child language acquisition Flashcards
1
Q
cochlear implant (CI)
A
- electronic prosthetic device that is implanted surgically + takes sounds from environment & converts them to electronic signals
- signals then get transmitted to brain via auditory nerve
- electronic signals from cochlear implant is not sufficient language environment for typical development
2
Q
oralism
A
belief that spoken/vocal languages are better
3
Q
language environment
A
- important for children to have access to an ambient language (auditory or visual) within first year of life
- language environment is vital for neural connections to form a mental grammar
- language deprivation leads to long-term impairments in social & cognitive function
4
Q
start of language learning
A
- babies have already stored auditory memories by the time they’re born
- high-amplitude sucking habituation method = newborns can differentiate between languages being spoken
- prosodic rhythm is audible to fetus in uterus + when born, babies can tell difference between rhythm they’ve heard & unfamiliar rhythm
5
Q
phonemic contrast
A
- babies are very good at noticing phonetic differences + can tell difference between all kinds of different sounds from many languages
- mental grammar of baby distinguishes between allophones + phonemically contrastive ASL hand shapes
- for signed & vocal languages, child’s mind has built up phoneme categories in mental grammar by age one, according to contrasts they have experienced within their language environment
- later learning of new phonemic contrasts in another language will be shaped by learning that has happened in the first year
6
Q
early language production - physical
A
- newborn’s larynx is higher in vocal tract than an adult’s; starts lowering around six months + takes few months to learn how to move their articulators
- begin to gain control of fingers, hands, forearms first + later learn to control jaw, tongue, lips
- around six months, sounds babies make begin to have some syllable structure
- start to produce reduplicated consonant-vowel syllables (repeated sounds)
7
Q
early language production
A
- when language environment is signed, babies start to babble using their hands
- babbles made up of repeated patterns that have structure of syllables
- alternate between hand shape & path movement or between closed & open vocal tract
- babbles use a subset of segments/hand shapes that appear in the language environment
- children develop meanings for words based on their experience of encountering the word in their environment
8
Q
30-million word gap
A
- study found that by age of three, children from lower-income families had heard approximately 30 million fewer words + were found to have less exposure to complex language & vocabulary which potentially impacted language skills & academic achievement later in life
- controversy surrounding study stems from implications and interpretations
- study highlighted significant differences in language exposure among different socioeconomic backgrounds
- the study has been criticized for potentially reinforcing stereotypes about parenting practices in low-income households
9
Q
understanding word combination
A
- start to speak/sign first word around twelve months (signed is usually earlier)
- kids a little older than twelve months already recognize syntactic constituent structure & its relation to meaning + grammatical categories
- when one-year olds hear new word in noun position, they conclude it has noun-like meaning & refers to thing or category of things
- also recognize if it is in adjective position & is more like an attribute
- by age two, children also recognize subcategories
10
Q
syntax in early utterances
A
- at 1;6 to 2;0, children begin to combine words into phrases of two or three words (consist mostly of nouns & verbs, few function words & inflectional morphemes)
- mental grammar has already grouped words into syntactic categories
