1
Q
Infants’ speech perception ability
A
heir ability to devote attention to the prosodic and phonetic regularities of speech—develops tremendously in the first year as infants move from detecting larger patterns, such as rhythm, to detecting smaller patterns, such as combinations of specific sounds.
2
Q
prosodic characteristics of speech
A
include the frequency, or pitch, of he duration, or length, of sounds; and the intensity, or loudness, of sounds.
- Combinations of these prosodic characteristics produce distinguishable stress and intonation patterns that infants can detect.
3
Q
Stress
A
prominence placed on certain syllables of multisyllabic words.
4
Q
Intonation
A
the prominence placed on certain syllables, but it also applies to entire phrases and sentences. F
5
Q
By age 9 months, infants learning English prefer to listen to words
A
containing strong–weak stress patterns
6
Q
How do infants use prosodic regularities to segment the speech stream?
A
- One way is by becoming familiar with the dominant stress patterns of their native lan-guage.
- Coupled with their ability to engage in statistical learn-ing, infants who notice the common stress patterns in their native language learn over time where likely word boundaries occur in running speech.
7
Q
phonetic details of speech include
A
phonemes, or speech sounds, and combina-tions of phonemes.
8
Q
According to Stager and Werker, infants who are not yet learning words devote much attention to….
and older children concentrate their efforts on…
A
- phonetic details of speech
- word learning at the expense of fine phonetic detail
- Stager and Werker hypothesized that the 14-month-olds devoted their attention to learning the object name and did not notice the fine sound difference, whereas the 8-month-olds engaged in a simple sound discrimination task and were able to notice the phonetic distinction
9
Q
Categorical perception
A
allows listeners to distinguish between phonemes so they can quickly and efficiently process incoming speech by ignoring those variations that are non-essential or nonmeaningful in their language.
10
Q
Detection of Nonnative Phonetic Differences. Infants
A
- In the first year, they can distinguish among the sounds of all world languages, an ability older children and adults lack.
- ## up to about 6 months of age, infants learning English can distinguish between two different sounds in the Hindi language
11
Q
perceptual narrowing
A
infants start to focus more on perceptual differences that are relevant to them (such as the difference between two native phonemes) and focus less on perceptual differences that are not relevant to them, or that they encounter less often (such as the difference between two nonnative phonemes),
- can happen in face perception and musical rhythm
- occurs over the second half of the first year of life in
12
Q
Detection of Phonotactic Regularities.
A
- infants hear their native language more and more, they also develop the ability to recognize permissible combina-tions of phonemes in their language
- Infants’ ability to differentiate between permissible and impermissible sound sequences in their native language is present by about age 9 months]
- play a role in word learning
13
Q
Categorical Perception of Speech
A
- we categorize input in ways that highlight differences in meaning.
- is an ability infants develop over the first year of life as they are exposed to lan-guage.
1st> infants categorize incoming sounds into speech and nonspeech sounds.
THEN, infants learn to categorize speech sounds according to the particular features of the sounds, such as whether the sound is voiced (doe) or voiceless (toe).
14
Q
allophones
A
Variations of sounds in the same category
–lophones of a phoneme are measurably different from one another (such as in the amount of aspiration they contain), but they do not signal a difference in meaning between two words, as phonemes do.
15
Q
voice onset time
A
is the interval between the release of a stop consonant (e.g., p, b, t, d) and the onset of vocal cord vibrations.
16
Q
By age 4 months, infants can distinguish between
A
purposeful and accidental actions, and they appear to focus on the intentions underlying actions rather than the physical details of the actions
17
Q
Over the first year, infants learn to view human actions as
A
goal-directed, mean-ing they pay attention to the outcomes and objects to which humans direct their actions rather than to other superficial perceptual properties of the event. F
18
Q
Infants’ awareness of movement and understanding of the goals underlying actions are important precursors for language development because
A
once they understand the intentions behind actions, they, too, can engage in intentional communication by pointing, gesturing, and eventually using language.
19
Q
Catogory formation
A
- The ability to form categories, or to group items and events according to the per-ceptual and conceptual features they share, is crucial for language development.
- the ability of infants ages 3–9 months to form categories predicts both their general cognitive and language abilities at age 2 years and their cognitive outcomes at age 2.5 years
20
Q
the idea that object category formation is
A
hierarchical and includes three levels:
- superordinate,
- subordinate
- basic
21
Q
superordinate level
A
- uppermost level
- describe the most general concept in a particular category
- EX: food, furniture, and clothing
- are among the later words children acquire (until preschool age)
22
Q
subordinate level
A
- lowest level in a category hierarchy
- describe specific concepts in a category.
- EX: garbanzo, pinto, and kidney are subordinate terms for different types of beans.
23
Q
basic level
A
- center of a category hierarchy
- describe general concepts in a category,
- EX: apple, chair, and shirt.
- Infants’ first categories are basic-level categories, just as their first words are basic-level words
24
Q
infants use two types of categories at each level of the hierarchy:
A
-ceptual categories and conceptual categories
25
Perceptual Categories
- infants form perceptual categories on the basis of similar-appearing features, including color, shape, texture, size, and so forth.
- use to recognize and identify objects around them
- form perceptual categories by month 3 they can distiguis between dogs and cats
- by 4 months they can distinguish between animals and furniture
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Conceptual Categories
-requires infants to know what an object does
- When infants have conceptual categories, they can use these categories to make inductive generalizations about new objects without relying on perceptual similarity.
-
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vocalizations often classify these sounds according to a stage model
which means they describe infants’ vocalizations as following an observable and sequential pattern.
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Stark Assessment of Early Vocal Development
| SAEVD-R
- which parents, researchers, and clinicians can use to classify vocalizations and as-sess an infant’s oral communication abilities.
- 23 types of vocalizations grouped into five distinct developmental levels
1. Reflexive
2. Control of phonation
3. Expansion
4. Basic canonical syllables
5. Advance forms
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Reflexive
- 0-2 months
- The first sounds infants produce
- include sounds of discomfort and distress (crying, fussing) and vegetative sounds such as burping, coughing, and sneezing.
- infants have no control over reflexive sounds
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Control of phonation
- 1-4 months
- in-fants begin to produce cooing and gooing sounds.
- consist mainly of vowel-like sounds
- might also combine vowel-like segments with a consonant-like segment
- isolated consonant sounds such as nasalized sounds as well as “raspberries,” trills, and clicks.
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expansion
- 3-8 months
- infants gain more control over the articulators and begin to produce isolated vowel sounds
- experiment with the loudness and pitch of their voices at this time, and they may squeal
- may use marginal babbling
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marginal babbling
early type of babbling containing consonant-like and vowel-like sounds with prolonged transitions between the consonant and vowel sounds.
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basic canonical syllables
- 5-10 months
- infants begin to pro-duce single consonant-vowel (C-V) syllables
- Canonical babbling also emerges
- whispered vocalizations
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Canonical babbling
- it differs from earlier vocalizations in that the infant produces more than two C-V syllables in sequence.
- Babbling may be reduplicated or nonreduplicated.
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Reduplicated babbling
consists of repeating C-V pairs, as in “ma ma ma,
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nonreduplicated babbling (or variegated babbling
con-sists of nonrepeating C-V combinations, such as “da ma goo ga.
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whispered vocalizations,
C-V combinations followed by an isolated consonant (“ba—g”) and disyllables, which consist of two C-V syllables separated by an audible gap (ba—ba).
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deaf, babble manually
- using their hands
- These infants’ hand movements have a slower rhythm than that of ordinary gestures, and the infants produce these movements within a tightly restricted space in front of the body (P
39
Advance forms
- 9-18 months
- infants begin to produce diphthongs
- Infants also begin to produce more com-plex syllable forms, including single-syllable types such as V–C (“am”) and C–C–V (“stee”), complex disyllables such as V–C–V (“abu”), and multisyllabic strings with and without varied stress intonation patterns
- biggest achievement of this stage is Jardon
40
diphthongs
which are combinations of two vowel sounds within the same syllable, as in the combination of sounds in boy and the combination of sounds in fine.
41
Jargon
is a special type of babbling containing at least two syllables and at least two different consonants and vowels, as well as varied stress or intonation patterns.
- you may think you are hearing ques-tions, exclamations, and commands, even in the absence of recognizable words.
- are not considered true words because they are not referential, nor do they convey meaning.
42
Infant-directed speech (IDS)
- also called motherese and baby talk
- is the speech adults use in communicative situations with young language learners
- falls within child-direcred speech (CDS)
- appears to serve a host of spe-cial purposes. It attracts infants’ attention, and infants, including those with hearing
43
Paralinguistic features of IDS
- those that describe the manner of speech outside the linguistic information
- include a high overall pitch, exaggerated pitch contours, and slower tempos than those of adult-directed speech loss, prefer it to ADS
- also aids in communicating emotion and speak-ers’ communicative intent
- contains exaggerated vowels, which may facilitate infants’ processing of words containing these vowels in fluent speech
- also highlights content words, such as nouns and verbs, relative to function words, such as prepositions and articles
- exaggerates pauses
- using IDS to introduce new words and phrases should capture infants’ attention and increase the chance that they will focus on the speech they hear.
44
Syntactic characteristics of IDS
a shorter mean length of utterance (MLU), or the number of morphemes in an utterance; fewer subordinate clauses; and more content words and fewer function words.
45
Discourse features of IDS
include more repetition and more questions than in ADS.
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joint reference and attention 3 major development phases
Phase 1: Attendance to social partners
Phase 2: Emergence and coordination of joint attention
Phase 3: Transition to language
47
Phase 1: Attendance to social partners
- birth - 6 months
-infants develop patterns of attending to social partners
-especially interested in looking at people’s faces during this phase
-infants value and partici-pate in interpersonal interactions, learning how to maintain attention and be “organized”
caregiver respnsivnes important in this phase
- rituals of body movement and joint intention with others.
-emotional support others provide, as well as to others’ reactions to their actions
48
Phase 2: Emergence and Coordination of Joint Attention
- (Age 6 Months to 1 year)
- infants begin to take more interest in looking at and manipulating the objects around them.
- shift their attention between an object of interest and another person
- the emergence of joint attention,
49
joint attention is
the simultaneous engagement of two or more individuals in mental focus on a single external object of attention
-children who engage in longer periods of joint attention with their caregivers have relatively larger vocabularies at age 18 months
50
supported joint engagement.
dults may use such techniques as speak-ing with an animated voice or showing the infant novel objects as
51
the extent to which mothers consistently use strategies to redirect their infant’s attention
negatively related to an infant’s ability to engage in sustained attention
52
intersubjective awareness
he recognition of when one person shares a mental focus on some external object or action with another person
53
intentional communication
the infants’ attempts to deliberately communicate with other people.
- begins to emerge around 8 -10 months of age
54
imperative pointing
- as requests to adults to retrieve objects for them. The
| - 10 months of age
55
Declarative pointing
- involves a social process between an infant and an adult
- to call an adult’s attention to objects and to comment on objects.
- 6 months - 1 yearinfants demonstrate sensitivity to the identity and emotions of others who engage with them.
56
Phase 3: Transition to Language
- age 1 year and beyond
- children begin to incorporate language into their communicative interactions with other people.
- involvement of parents and other adults is still important during this phase.
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Daily routines of infancy
- provide comfort and predictability
- provide many opportunities for language learning.
- such as feeding, bathing, dressing, and diaper changing
58
Caregiver responsiveness
- caregivers’ attention and sensitivity to infants’ vo-calizations and communicative attempts.
- helps teach infants that other people value their behaviors and communicative attempts.
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seven characteristics as key indicators of caregiver responsiveness.
by Weitzman and Greenberg/ linked to improved rates of language development
1. Waiting and listening.
2. Following the child lead
3. Joining in and playing
4. being face to face
5. using a variety of questions and labels
6. encouraging turn taking
7. expanding and extending
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1. Waiting and listening.
Parents wait expectantly for initiations, use a slow pace to allow for initiations, and listen to allow the child to complete messages.
61
2. Following the child lead
When a child initiates either verbally or nonverbally, parents follow the child’s lead by responding verbally to the initiation, using animation, and avoiding vague acknowledgments.
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3. Joining in and playing
arents build on their child’s focus of interest and play without dominating.
63
4. being face to face
Parents adjust their physical level by sitting on the floor, leaning forward to facilitate face-to-face interaction, and bending toward the child when they are above the child’s level.
64
5. using a variety of questions and labels
arents encourage conversation by ask-ing a variety of wh- questions (e.g., “Who?” “Where?” “Why?”), by using yes–no questions only to clarify messages and obtain information, by avoiding test and rhetorical questions, and by waiting expectantly for responses.
65
6. encouraging turn taking
Parents wait expectantly for responses, balance the number and length of adult-to-child turns, and complete their children’s sen-tences only when they are not yet combining words.
66
7. Expanding and extending.
Parents expand and extend by repeating their children’s words and using correct grammar or by adding another idea, and use comments and questions to inform, predict, imagine, explain, and talk about feelings.
67
Language form
phonology: infants begin to produce sounds as soon as they are born. distress, such as crying, from birth on. andmelody of cries tends to match the melody of a newborn’s native language
morphology and syntax:infants’ accomplishments in these areas are min-imal, if not nonexistent.
68
Language content
- produce their first true word around age 12 months
- language content corresponds to semantics.
- true word
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true word if it meets three important criteria.
- infants must say true words with a clear intention.
- infants must produce true words with recognizable pronunciation that approximates the adult form.
- a true word is a word a child uses consistently and generalizes beyond the original context to all appropriate exemplars.
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Language use
```
pragmatics: who are communicating intentionally (usually by age 8 months) use a variety of preverbal language functions
Attention seeking to self
Attention seeking to events object or people
requesting objects
requesting info
requesting action
greetings
transferring
protesting or rejecting
responding or acknowledge
informing
```
71
Intraindividual Differences: Three factors account for the fact that lan-guage comprehension most often precedes language production
1. language comprehension requires that people re-trieve words from their lexicon, or mental dictionary
2. the speaker to search for words, organize them, and place stress where it is required.
3. must construct a match between the intended referent and language to express meaning.
72
Inter-individual Differences:
- some children develop language more quickly than others.
- children express themselves for different communicative purposes.
- certain children fall at either end of the continuum for language development and are late talkers or early talkers.
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Variation in language development rate
The rate at which a group of children develop their receptive and expressive lan-guage abilities can vary considerably. One way to gauge the variability in infants’ receptive and expressive vocabularies is by examining norm-referenced measures of language: MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventories
- This means even toddlers who seem to say many words (compared to their same-age peers) might potentially un-derstand twice as many words.
- age counts only 22% of variance so 78% varient depends on the child life
- 2 variables of interpreting are socioeconomic (SES) and the maout of talk parents engage with their child.
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Variation in language learning styles
infants’ predominant style for using lan-guage, which researchers describe as expressive or referential language
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Expressive language
- essive language learners use language primarily for social exchanges
- several words and phrases that allow them to express their needs and describe their feelings as they interact with other people.
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Referential language
- use language primarily to refer to peo-ple and objects.
| - They enjoy labeling things they see, and they like when adults pro-vide labels for them.
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Variation at the extremes of the typical range of language development
late talkers and early talkers
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late talkers
- are children who exhibit early delays in their expressive (rather than receptive) language development.
- they produce fewer than 50 words by age 2
- 13.4% of the general population are late talkers
- males are about three times more likely to be late talkers than females,
- born earlier than 37 weeks’ gestation, or who are less than 85% of their optimum birth weight are about twice as likely to be late talkers
- achieve normal language level by age 3-4
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earely talkers
- are children who are ahead of their peers in expres-sive language use.
- early talkers as children be-tween ages 11 and 21 months who score in the top 10% for vocabulary production
- an average of 475 words ( compared to 200 from normal kids)
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Habituation
of an infant consists of presenting the same stimulus repeatedly (e.g., an image of a brown dog on a TV screen) until his or her attention to the stimulus decreases by a predetermined amount.
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Dishabituation
describes the infant’s renewed interest in a stimulus according to some predetermined threshold.
82
habituation–dishabituation tasks
to determine whether infants detect differences in prelinguistic and linguistic stimuli and how infants organize these stimuli categorically
-researchers determined that young infants are sensitive to the nonlinguistic aspects of manner and path that potentially serve as verb labels in their native language.
83
Switch Task
- is a technique used in conjunction with habituation.
- In the test phase, the infant sees either the same pairing as during the habituation phase (the “same trial”) or a different pairing than he or she saw during the habit-uation phase (the “switch trial”).-Researchers expect an infant will look longer at the stimulus presented during the control trial than at stimuli he or she has already viewed.
84
intermodal preferential looking paradigm (IPLP)
- an infant sits on a blind-folded parent’s lap approximately 3 feet from a television screen
- The infant watches a split-screen presen-tation in which one stimulus is on the left side of the screen and another stimulus is on the right side.
- The audio stimulus accompanying the presen-tation matches the visual information on only one side of the screen
- dancing?”). A hidden camera records infants’ visual fixation throughout the presentation
- nfants will direct more visual atten-tion to the matching side of the screen when they understand the language they hear; that is, they will find the link between the information presented in the au-ditory modality (that which they hear) and that in the visual modality (that which they see).
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interactive intermodal pref-erential looking paradigm (IIPLP),
- the infant is able to hold and explore objects before the experimenter affixes them to a board for the test trials.
- researchers measure attention to the target object as it appears alongside another object on a board.
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Naturalistic observation
-involves systematically observing and analyzing an infant’s communicative behavior in everyday situations.
- may videotape, audiotape, and take notes as the infant interacts naturally with the people around him or her
-
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The Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES) database
- source for researchers interested in gain-ing access to naturalistic and structured language samples to answer questions about language development.
- contains transcripts and audio files naturalistic and structured observations in more than 30 languages as well as software for coding and analyzing these transcripts (CLAN)
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Neuroimaging technologies
- focused largely on infants’ perception of the phonemes that make up their native language or languages.
2 types
1st: methods that measure changes in the brain’s electrical activity, such as event-related potential (ERP) and magnetoencephalography (MEG).
2nd: methods that measure changes in the brain’s blood flow (hemodynamic response), such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), or functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)
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Information language screens
involve checklists of common early language milestones that clinicians and parents can use to check off whether or not an infant exhibits each behavior in question. see page 155
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parent report measures
- reporting to be a reliable and valid measure of language ability when compared with other direct assessments
- Parents report on specific language behaviors, us-ing checklists and questionnaires. Common self-report measures for infants include the Language Development Survey (LDS), and the MacArthur–Bates
Language development
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