Language Development Flashcards
(17 cards)
What is language?
Communication system
Language = discrete- each word= category
Language = combinatorial - we combine sounds to make words
Finite no. Of words, infinite combinations
Infants first learn words, then use to abstractly ( describing things that aren’t visible)
Stages of 1st language develoment:
0-2 months: crying (hunger, pain)
2-4 months: cooing (express pleasure)
4-9 months: babbling, gurgling
9-18 months: one-word utterances- referring to ppl in their life or objects
18 months- 2 years: two-word utterances - three-word utterances
Other communication systems available earlier than language: vocalisations
CRYING
- Lummaa 1998: intentional, manipulative signal > lacking evidnece
- Bowlby 1969: intentional- keeps mother close to baby (food, warmth)- crying has functional impact on mothers behaviour and brain responces
BABBLING
1st stage= vocal play
2nd stage= canonical babbling- repetition of same sounds
3rd stage: modulates babbling- included play with pitch + tone - sounds nonsense
Learning to babble:
- 9-month olds increase vowel sounds if mothers responded to Babbage’s with vowel sound
- not just imitation
- only if mothers vocalisation was temporarily contingent with baby’s initial babble
Other communication systems available earlier than language: gestures (pointing)
POINTING
- large aviation in age of onset
- 7-15 months/ 11-12 months
- neural Cortes of pointing develop significant between 6-13 months and
Theories of pointing:
1. pointing starts as individual, becomes joint
- starts as non-communicative
- infants sometime point when alone
- gaze alteration to recipient does not always occur
- Pointing is joint from start
- pointing = referential and symbolic
- mother and child pointing correlates with one mother
- accompanied by vocalisations
- correlated with understanding of intentions
Pointing helps transition from 1 to 2 word utterances
Other communication systems available earlier than language: gestures (iconic gestures)
Iconic gesture= hand shape represents object/event being described
Iverson & Goldin-Meadow (2005): inconceivable gestures closely related to 2-word combinations
Sign languages
Although sign language uses manual symbols - also follow rules of spoken language
Senghans (2004) Nicaraguan sign language
- deaf ppl kept home, no school
- lacked exposure to developed language
- deaf school opened— new song language evolved
Developmental learning mechanisms
Although we loose some info by separating manner and path, we gain potential for infinite combinations
Children demonstrate early mechanisms for learning discrete, combinatorial systems
Children drive evolution of languages, through this preference
Turn- taking. A step for language development
2 ways of detecting conversation turn:
1. Semantic content - tested pre lipstick v linguistic kids
- Intonational form: presented normal/ flattened intonation
Measure = gaze shift between speakers
Infant-directed speech
Some variation in amount of motherese across cultures, but some basic features
- higher pitch
- slower
- exaggerates prosody
Why do adults talk to infants even before they can understand?
- Aids speech perception
- infants sensitive to world-clause boundaries
- significant correlation between degree of exaggeration in IDS and infants Honeycutt discrimination ages 6-12 months - Facilitates adult-infant social interaction
- infants prefer IDS
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4 components of language:
- Phonology
- Semantics
- Syntax
- Pragmatics
Phonological development
= discriminating and producing sounds
High-amplitude sucking procedure: (Emias 1977)
- presented 1and 4 month olds with different categories of phonemes, Orestes with different Voice Onset Times
- some phoneme category
Is this universal ?
- sounds categorised differently in different cultures
- Hindi speakers can discriminate between sounds that sound identical to English-speakers
Head-turn procedure
- 7 months old
- children start out being very good at discriminating sounds from any language
- they then learn which sounds they need to be able to discriminate between their own language
Semantic development:
= understanding meaning of words
Children must learn massive no. Of words in short time- how?
- 1st. Learnt words relating to their immediate environment (Mummy, daddy etc)
They learn from errors they make:
- Underextension: fail to use a word to describe all the members of category (call their won dog , dog but don’t know what to call other dogs)
- Overextension: applying words to members of broader category (calling a cat ‘dog’ too)
-Overlap: mixture of Underextension + overextension
- Mismatch: child points at something, calling it wrong thing- parent thinks they were pointing at right thing so praises- child learns wrong word
Children do 2 things at this stage:
1. Naming insight: realising that everything has a name and every name refers to object
- Understanding semantic relations: words can be grouped together into categories
- age kids start to sort objects into categories correlated with age of vocab spurt
The Wug test (Berko, 1958)
- 3 year olds: more than 2-word combinations
- evidnece for early grammar rule understanding —- knowing to add ‘s’ to pluralise
Pragmatic development:
= appropriate use of language depending on needs of listener
- adults usually keep track of whether listener has same common knowledge about object of sentence
- young children tend to make errors, suggesting they assume other ppl know same as they do— Thoery of Mind
- children improve mist between 3-4 years, but continue to improve throughout childhood
Theories of language development: Learning Theory
Language is like any other behaviour we learn
We use domain general learning mechanisms, not special domain specific modules
Infants surrounded by language, even in utero
Statistical Learning (Newport et al, 1996)
- certain syllable combinations more common than others
- test phase: present common combinations or non-common ones
- 8-month olds showed preference for non-common combination
Theories of language development: Nativism
Learning cant explain all aspects of language development.
- cultures vary in many ways, but language milestones= similar
- learning only leads to more cross-cultural variation
- errors unlikely to be learned
- humans require innate capacities for language to learn correct linguistic structure
Language Aquisition Device (LAD)
- cognitive mechanisms predisposing kids to learning language rules
- generates theories about rules by studying regularities in speech
- sometime these theories = wring, and need to be tweaked
- LAD -Broca’s areas- production of speech
- LAD- Wernicke’s area- comprehension of speech
Theories of language development: Interactionist accounts
Learning can’t explain language entirely, but neither can innate biological structures
Underline interaction between language + cognitive development
