some evidence for Tomasello’s usage based approach?

A
  • questions: children produce correct questions with WH- words that are used most often.
  • while making errors with questions that contain less frequently used WH- words.
  • suggests that interaction, understanding and ue work together in the development of language and not innateness.
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16
Q

what is some evidence against Tomasello’s usage based approach?

A

tomasello admits himself that his apporach is limited

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17
Q

what is the critical period hyphothesis

A

Lennebur’s hypothesis claims that there is an ideal time window to acquire language in a liguistically rich environment, after which further language acquisition becomes much more difficult and effortful.

the ability to learn lanuage is biologically linked to age.

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18
Q

name the 5 pre-verbal stages of phonological development

A
  1. biological noises
  2. cooing and laughing
  3. vocal play
  4. babbling (early and later)
  5. melodic utterance
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19
Q

what is the purpose of the perverbal stages?

A

provide an outline of vocal development during a child’s first year.

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20
Q

what is stage 1 of ‘preverbal stages’

at what age and what happens

A

biological noises

  • between 0-8 weeks
  • vomiting, crying and burping ect…
  • these noises are common to the whole human race (all babies at this point sound the same)
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21
Q

what is stage 2 of the ‘preverbal stages’

at what age and what happens?

A

cooing and laughing
* 8-20 weeks
* produced when the baby is in a settled stage
* short vowel-like sounds
* baby begins to develop control over vocal muscles

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22
Q

what is stage 3 of the ‘preverbal stages’

at what age and what happens?

A

vocal play
* 20-30 weeks
* a controlled single vowel-like or contant-like sound
* more varied than babbling but much less controlled

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23
Q

what is stage 4 of the ‘preverbal stages’

at what age and what happens?

A

babbing
* 25-50 weeks
* baby produces phonems, often in the form of cobinations of CV STRUCTURE
* early babbling- all babies sound the same (supports innateness theory)
* later babbling- phonemic contraction; start to prefer sounds from their native language (supports imitation theory)

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24
Q

what is stage 5 of the ‘preverbal stages’

at what age and what happens?

A

melodic utterance
* from 9 months
* melody, rhythem and intonation develop
* genional accents become evident
* parents assume sounds have different functions: questions, greeting or exclaiming

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25
Q

phonology definition

A

the study of different sounds and the way they come together to form speech and words.

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26
Q

biblical consonant

place of articulation

A

place of articulation: both lips
e.g. /b/ /m/

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27
Q

dental consonant

place of articulation

A

place of articulation: upper and lower teeth & tongue

e.g. mother, or think

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28
Q

velar consonant

place of articulation

A

place of articulation: back of the mouth, back of the tongue

e.g. /g/ /k/

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29
Q

plosive consonant

manner of articulation

A

manner of articulation (what happens to the air when sound is made):
COMPLETE blocking of the air

e.g. /p/ /k/ /g/ /t/

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30
Q

fricative consonant

manner of articulation

A

manner of articulation: narrowinf og the airstream, creating friction

e.g. /f/ (funny ones)

31
Q

affricate consonant

manner of articulation

A

a plosive followed by a fricative

32
Q

nasal consonant

A

air escapes through the nasal cavity while the mouth is obstructed

e.g. /m/ /n/

33
Q

what was olmstead’s research?

A

the average age estimates for acquisition of english consonants

34
Q

what type of consonants are children likely to utter first and why?

A
  • the voiceless bilabial plosive /p/ by the age of 2
  • because the manner of articulation to create plosives does not require the child to control the air
35
Q

what types of consonants are children likely to master last and why?

A
  • the dental voice sound /weird o/
  • not likely to master before 6 yrs old
  • because the child hasn’t developed teeth yet so cannot physically make the sound.
36
Q

what is the CV pattern?

A

consonant + vowel structure

37
Q

what are realisation rules?

A

principles that explain why children pronounce early words the way they do.

38
Q

reduplication

realisation rule

A
  • the repetition of particular sounds and structures
  • maintains CVCV structure

e.g. dada

39
Q

deletion (aka reduction of monosyllables to cv)

realisation rule

A
  • final consonants are dropped
    e.g. /d^/ for duck and /be/ for bed
40
Q

consonant cluster reduction KEY

realisation rule

A
  • certain words contain clusters of consonants (e.g. spoon, blanket & squirrel)
  • these are difficult for children to produce so they reduce them down to smaller units to maintain a CV structure and avoid a CCV one

e.g. /p/u:/n/ for spoon

41
Q

substitution KEY

realisation rule

A
  • substituting easier sounds for harder ones

e.g. the dental fricative ‘th’ (as in ‘there’) might br replaced with the plosive d (pronounced ‘dere’)

42
Q

addition

realisation rule

A
  • an extra vowel is added- often to avoid a consonant cluster or conform to CV structure

e.g. /pig(upside down e) for pig (pronounced piggy)

43
Q

assimilation

realisation rule

A
  • the process that illustrates how some sounds change because of other consonants or vowels around them

e.g. Dog becomes ‘gog’
rabbit becomes ‘babbit’

44
Q

syllable reduction of unstressed syllables KEY

realisation rule

A
  • children do not pronounce the unstressed syllable
  • this is a general tendancy in early speech

e.g. remember becomes member
another becomes nother

45
Q

what is browns fis phenomenom and what theory does it support?

A
  • child mispronounces ‘fish’ as /fls/ and when Brown repeated /fls/ back to the child, he denied it and made the same mistake
  • shows that the child is aware of how a word should sound but and is trying to copy the adult but can’t physically pronounce the fricative /f/
  • supports skinners imitation theory
46
Q

what 4 things did Katherine Nelson classify children’s first 50 words into?

RESEARCH

A
  1. naming things or people (mostly nouns) e.g. ball, juice, biscuit
  2. actions/events (verbs) e.g. go, give, sit, stop
  3. describing/modifying things (adjectives) e.g. dirty, allgone, bye-bye
  4. personal/social words e.g. more, hi, yes, this, no
47
Q

which theories best explain how children learn words (lexical development)? explain your answer

A

skinner suggests that children learn language through copying and imitating eachother because they are naturally good mimics

48
Q

how is the concept of object permanence linked to lexical development?

A

there is a sharp increase in vocabulary once this stage is reached. Piaget’s cognative theory supports this.

49
Q

what are underextensions?

semantic development

A

the child uses the word more narrowly than an adult would.
e.g. using the noun ‘shoe’ only when referring to her own shoes

50
Q

what are overextensions?

semantic development

A
  • a child using a word more broadly than an adult would.
  • e.g. child uses ‘apple’ to label other types of fruits.
  • overextenstions can reflect childrens growing knowledge about the world as they stert to notice similarities between objects (chomsky)
51
Q

what are the 3 types of overexensions Rescorla studied?

research

A
  1. categorical: a word for one member of a clear category. e.g a child uses ‘apple’ to label other types of fruits
  2. analogical: a word for one object is extended to another object which is not the same clear category but which still bears some similarity, either physical or functional, to the original object.
  3. statements: these are almost like one word sentences. children are not labelling an object but making a statement about it in relation to another object. e.g. saying ‘dolly’ upon seeing the empty dolls bed.
52
Q

What are the 4 stages of grammatical development?

A
  1. Holophrastic stage (12-18 months)
  2. Two-word stage (18-24 months)
  3. Telegraphic stage (24-36 months)
  4. Post-telegraphic stage (36 months)
53
Q

what is the Holophrastic stage (and when)?

stages of grammatical development

A
  • 12-18 months
  • single word utterances (holophrases) produces and function as words or phrases.
  • longer utterances can be produced but arelearnt as whole phrases
  • most single word utterances are nouns.
54
Q

what is the two-word stage (and when)?

stages of grammatical develpment

A
  • 18-24 months
  • by the time a child is 2 they can voice a variety of combinations. e.g. baby chair, mummy eat.
  • the interpretation of these combinations is closely related to the context of their utterance.
  • adult behaves although communication is taking place (childs utterances recieve feedback- confirms their ‘success’)
  • questions begin to appear
  • negative words (NO & NOT)

e.g. possession, request, statement

55
Q

Roger Brown’s semantic roles (two-word stage)

research

A

studied two-word sentences from children and analysed them by types of meanings that they are expressing.

he found…
- most children expressed the same basic set of meanings consistantly
- from 18 months words become gramatical sequences

56
Q

‘all children around the world go through the same stages of grammatical development.’ – what theory does this support and why?

A

chomskey’s innateness theory-
suggests that the deep structures of language, supported by the LAD, universal to humans

57
Q

what is the telegraphic stage (and when)?

A
  • 2-3 years old
  • child tends to retain content words (nouns/verbs/adjectives) and drop function words (gramatical & inflections)
  • inflections used more accurately
  • auxillary verbs used more frequently
  • modal auxillary verbs used more frequently.
58
Q

who did a study on the acquisition of questions, negatives & pronouns?

A

linguists Bellugi & McNeill

59
Q

what did they find?

Bellugi & McNeil’s research

A

that there are distinct stages tha children progress through as they develop & apply rules to the creations of negatives & questions.

60
Q

what are the stages of acquisitions of questions?

Bellugi & McNeil’s research

A
  1. (18-24 months) use of simple q words & use of inotation at the end of 2-word utterances
  2. (2-3 yrs) more sophisticated q words & longer questions produced with more elements but missing auxillary verbs
  3. (3-4 yrs) manipulation of word order & use of auxillary verbs in right order to create more sophisticated questions.
61
Q

what are the stages of acquisition of negatives?

Bellugi & McNeil’s research

A
  1. (12-18 months) use of negative word on its own e.g. ‘no’ or ‘not’
  2. (18-24 months) combining a negative word with other words in 2 word or telegraphic stage. usually at the beginning of the utterance.
  3. (2-3 yrs) using negative word in the middle of an utterance e.g. ‘me no like that’
  4. (3-4 yrs) increased accuracy of negative words within utterances.
62
Q

inflections

A

changes in the form of a word (e.g. -ed, -ing)

63
Q

plural inflection

A

child adding -s to the end of a word.

64
Q

overgeneralisation

A

the application of a grammatical rule in cases where it doesn’t apply.

65
Q

what is Burko’s WUG experiment?

research

A
  • experiment where children had to pluralise made-up words as well as real words
  • if children can pluralise words they have never heard- must be because they have learnt the general rule of adding -s inflection to form plural nouns.
66
Q

what were the results of Burko’s WUG experiment?

research

A
  • some of the children overgeneralised and applied the rule to irregular plural nouns. producing virtuous errors (do not realise there are exceptions to the rule)
  • making mistakes with the past tense -ed inflection.
67
Q

Brown’s U-shaped regression modal:

research

A
  • a childs number of virtuous errors seem to increase
  • only a matter of time before the correct endings of the verbs start to reappear (as shown on the U-SHAPED graph)
68
Q

what are the 7 functions in children’s early language that Halliday’s research discovered?

research

A
  1. instrumental
  2. regulatory
  3. Heuristic
  4. personal
  5. interactional
  6. imaginative
  7. informative
69
Q

what are the 4 KEY functions in children’s early language that Halliday’s research discovered?

A
  1. heuristic- explores, learn, discover and gain knowledge about the environment
  2. personal- expresses personal opinions, attitudes and feelings including speakers identity.
  3. imaginitive- use of language to tell stories and create imigary constucts
  4. informative- language that is used to relay or request facts/information.
70
Q

features of child directed speech (CDS)

A
  1. phonology:
    slower, clearer pronounciation, higher pitch, exaggerated information & stress
  2. lexis
    simpler, more ristricted vocabulary. diminutive forms (“doggie”). concrete language.
  3. grammar
    simpler constructs, frequent use of imperitives, frequent questions, expansions, recasting.
71
Q
A
72
Q

what is Kaye’s research

pragmatic development

A

the language used by carers to children shows the following features:
- posodic features: higher pitch & greater range of frequencies
- lexical features: special forms of words e.g. “doggie”
- complexity features: shorter utterances, fewer clauses, fewer auxillaries
- redundancy features: repetitions, both immediate & later
- context features: topics with child’s world.

73
Q

what did kuhl & Meltzhof suggest in their research?

development of interactional/conversational skills

A

social interaction is critical in childrens language development and that early exposure to language can correlate with childs readiness for school in the future.

using…
- PROTOCONVERSATIONS
- CONVERSATIONAL SKILLS