Language Acquisition

Question 0

what is the main reason behind the delay between the time when children comprehend words/syntax and when they start to produce it?

Answer 0

children have difficulty articulating their mouth and do not develop muscle or the motor control needed to produce speech until after they understand speech

Question 1

what are the 3 infant language development stages? what occurs in each?

Answer 1

1. cooing –> non linguistic utterances
2. Word production –> producing words with meaning in context
3. Use of syntax –> forming sentence structure

Question 2

what are the two theories on how we read?

Answer 2

1. whole word recognition –> recognizing word patterns when we see them and then matching it up with a familiar pattern in our head
2. phonetic decomposition –> sounding words out and breaking them down into their phonemes

Question 3

what does the dual route model suggest about how we read?

Answer 3

suggest that we have a whole route approach and composition approach to reading and recognizing words and we match the overall pattern when we can find out the word and if hat doesn’t work then we use phonetic decomposition to sound the word out which takes longer than the whole route approach

Question 4

how do expert readers develop?

Answer 4

expert readers are more familiar with word patterns therefore in order to be an expert at reading you have read more

Question 5

what area the two main theories on how we acquire language?

Answer 5

1. Behaviourist theory

2. Nativism theory

Question 6

what does the behaviourist theory suggest on language acquisition?

Answer 6

language is acquired by getting positive or negative outcomes (praise or punishment) from their parents

Question 7

what are 2 flaws with the behaviourist account theory?

Answer 7

1. parents only provide praise for phrases that the child produces that is understandable but not grammatically correct, however children develop syntax somehow
2. Does not account for how children produce random new utterances

Question 8

What does the nativist theory suggest on language acquisition?

Answer 8

that we are all born with an innate characteristic for language and grammar

Question 9

What are 3 flaws with the nativism theory?

Answer 9

1. does not explain why we do not have language ability from the moment we are born
2. does not explain why children who are past the age of 7 with no language acquisition do not develop language like children who were exposed to language before age 7
3. does not explain why its harder to learn any other language past age 7-10

Question 10

What does the sapir-worf hypothesis suggest?

Answer 10

suggests that language is the framework for thinking and reasoning (language influences our ability to think)

Question 11

what is a piece of evidence that supports the sapir-whorf hypothesis and what is evidence against?

Answer 11

Evidence for: memories are encoded by the language of the environment at the time they were encoded.
Evidence against: the dani-people (tribe) have only two words for colour, but they can still distinguish between every shade of colour like anyone else can… this shows that language does not always determine thoughts and reasoning