lecture 5 prelinguistic language development

Question 1

what are the different chunks of language that we learn

Answer 1

messages
sentences
words
speech sounds

Question 2

define messages

Answer 2

pragmatics of the language - study of language in terms of context

Question 3

define sentences

Answer 3

grammar of language ie the syntax/morphology - way the shape of the word can change its meaning

Question 4

define words

Answer 4

lexical level of language ie the semantics

Question 5

define speech sounds

Answer 5

difference between the sounds we make and the sounds that convey meaning
phonology - language sounds
phonetics - vocal sounds
different phonemes convey different meanings

Question 6

how does knowledge of language and meaning develop

Answer 6

progressive - small to large units ie better at phonemes at start of development

not completely the case as suggests define phonemes in terms of meaning

Question 7

stages of language aquisition

Answer 7

communicative crying (pre)
babbling(pre)
reduplication (pre)
one word
two word 
multi word 
narrative

Question 8

moan et al high amp sucking and native lang from birth

Answer 8

from 2 days old infants of monolingual mothers display high amp sucking to native language

Question 9

what is high amplitude sucking

Answer 9

used to look at child understanding from birth -where cant voice experience/preference
habituate to an auditory stimulus then change in some way - see if the infant recognizes and change in the sound - if does, sucking increases

Question 10

what is infant directed speech preference

Answer 10

adults speak to infants in short sentences, high pitched, exaggerated expressions, clear pronunciation, distinct pauses
do to catch babies attention

Question 11

what is categorical perception

Answer 11

there are distinct categorical differences between the sounds we hear in language - subtle changes in phonemes are changes in the smaller form of a word to change meaning and differ across languages
young infants sensitive to a range of speech categories in native and non native language up to 6-8 months

Question 12

categorical perception in adults

Answer 12

speech sounds vary in phonetic featuresi.e. /ba/ /pa/ vary by VOT
can artificially synthesize sounds then ask what hear - sharp discrimination at 25-30ms VOT - not linear

Question 13

eimas et al categorical perception in infants

Answer 13

habituated 1 and 4 months to /ba/
control - hear ba both conditions - no change in HAS
differ - hear /pa/ from other side of cat boundary - increase in recog that diff
same - hear different target of /ba/ (same cat boundary) - equal step change but quickly habituate

Question 14

why can infants detect non native language contrasts while adults cant

Answer 14

early in life, infants do not know own native language so must recognise all contrasts incase necessary in native language
adults aware of native so stop recognising contrasts not useful for comprehension of own language

Question 15

werker et al 1981 when does native lang environment change infantile speech perception

Answer 15

compared english adults, english infants and hindi adults ability to discriminate hindi speech sounds
head turn procedure - condition to turn head when hear change in sound (reward by toy)
test english infants ability to distinguish hindi /tha/ vs /dha/ same level as hindi adults
6-8m universal listeners
english adults cannot distinguish

Question 16

werker and tees 1984 english and hindi adults/infants and change in speech perception

Answer 16

compare english infants with english and salish adults in distinguish of salish contrasts
6-8m, 8-10m, 10-12m, 11-12m
rapid reduction in discrimination ability around first year (10m)

Question 17

what do spectrographs suggest about word seperation

Answer 17

stream of speech is not discrete but a continuous flow of energy between words

Question 18

describe the preferential looking paradigm

Answer 18

infant habituated to a stimulus

show second novel stimulus - if look longer at new then can discriminate between stimuli

Question 19

describe juscuzk and aslin PLP in infant ability to segment continuous speech

Answer 19

1- illuminate light when hear sounds sequence specific to target (look at light, hear certain speech) i.e. ‘cup’ ‘dog’
hear familiar or isolated non familiar words in different stream

2- habituate to isolated target words then hear sentences of target words or unfamiliar words
if can tell the difference

if prefer speech sounds (familiar) then look longer at light for it

Question 20

results of juscuzk and aslin PLP in infant ability to segment continuous speech

Answer 20

able to segment words in continuous spech from 6-7.5 months

Question 21

problem with juscuzk and aslin

Answer 21

cant tell if look because prefer one to other or just cant tell difference

Question 22

what are prosodic cues in speech

Answer 22

recognising segmentation of continuous speech based on the properties of the word when pronounced - the stress syllables

Question 23

metrical segmentation strategy

Answer 23

placement of stress on syllables often used in a language to denote the start or end of a word

Question 24

jusczyk, cutler and redanz 1993 infant preference of stress syllables

Answer 24

examine the potential role that sensitivity to predominant stress patterns of words might play in lexical development
english - majority of words have stressed (strong) initial syllables
9 m American infants sig longer to strong/weak stress patterns than weak/strong stress patterns
no sig preferences for stress pattern in 6m
9m preference for strong/weak patterns even when the speech input was low-pass filtered
- preference a result of familiarity w/prosodic features of native language and specifically for the prosodic structure of the words

Question 25

jusczyk et al 1999 familiar and non familiar words and stress patterns in infancy

Answer 25

7.5 m segment strong/weak stress patterns from fluent speech - responding to the whole words not to just strong syllables
7.5 m missegment weak/strong words - treat strong syllables as markers of word onsets
when weak/strong words co-occurred with a particular following weak syllable (e.g., “guitar is”), 7.5 m misperceive these as strong/weak words (e.g., “taris”)
English rely heavily on stress cues when segment words from fluent speech but learn to integrate multiple sources of info about word boundaries

Question 26

co occurance of words in segmenting speech

Answer 26

relate to the statistical relationshipbetween syllables that commonly occurs in native language
syllables that co occur more often are more likely to be used - determine different words

Question 27

describe saffran et al 1996 co occurance of syllables

Answer 27

infants more exprience dependent>independent in word learning?
habituate infants to unstressed nonsense strings ie ‘ti-bi-do’ ‘pi-go-la’ (recog as full words as 100% transition prob)
PLP - look to hear familiar full words or unfamiliar part ie ‘pi-go-do’
increased attention for part words - recog difference and that not what expected
possess experience dep mechanism useful in segmentation and other lang aspects but not certain if specific to lang or general mechanism of learning

Question 28

define phoneme

Answer 28

smallest sound unit that holds meaning

Question 29

define voice onset time VOT

Answer 29

time between release of the plosive (ppp/bbb) and the onset of vocal energy (aaaa)

Question 30

what might eimas et al 1971 suggest about language

Answer 30

hold an innate ability to categories sightly discrepant speech sounds
highly attuned to recognise slight differences in language from birth

Question 31

if language categorisation is innate, what might be expected from birth

Answer 31

logically, infants should discriminate sounds in both the native and non native languages
onyl experience will determine specificity to own language

Question 32

cultural differences in metrical segmentation strategy

Answer 32

ie english and dutch more stress then weak ‘ANImal’
canadian and french more weak than stress

by 7months imporved recognition of words that reverse typical lang stress ie supRISE

Question 33

theoretical implications of current language development understanding
altman 1997

Answer 33

how can babies be aware of distinctions between one language and another when they have only just been born?
If babies lose sensitivity to speech sounds absent from their language because of inexperiene, how are they sensitive to any sounds in the first place?
If adults spend all this time accessing false words (identifying “ramp” “art” “part” and “rampart” based on context), how do we ever manage to figure out which words were intended, and which were not? and how do babies manage this also?

Question 34

what sounds are babies exposed to in utero (prosodic variation)

Answer 34

mother’s voice travels through bone and tissue to the uterus and, although still muffled, is louder than any speech sounds coming in from the outside
the perception of varying intonation and rhythm is generally referred to as prosodic variation—the variation in pitch, amplitude (which is perceived as loudness), and duration (how long the sounds are, how quickly they vary, and so on)
prosodic variation is just about the only variation in the language that the baby has exposure to before it is born.

Question 35

cooper and aslin 1994 IDS

Answer 35

1m/o and newborns prefer IDS over ADS
thought that success in lang dev may be facilitated by positive interaction with verbal environment between parent and child

Question 36

discrimination on the category boundary

Answer 36

/ba/ /pa/ 25ms boundary
when hear two exemplars from adjecent positions along cat boundary then adults find very hard to discriminate and tend to make guesses or hear the same thing