EARLY LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

Question 1

What did Mehler et al. (1988) study?

Answer 1

Language preference in 4-day-old infants.

Question 2

What method did Mehler et al. (1988) use?

Answer 2

Habituation to a Russian voice, then testing preference for Russian vs. French.

Question 3

What was the key finding of Mehler et al. (1988)?

Answer 3

Newborns preferred the native language (French).

Question 4

What did Mehler et al. (1988) conclude?

Answer 4

Prenatal learning of prosody; very early language sensitivity.

Question 5

What did Schacter et al. (2016) show?

Answer 5

Rapid growth in comprehension and vocabulary between ages 1–4.

Question 6

What data did Xu et al. (2023) use?

Answer 6

CHILDES database, 24 children aged 14–43 months.

Question 7

What did Xu et al. (2023) find?

Answer 7

Children shift from single words to two-word combinations around 18–24 months.

Question 8

What is the significance of Xu et al. (2023)?

Answer 8

Shows early syntax and productive language.

Question 9

What did Dromi (1987) observe?

Answer 9

A sudden increase in word learning (vocabulary spurt).

Question 10

What did Goldfield & Reznick (1990) find?

Answer 10

Vocabulary spurt around 40 words.

Question 11

What was Goldfield & Reznick’s conclusion?

Answer 11

Indicates a qualitative change in lexical learning.

Question 12

What are the major components of language?

Answer 12

Phonology, vocabulary, syntax, pragmatics.

Question 13

What did Eimas et al. (1971) investigate?

Answer 13

Categorical perception in infants.

Question 14

What method did Eimas et al. (1971) use?

Answer 14

Habituation to /b/ or /p/; tested within vs. across phonemic boundaries.

Question 15

What did Eimas et al. (1971) find?

Answer 15

Infants detected across-boundary changes → categorical perception.

Question 16

What did Eimas et al. (1971) conclude?

Answer 16

Speech perception is linguistically organized early; may be biologically specified.

Question 17

What did Werker & Lalonde (1988) study?

Answer 17

Phoneme discrimination in infants.

Question 18

What did Werker & Lalonde (1988) find?

Answer 18

6–8-month-olds discriminate all contrasts; 11–13-month-olds lose non-native contrasts.

Question 19

What is perceptual narrowing?

Answer 19

Loss of ability to distinguish non-native sounds with age.

Question 20

What is fast mapping?

Answer 20

Learning a new word after one exposure.

Question 21

What did Halberda (2003) discover?

Answer 21

Infants 14–17 months map new words to novel objects.

Question 22

What does the Gavagai problem illustrate?

Answer 22

Ambiguity in word meaning.

Question 23

What is the Mutual Exclusivity bias?

Answer 23

New words map to unfamiliar objects.

Question 24

What is the Whole Object bias?

Answer 24

Words refer to whole objects by default.

Question 25

What is the Basic Level bias?

Answer 25

Preference for basic categories over superordinate ones.

Question 26

What is the Shape Bias?

Answer 26

Extending labels based on shape.

Question 27

What is the Taxonomic Bias?

Answer 27

Grouping words by category instead of theme.

Question 28

What is structural dependency?

Answer 28

Grammar relies on hierarchical structure.

Question 29

Why is question formation evidence for structural dependency?

Answer 29

Children must move the correct auxiliary verb.

Question 30

What did Crain & Nakayama (1987) test?

Answer 30

Children's understanding of question formation.

Question 31

What did Crain & Nakayama (1987) find?

Answer 31

Children never made deep structural errors.

Question 32

What did Crain & Nakayama (1987) conclude?

Answer 32

Supports innate grammatical constraints.

Question 33

How does the behaviourist approach explain language?

Answer 33

Through conditioning, reinforcement, and stimulus–response learning.

Question 34

What are Chomsky's key ideas?

Answer 34

Universal Grammar and the Language Acquisition Device.

Question 35

What is Poverty of the Stimulus?

Answer 35

Input is insufficient → grammar must be partly innate.

Question 36

What did Grimshaw & Pinker (1989) argue?

Answer 36

Children learn grammar without consistent correction.

Question 37

What does overregularization show?

Answer 37

Children generate internal grammatical rules.

Question 38

How does Piaget view language?

Answer 38

As part of general cognitive development based on symbolic function.

Question 39

What did Corrigan (1978) find?

Answer 39

Correlation between conceptual and linguistic development.

Question 40

What is a criticism of Piaget's view?

Answer 40

Correlation may reflect parallel—not causal—development.

Question 41

What do modern theories say about language development?

Answer 41

Mix of innate constraints and experiential learning.

Question 42

What early sensitivity do newborns show?

Answer 42

Prenatal sensitivity to prosody.

Question 43

When does language develop rapidly?

Answer 43

Between ages 1–4, especially year 2.

Question 44

What are the major qualitative shifts in development?

Answer 44

Vocabulary spurt and early syntax.

Question 45

What are the core components of language?

Answer 45

Phonology, vocabulary, syntax.

Question 46

What is categorical perception?

Answer 46

Perceiving phoneme boundaries rather than continuous variation.

Question 47

What is perceptual narrowing?

Answer 47

Loss of ability to distinguish non-native sounds with age.

Question 48

What is the symbolic function?

Answer 48

Using one thing to represent another (basis for language).

Question 49

What is fast mapping?

Answer 49

Learning a word from one exposure.