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Psych 302 > Language Development > Flashcards

Language Development Flashcards

1
Q

themes of language development

A
  • nature vs. nurture
  • sociocultural context
  • individual differences
  • active child
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2
Q

what is language?

A
  • Non-human animals have complex systems of communication that we can call language
  • We share characteristics of communication with non-human animals (ie. Different vocalizations for different meanings, body language, etc.)
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3
Q

what makes human language unique?

A

symbols and generativity

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4
Q

symbols (vs. signs)

A
  • arbitrarily represent objects, ideas, places, etc.
  • Not signs (which share connection with that they represent -> ex. Onomatoepia “beep”)
  • Ex. A drawing of a cat is a sign, the word “cat” is a symbol -> it’s not connected to a cat (would make more sense to call cats “meows”, etc.)
  • Most of human language is symbolic
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5
Q

generativity

A
  • ability to generate novel ideas that have never been produced before and can be understood by our con-specifics
  • Ex. “purple giraffes fly through space on their way to Mars” -> sentence we’ve never heard before, but we can understand it and visualize it
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6
Q

parts of language

A
  • phoneme
  • morpheme
  • semantics
  • syntax
  • pragmatics
  • metalinguistics
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7
Q

phonemes

A
  • smallest unit of sound recognizable as speech rather than random noise
  • Ex. Consonants and vowels
  • Each of the words languages have a unique set of phonemes, but not all languages use all phonemes (English has 36)
  • Some languages have contrastive phonemes that other languages do not have -> Ex. R vs. L (Japanese doesn’t have this)
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8
Q

infants’ perceptual narrowing and phonemes

A
  • Young infants (younger than 9 months) can discriminate auditorily between many of the world’s phonemes, but this ability disappears due to perceptual narrowing after 9-10 months
  • This is also true for discriminating signs from sign language and visual speech on the face
  • Perceptual narrowing is not an entirely negative phenomenon -> reduction of sensitivity to irrelevant phonemes leads to specialization in discrimination of native phonemes
  • Infants whose narrowing occurs earlier in the first year of life have an improved productive vocabulary a year later (but other infants catch up to them over time)
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9
Q

morpheme

A
  • smallest unit of sound that carries meaning
  • What’s the smallest number of phonemes needed to make a morpheme? -> 1
    • Ex. “s” -> indicates plural
  • Can only break words down into morphemes that are still relevant to the words
    • Ex. “hiking” -> 2 morphemes: hike, ing (don’t include hi or king because they’re not relevant to the whole word)
    • Ex. “cats” -> 2 morhemes: cat, s
    • Ex. “walrus” -> 1
    • Ex. Overwhelmingly -> 4: over, whelm, ing, ly
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10
Q

semantics

A

words

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11
Q

Syntax

A
  • combination of semantics into meaningful phrases
  • Syntactical rules differ across all the world’s languages
  • Some languages are verb-object (emphasize objects/nouns; kids use more nouns in early childhood language development) -> English: “I built my son a house”, Spanish, Nahuatl
  • Most languages, however, are object-verb (emphasize verbs; kids use more verbs in early childhood development)
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12
Q

pragmatics

A

intonation and body language that can change the meaning of words

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13
Q

metalinguistics

A

using language to discuss/play with language

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14
Q

infant-directed speech (IDS)

A
  • Most cultures’ IDS is different from that culture’s adult-directed speech
  • Different languages have different types of IDS
  • Bilingual parents may emphasize the differences in their two languages by exaggerating vowel and consonant differences when speaking IDS
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15
Q

English IDS

A
  • We raise the pitch of our speech
  • We have more pitch modulations
  • We emphasize nouns more than verbs
  • We use very clear vowels (unlike when we’re speaking to each other)
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16
Q

when do children have phonological/sound development?

A
  • Before birth until adolescence
  • Babies begin learning sounds of native language in utero
  • Learn to differentiate (perceive) sounds of native language
  • Much perceptual phonological development complete by 10 months
  • Learn to produce sounds of native language (6 months – adolescence)
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17
Q

when do children have semantic development?

A
  • Begins at birth, lasts throughout entire lifespan
  • Very high rates of acquisition after 10 months through early school age (2 “bursts” of language development)
  • Requires segmentation of speech (statistical learning)
  • In English, semantic development consists mostly of nouns
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18
Q

when do children have morphemic development?

A
  • Begins around pre-school age (after 2nd birthday)

- Engage in overregularization (overapplying morphemic rules to irregular nouns and verbs)

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19
Q

when do children have syntactic development?

A
  • After 1 year to adolescence
  • Sentences (simple combinations of words) emerge by the end of the second year of life (after age 1)
  • Telegraphic speech: two-word utterances (“more juice”)
  • Four-word sentences may emerge by 2 ½ (or later) and sentences may become more complex
  • Development continues through adolescence
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20
Q

theories of language development

A
  • behaviourist account
  • nativist account
  • connectionist account
  • social interactionist account
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21
Q

behaviourist account

A
  • Caregivers support language learning through reinforcement or punishment (operant conditioning)
  • Parents correct children when they make mistakes and reward them when they’re correct
  • For this to be true, parents would need to consistently reward/punish language, which is untrue
  • Even parents who consistently correct don’t have that much of an influence
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22
Q

behaviourism and themes of language development - predominantly…

A
  • A nurture-based theory (nature vs. Nurture)
  • Sociocentric (sociocultural)
  • Heterogenous (individual differences)
  • Both active and passive (active child)
23
Q

nativist account

A
  • Proposed that there’s a dedicated language module in the brain called the language acquisition device, which has evolved in humans (but not in other animals)
  • Proposed universal grammar: shared structure that weaves together all of the world’s languages
  • Noam Chomsky
  • Supports for nativism:
    • Although there is no actual language acquisition device, there are some language areas (ex. Wernicke’s area, Broca’s area)
    • All normally developing children acquire language
    • The first language you learn (L1) looks different from the second language (L2) you learn at the neural level (brain will activate in different ways and use different structures)
    • You can have more than one L1
  • Argument against nativists: Language acquisition device is more of a theoretical structure, and universal grammar is not that complex – other than nouns and verbs, languages are very diverse
24
Q

nativism and theories of language devleopment - predominantly…

A
  • Nature (nature vs. Nurture)
  • Egocentric (sociocultural)
  • Homogenous (individual differences)
  • Passive (active child)
25
Q

connectionist account

A
  • Opposed to nativism
  • Similar to information processing theory
  • Children learn language the same way that they learn everything else (general-purpose learning mechanisms)
  • Computer simulations show that language can be learned with repetitive input (except for pragmatics)
26
Q

connectionism and theories of language development - predominantly…

A
  • Mostly nurture, with some nature (nature vs. Nurture)
  • Both egocentric and sociocentric (sociocultural)
  • Mostly heterogenous, with some homogeneity (individual differences)
  • Active (active child)
27
Q

social interactionist account

A
  • Similar to sociocultural theory
  • There is some initial basis to learn language at birth (human babies are attracted to human faces and social interaction)
  • This initial basis is elaborated by experience
  • Social communication drives language development
28
Q

social interactionist account and theories of language development - predominantly…

A
  • Nurture, with some nature (nature vs. Nurture)
  • Sociocentric (sociocultural)
  • Heterogenous (individual differences)
  • Both active and passive (active child)
29
Q

bilingualism

A
  • More than half of the world is bilingual
  • Children growing up bilingual reach developmental language milestones at roughly the same time as monolingual kids do (unlike commonly believed, their development is not delayed) -> These milestones include onset of speaking, vocab size, and word choice
30
Q

FALSE beliefs about bilingualism

A
  • In order to truly be bilingual, you must acquire both languages at the same time
  • Bilinguals mix their two languages because they are confused (in reality, this is not confusion, but rather code-switching)
  • Bilinguals have a lower vocabulary than monolinguals do
  • Bilinguals have non-linguistic cognitive disadvantages compared to monolinguals
31
Q

when does critical period for language development end?

A

sometime between age 5 and puberty

32
Q

prosody

A

the characteristic rhythm, tempo, cadence, melody, intonational patterns, etc. with which a language is spoken

33
Q

categorical perception

A
  • perception that speech sounds belong to discrete categories
  • ex. differentiating “b” and “p” sounds based on delayed voice onset time (time between when air passing through lips to when vocal cords start vibrating)
34
Q

word segmentation and distributional properties

A
  • word seg: process of figuring out where words begin and end in a string of speech
  • distrib prop: the fact that in any language, certain sounds are more likely to appear together than others (ex. pre-tty ba-by is more common than pre tty-ba by)
35
Q

babbling

A

repetitive consonant-vowel sequences (ie. bababa) or signs (for ASL learners) produced during early phases of language development

36
Q

Reference/Quinean Reference Problem

A
  • figuring out the meaning of words

- ie. associating the word “cat” with an animal with pointy ears, whiskers, 4 legs, paws, a tail, etc.

37
Q

holophrastic period

A

period when children begin using words in their small vocabulary 1 word at a time

38
Q

pragmatic cues

A
  • figuring out the meaning of words using social contexts, intentionality, linguistic context, or grammatical category
  • ex. if researcher says she wants a “gazzer”, then picks up an object and smiles, the child assumes that object is the “gazzer”
39
Q

shape bias

A

when presented with a nonsense object (“dax”), kids will assume that objects that share the same shape as the “dax” are also “daxes”, regardless of size or texture

40
Q

overextension vs. overregularization

A
  • overextension: using a given word in a broader context than appropriate (ex. “dog” for all 4-legged animals)
  • overregularization: speech errors where children treat irregular words as if they were regular
41
Q

fast mapping

A
  • rapidly learning a new word simply by hearing the contrastive use of a familiar and unfamiliar word
  • ex. if you have 2 plates (red and silver) and ask them to pick up the chromium one, they’ll pick up the silver one because they know that the other one is red
42
Q

syntactic bootstrapping

A
  • using grammatical structure of the whole sentence to figure out meaning
  • ex. if rabbit and duck are waving hands in the air while duck is pushing rabbit and kids are told “both of them are kradding”, they’ll assume that means waving hands in the air
43
Q

collective monologue

A

conversation between children that involves a series of illogical statements - the content of each child’s turn has nothing to do with what the first child said

44
Q

narratives

A

descriptions of past events that have the basic structure of a story; parents often help children tell narratives during early stages of conversational skills

45
Q

dual representation

A

the idea that a symbolic artifact must be represented mentally in two ways at the same time - both as a real object and as a symbol for something other than itself

46
Q

2 types of bilingualism

A
  • early bilingualism: occurs in infancy and early childhood

- late bilingualism: occurs in adolescence or adulthood

47
Q

2 types of early bilingualism

A
  • Simultaneous bilingualism: learning both languages at same time
  • Sequential bilingualism: learning one language, then learning another
  • Both simultaneous bilingualism and sequential bilingualism are successful if started early in life
48
Q

bilingual vocabulary

A
  • Bilinguals may have lower vocabulary in one language compared to their monolingual peers
  • Especially true for “home” words when English is not spoken at home
  • However, bilinguals’ combined vocabulary is higher than monolinguals’
49
Q

code switching

A
  • Bilingual children often switch languages between sentences or even mid-sentence -> “code switching”
  • Code-switching is not an indication of confusion
  • Children may prefer to code-switch in order to better express themselves, and adults around them who code-switch are modelling code-switching behaviour, younger bilinguals may not have translation equivalents for all words
50
Q

bilinguals’ language dominance

A
  • Even early bilinguals may be dominant in one of their two languages
  • In one language, a child may have: larger vocabulary and higher performance on cognitively burdensome linguistic tasks
  • Being dominant in one language does not mean that a bilingual will always have an accent in her other language
51
Q

study: what makes a bilingual dominant in one language?

A
  • Dupoux et al (2010) tested 3 groups:
    • Spanish monolinguals
    • French monolinguals
    • French-Spanish bilinguals
  • Tested on a Spanish linguistic distinction that does not exist in French
    • French monolinguals did badly
    • Spanish monolinguals did well
  • Some bilinguals did well and some did poorly
  • Deciding factor: dependent on where they were living from 0-2 years of age
52
Q

bilingual cognition

A
  • For much of the 19th and 20th century, it was thought that bilingual children were cognitively disadvantaged
  • This bias was based on anecdotal evidence (like code-switching and lower vocab in one language)
  • More recent scientific evidence has reversed this bias
    • Bilingual 5-year-olds have some cognitive advantages over monolinguals (ex. Rule-switching, working memory, inhibition), and these advantages persist into adulthood
53
Q

bilingual perception

A

Bilinguals appear to have an advantage in visual speech perception over monolinguals

54
Q

Study: bilingual perception

A
  • Sebestian-Galles and colleagues (2012)
  • Infants were 8-month-olds
    • Catalan-Spanish bilinguals
    • Spanish monolinguals
    • Catalan monolinguals
  • Tested visual discrimination of silent French speech vs. English speech
  • Bilinguals succeeded, monolinguals failed
  • Bilinguals succeeded even though the two languages were not theirs
  • Suggests that bilinguals have generalized (not language-specific) advantages over monolinguals

Psych 302 (14 decks)

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