Chapter 4 book Flashcards
1
Q
Theory
A
refers to descriptive statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena.
- is a claim or hypothesis that may be tested repeatedly with an array of scientific methods; when the accumulated evi-dence consistently supports a given theory throughout time, it becomes an accepted part of the knowledge base in a particular discipline, and we can then use the theory to make predictions about natural phenomena.
2
Q
evidence-based practice (EBP)
A
EBP involves integrating theoretical knowledge with scientific inquiry (which may include reviewing existing scientific literature) to inform decision-making.
3
Q
(Developmental) psychology
A
Human mind and behavior and the changes that occur in humans as they age
4
Q
Linguistics
A
Aspects of human language, including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics
5
Q
Psycholinguistics
A
Psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, and understand language
6
Q
(Linguistic) anthropology
A
Relationship between language and culture; social use of language; language variation across time and space
7
Q
Speech–language pathology
A
Prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of speech and language disorders
8
Q
Education
A
Aspects of teaching and learning
9
Q
Sociology
A
Aspects of society such as cultural norms, expectations, and contexts
10
Q
theoretical research, or basic research
A
It focuses primarily on gen-erating and refining the existing knowledge base
11
Q
applied research
A
People typically conduct ap-plied research to test different approaches and practices that pertain to real-world settings.
- societal needs by testing the viability of certain practices and approaches
- It typically involves using experimental research designs to examine the causal relationship between a specific approach, program, or practice and a specific language outcome.
12
Q
use-inspired basic research
A
addresses useful applications of research findings
13
Q
Charity, Scarborough, and Griffin (2004) studied
A
- language skills of African American children ages 5–8 and considered how children’s familiarity with the English dia-lect used in their school (School English) contributed to their success in reading.
- found that children who were more familiar with School English per-formed better on measures of reading achievement than children who were less familiar with School English.
14
Q
basic research is a study by Saylor and Sabbagh (2004),
A
-studied how children coordinate different types of information present in the environment to facilitate learning new words.
15
Q
Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s theory of language develop-ment emphasized
A
the role of the environment, especially the language input parents provide to children.
16
Q
Sci-entists who study language development for applied purposes respond to such societal needs by determining why some individuals progress relatively slowly in language development. They do so in two ways:
A
by learning how to identify per-sons at risk for or exhibiting disordered language development, and by developing ways to remediate delays and disorders in language when they do occur
17
Q
Applied researchers usually test language-development practices relevant to three main con-texts:
A
homes, clinical settings, and schools.
18
Q
In studies of the home environment,
A
researchers examine the effectiveness of specific practices or approaches parents can use to help their children develop language during home activities.
19
Q
In studies of the clinical environment,
A
applied re-searchers examine the effectiveness of different approaches that clinical profession-als, such as speech–language pathologists and clinical psychologists, may use with specific populations of patients.
20
Q
In studies of the school environment,
A
applied researchers examine the effectiveness of different approaches that educators may use in the classroom to build children’s language skills.
21
Q
approaches scientists use to study three aspects of language develop-ment:
A
speech perception, language production, and language comprehension.
22
Q
Goal of Speech Perception Studies
A
help researchers learn about how children use their speech perception to draw information from and ultimately learn language.
23
Q
Methods for Studying Speech Perception
A
- typically present auditory stimuli to participants and measure their response to the stimuli
- technology: Saffran, Aslin, and Newport (1996) developed digitized sequences of made-up three-syllable words to reveal 8-month-old infants are able to detect statistical patterns in running speech and thereby, segment words from the speech stream.
- While infants are still in the womb, scientists can measure their heart rates and kicking rates as a response
- behavioral testing, in which children or adults respond by speaking, pointing, or pressing buttons in response to different speech stimuli.
24
Q
magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG),magnetoencephalography (MEG), the event-related potential (ERP) technique, and optical topography (OT).
A
speech perception
- These technologies allow researchers to conduct direct, real-time investigations of speech perception by presenting individuals with specific speech sounds and identifying the exact areas of the brain where speech percep-tion occurs.
25
Goal of Language Production Studies
- studies help inform practitioners of children’s ability to use language expressively
- researchers examine children’s emergent form, content, and use capabilities.
- normative research
26
normative research
in which experts compile data from multiple individuals on a certain aspect of lan-guage development and from these data determine and chart the ages (or grades) by which children typically meet certain milestones.
27
the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDI; formerly the MacArthur Commu-nicative Development Inventories).
- Dale and Fenson (1996) gathered language production information from more than 1,800 infants and toddlers, and from it developed the CDI.
- to determine how many words typically developing children understand and pro-duce at various ages.
28
Methods for Studying Language Production
are generally either observational or experimental.
29
In observational studies,
researchers examine children’s language use in naturalis-tic or semistructured contexts, usually by using a tape recorder or another audio recording device to capture children’s language for a certain period.
- researchers typically record children’s language for a certain period, after which they transcribe the language and analyze it for spe-cific properties or qualities.
30
In naturalistic settings
the researcher does not manipulate the context
- Hart and Risley (1995), who collected monthly audio samples of parents’ and children’s language in the home environment for more than 2 years. the results of this study provided useful references for the number and types of words children use as they develop their vocabulary skills.
31
in semistructured settings,
researchers manipulate the environ-ment in which they are observing children’s language form, content, and use.
32
Experimental studies differ from observational studies
in that the researcher actively manipulates variables of interest.
- involves manipulating the context in which, or the conditions under which children experience new words and examining how children’s production of these words varies by context.
- vary widely and may examine many aspects of production, including vocabulary, morphology, syntax, phonology, and pragmatics.
33
pseudowords
(nonsense words) to assess children’s morphological skills or vocabulary skills. Pseudowords allow control over children’s previous experience with words; because these words are invented, researchers can assume children have no experi-ence with them.
34
Goal of Language Comprehension Studies
studies specifically tap into what children understand about language, and with the assistance of some creative research paradigms, experts can measure children’s language comprehension even before children speak their first word.
- researchers try to estimate what children or adults understand rather than produce.
35
Methods for Studying Language Comprehension
prelinguistic infants: visual fixation (looking time) on a stimulus as a measure of language comprehension.
older children: pointing as a measure of language comprehension instead.
36
Questions language theories should answer
1. What do infants bring to the task of language learning?
2. What mechanisms drive language acquisition?
3. What types of input support the language-learning system?
37
What do infants bring to the task of language learning?
- that language development results from the interaction of a number of factors, including biologi-cal, social, cognitive, and linguistic factors.
- natural versus nurture debate (child born to learn language or they learn language from experience)
38
What Mechanisms Drive Language Acquisition?
- acquisition addresses the pro-cesses by which language develops from infancy for
- domain specific: dedicated solely to the tasks of comprehending and producing language.
- Modularity: theoretical account of how the brain is organized for various cognitive processes.
- A strict modularity perspective includes a domain-specific account of language acquisition, whereas a nonmodularity perspective provides a domain-general account.
39
What Types of Input Support the Language-Learning System?
Some theorists suggest that increasing knowl-edge of social conventions and a child’s desire to interact with others are the most important supports for language development. Other theorists propose that when children simply hear more and more language, they use “positive evidence” that other people provide to make assumptions about the structure of their native language.
40
Nurture-inspired theories
often called empiricist theories
- they rest on the notion that humans gain all knowledge through experience.
- The extreme empiricist position is that an infant arrives in the world as a “blank slate,” with no innate language abilities.
41
nature-in-spired theories
also called nativist theories
- generally hold that much knowledge is innate and genetically transmitted rather than learned by experience.
- an individual’s underlying language system is in place at birth and children use this system to extract rules about their native language apart from other cognitive abilities.
42
interactionist theories.
acknowledge that language develops through the interaction between nature-related and nurture-related factors.
43
Behaviorist theory (Skinner)
- nurture inspired
- Language is like any other human behavior and does not reflect any special innate endowment.
- operant conditioning; reinforcement
44
Universal grammar (Chomsky)
- Nature inspired
- children born with general grammatical rules and common to all languages
- language acquisition device; parameters
45
modularity theory (fodor)
- nature inspired
- Language is organized in highly specific modules in the brain.
- Localization; Encapsulization
46
Bootstrapping theories (Syntactic - Gleitman; Semantic - Pinker; Prosodic - Wanner & Gleitman)
- Nature inspired
- Children use their knowledge of syntactic categories, word meanings, or the prosodic structure of language to make inferences about other aspects of language.
- Syntax; Semantics; Prosody; acoustics
47
Social-interactionist theory (Vygotsky)
- Interactionist
- Language emerges through social interaction with peers and adults.
- Social plane– psychological plane; Zone of proximal development
48
Cognitive theory (Piaget)
- Interactionist
- Children’s cognitive development and interactions with the physical environment drive language development.
- Cognition hypothesis; Egocentric speech
49
Intentionality model (Bloom)
- Interactionist
- The tension between the desire to communicate intentions to other people and the effort required to communicate these intentions drives language development.
- intentionality
50
Competition model (MacWhinney)
- Interactionist
- Repeated exposure to reliable language input strengthens children’s “correct” representations of the morphology, phonology, and syntax of their language.
- Reliable input; Strengthened representation
51
Connectionist theories (Rumelhart & McClelland)
- Interactionist
- Language is organized in a network containing nodes and connections.
- nodes; connections
52
Usage-based theory (Tomasello)
- Interactionist
- Children attend to and understand other people’s intentions and then imitate other persons’ intentional communicative actions to learn language.
- Joint attention; Intention reading
53
Behaviorist theory
1. What do infants bring to the task of language learning?
2. What mechanisms drive language acquisition?
3. What types of input support the language-learning system?
1. N/A
2. Operant conditioning by parents and adults—a domain-general process
3. Reinforcement of desirable verbal behavior and punishment of undesirable verbal behavior
54
Universal grammar
1. What do infants bring to the task of language learning?
2. What mechanisms drive language acquisition?
3. What types of input support the language-learning system?
1. Explicit, domain- specific linguistic knowledge
2. Discovery of the parameters a person’s language encompasses—domain-specific processes
3. General linguistic input (even of an impoverished quality)
55
Modularity theory
1. What do infants bring to the task of language learning?
2. What mechanisms drive language acquisition?
3. What types of input support the language-learning system?
1. Specialized modules in the brain
2. Functions performed by dedicated language modules—domain-specific processes
3. Input that promotes parameter setting of modules and interactions among language modules
56
Bootstrapping theories
1. What do infants bring to the task of language learning?
2. What mechanisms drive language acquisition?
3. What types of input support the language-learning system?
1. Syntactic categories, semantic categories, or sensitivity to prosodic or acoustic structure of language
2. Domain-general processes to understand how language works, domain-specific processes to notice correlations between syntax and meaning (syntactic bootstrapping), to make hypotheses about new words (semantic bootstrapping), or to notice correlations between acoustic properties of speech and syntactic categories (pr
3. Syntactic input, semantic input, or acoustic input
57
Social interactionist theory
1. What do infants bring to the task of language learning?
2. What mechanisms drive language acquisition?
3. What types of input support the language-learning system?
1. General social structure
2. Social interactions with others—a domain-general process
3. Linguistic input that is within the child’s zone of proximal development
58
Cognitive theory
1. What do infants bring to the task of language learning?
2. What mechanisms drive language acquisition?
3. What types of input support the language-learning system?
1. General cognitive structure
2. General cognitive processing abilities—a domain-general process
3. Understanding events, relations, and phenomena in anonlinguistic sense
59
Intentionality model
1. What do infants bring to the task of language learning?
2. What mechanisms drive language acquisition?
3. What types of input support the language-learning system?
1. General social structure
2. Engaging with other people and objects—a domain- general process
3. The tension between the desire to engage with other people and the effort required to express elaborate intentional states
60
Competition model
1. What do infants bring to the task of language learning?
2. What mechanisms drive language acquisition?
3. What types of input support the language-learning system?
1. Ability to attend to and organize linguistic data
2. Induction and hypothesis testing—domain-general processes
3. Reliable and frequent input patterns
61
Connectionist theories
1. What do infants bring to the task of language learning?
2. What mechanisms drive language acquisition?
3. What types of input support the language-learning system?
1. Ability to attend to and organize linguistic data
2. Pattern detection—a domain-general process
3. Reliable and frequent input patterns
62
Usage-based theory
1. What do infants bring to the task of language learning?
2. What mechanisms drive language acquisition?
3. What types of input support the language-learning system?
1. Intention reading, which emerges during infancy
2. The child’s interpretation of the social environment—a domain-general process
3. Reproducing intentional communicative actions through cultural or imitative learning
63
operant conditioning,
behaviors that are reinforced become strengthened, and behaviors that are punished become suppressed.
64
universal grammar (UG)
which describes the system of grammatical rules and constraints consistent in all world languages.
65
language acquisition device
Chomsky theorized the existence of one language module,
66
linguistic competence
the implicit knowledge children have about language
67
linguistic performance
whereas the actual comprehension and production of language in specific situations
68
language is localized
the modules composing the language system each operate by using a dedicated neural system
69
encapsulization
means the processors operate in-dependently of one another.
70
Syntactic bootstrapping
describes the process by which children use the syntactic frames surrounding unknown verbs to successfully constrain or limit the possible meanings of the verbs.
71
Semantic bootstrapping
semantic bootstrapping uses the bootstrap metaphor to illustrate how children acquire particular linguistic concepts with minimal outside assistance.
72
Prosodic bootstrapping
it suggests in-fants use their sensitivity to the acoustic properties of speech (e.g., pitch, rhythm, pauses, stress) to make inferences about units of language, including clauses, phrases, and words.
73
zone of proximal development (ZPD),
which is the difference between a child’s actual developmental level, as determined by independent problem solving, and his or her level of potential development, as determined through problem solving in collaboration with a more competent adult or peer
74
overgeneralization
A common child language phenomenon that illustrates how the competition model works
75
Nodes
are simple processing units that can be likened to brain neurons.Nodes receive input from external sources through connections
76
Cognitive principles
include ideas governing language processing and automaticity and the role of tangible and intangible rewards the speaker gains through language use.
77
Affective principles
are related to the individual’s confidence with language learning and his or her propensity to take risks with respect to language.
78
Linguistic principles
describe the role of a person’s native language in simultaneously facilitat-ing and interfering with second language acquisition.
79
Two historical methods for teaching English as a second language that stem from distinct language theories are
the audiolingual method and the Silent Way.
80
The audiolingual method
was developed in response to an increas-ing need for translators during World War II. It emphasizes imitation, repetition, and memorization of language forms to create automatic and habitual language responses.
81
The Silent Way is
a language-teaching method that was popular during the cognitive revolution of the early 1970s. It emphasizes the importance of allowing students to generate hypotheses about language rules and then to apply the rules and discover errors.
- teachers facilitate students’ discovery of language rules, remaining mostly silent and using color-coded rods rather than words to represent vocabulary words, grammatical forms, and pronunciation rules.
82
prevention
is to inhibit language difficulties from emerging and thus reduce the need to resolve such difficulties later in life.
83
Phonological awareness
is the ability to focus on the sounds that make up syllables and words; well-developed phonological awareness can help children succeed in later reading instruction.
84
Intervention and remediation
are programs or strategies to help children, ado-lescents, and adults who exhibit difficulties with some aspect of language develop-ment.
85
Enrichment
is the process through which teachers, clinicians, and other adults provide children, adolescents, and adults with an enhanced language-learning en-vironment that both builds on existing skills and promotes the development of new and more advanced language abilities.
- Learning Language and Loving It progrma
