exam 2 Flashcards
(117 cards)
critical period
there is a biologically determined period during which a behavior must appear
what are some things that would provide proof of a sensitive period for language learning?
children unexposed to language (do not develop syntax), children who are deaf born to hearing parents, second language studies
what are some non-biological factors that could affect language acquisition throughout the lifespan?
education level, environment (learning: classroom vs. immersion), social psychosocial factors (role in the family, personality)
Which aspects of language development are most strongly related to genetics?
-genetics: predictive of rate of acquisition of language, rate of language disorder, grammar/syntax
-environment: lexical/vocab development
social gating
the social function of language ‘gates’ children’s attention which allows them to learn
what were the results of studies on the language outcomes of infants who were exposed to live interaction and audio visual media of a speaker of a different language?
live social interactions: infants display skills of native speaker; audio-visual (recording): infants display same ability as having no exposure; interaction has important connotation in language learning
joint attention
when an adult and child are looking at same thing and “mutually engaged”
gaze following
child looks where person looks (around 10-15 mo)
gaze leading
eye gaze, communicative pointing (10mo-1 yr)
conventional gestures
: culturally agreed upon meaning (nodding, shaking head no, appear just before emergence of words)
spontaneous gestures
symbolic communication created by children- predicts vocab & syntax development (ex: blow on food- hot, open & close hand- give me)
evidence that children can read intentions of others?
-missed string in a cup experiment: can imitate correct behavior by 18 mo
-used for language learning: new labels go to what adult is looking at, not child (around 24 months)
what do infant visual stimuli looking time measures tell us about mental categorization?
infants are actively forming categories of things/objects- can differentiate between rectangles and a circle
high amplitude sucking paradigm
sucking rate increases (dishabituation) with new sound if it is heard as different
habituation
become acclimated to (bored of)
dishabituation
regain interest in stimuli
headturn paradigm
uses pavlovian (classical conditioning) responses (ex: turning head when hearing “da” rather than “pa”
preferential looking & eye tracking
looking in a certain direction to relay preference; device used to track pupils/eye movements
what are some of babies’ preferences at birth?
i. Language > other audio
ii. Mother’s voice to other women
iii. Stories they’ve heard in the womb
iv. Native language
when does the shift from being a “universal” vs. “language specific” listeners?
around 1 yr
true or false: infants can create categories of objects and animals by 4-6 mo.
true
path
how infants recognize and categorize motion events- the direction the agent moves in (prepositions)- not mandatory/optional
manner
how infants recognize and categorize motion events- the way the agent moves (jumping, bouncing, skipping) (verbs)
what do infants use to differentiate between objects
adjectives and nouns