Language acquisition

Question 1

skills for learning language: association

Answer 1

sounds with words, words with sounds

Question 2

skills for learning language: generalisation/extenstion

Answer 2

new items/different speakers

e.g. need to recognise words through accents

Question 3

skills for learning language:
recognition

Answer 3

sounds, words and learned meanings

Question 4

skills for learning language: retrieval

Answer 4

raclling sounds, words and meanings

Question 5

Domain pattern recognition

Answer 5

all patterns

• identify patterns for sounds which fit together to make words
• identify patterns for which word-types fit together and in which order to make longer words

Question 6

comprehension precedes production

Answer 6

understand 100s of words before they say their first word – speaking is a lot more challenging

Question 7

comprhension

Answer 7

understanding what others say

Question 8

production

Answer 8

speaking to others

Question 9

the word gap

Answer 9

• vocabulary size differs between socio-economic status groups
• the gap gets bigger and bigger over time
• 6month language gap at 24 months

Question 10

research results for word gap

Answer 10

• middle and high SES parents are more talkative
• at 18mo children from low SES produce fewer words
• children from low SES produce less complex sentences
• 6month language gap at 24 months

Question 11

The Matthew effect

Answer 11

the richer become richer and the poorer become poorer

Question 12

recognising language

Answer 12

• foetuses can hear from 15-18 weeks
• sounds are muffled
• infants prefer muffled sounds
• infants prefer parents voices and own language

Question 13

candence

Answer 13

rhythm of language and speech

Question 14

recognising cadence study

Answer 14

• pregnant women read a story 2x a day for last 6 weeks of pregnancy
• 55 hours old sucked pacifier at rate that told familiar story was told more
• learned cadence and cause and effect

Question 15

no breaks between spoken words, how do infants know where breaks are?

Answer 15

pitch
pauses
correlations

• both men and women increase pitch when using infant- directed speech and will include pauses

Question 16

transitional probability PATTERNS

Answer 16

• sounds that occur together often are more likely to be part of the same word
• Ba -By - often together
• but baby is followed by lots of different words - recognise gap

Question 17

infants segmenting speech study

Answer 17

• 8 month old infants listen to 3 multi-syllable pseudowords for 2 minutes
• no pauses or cues
• transitional prob within words - 1.0
• transitional probability between words 0.33
• infants then listened to part words or words
• preferred part words and could tell the difference
• infants use patterns to learn language

Question 18

infant directed speech characteristics

Answer 18

• higher pitch
• wider range of pitch
  -exaggerated intonation
• simple structure
• highly grammatical
• slower
• repetition

adjust speech based on words they think their children do not know

Question 19

infant directed speech benefits

Answer 19

• exaggeration between vowel categories - helps children learn words
• children learn words better
• have wider vocabularies
• children understand sentences better
• can even help adults learn

Question 20

ages recognising words

Answer 20

4.5m - own name
6m - mommy and daddy
6-9m some words of familiar objects - food, body parts, etc

Question 21

Autism and recognising own name

Answer 21

• rate at which children do not recognise own name much higher in those who went on to be diagnosed with ASD
• could become a diagnosis technique

Question 22

bilingual vs monolingual children

Answer 22

• develop very similarly
• in general the development is flexible and robust
• more specifically shows the general stages all children experience

Question 23

dragon study

Answer 23

language influences what categories are formed

Question 24

categorisation and language

Answer 24

• most input children hear is:

for solid, shape based categories (nouns) with count noun syntax (cups rather than some water)

helps them create rules for when they encounter new items

Question 25

categorisation - Samuelson study

Answer 25

- children who were shape trained more likely to match things based on shape even when it didn't make sense to - shape bias training effects lasted longer - children who learned based on material categories developed no bias

Question 26

how do children know what a words means

Answer 26

- repetition -context - feedback - repeated exposure - gestures - association/detecting patterns

Question 27

Fast mapping

Answer 27

- ability to quickly link a novel name to a novel object by applying known info - linking a name to an object or a colour word to a coloured object 'bring me the chromium tray, not the blue one, the chromium one' 13/14 children brought the olive green tray a week later 9/13 children brought a green tray when asked ' which is chromium' - they know blue - so it must be the other one

Question 28

word learning is a product of

Answer 28

what the child is seeing/doing now what the child just did the child's developmental history - disadv, stuttering, accents

Question 29

Word learning as a product of what the child is doing now:

Answer 29

What is a child being asked to do on the test E.g. it is easier for children to point to dot that refers to a particular word then actually articulate/say word itself and easier to remember a new word if it was the only thing among other objects given a name 'the different one'

Question 30

word learning as a product of what the child was just exposed to: recent past

Answer 30

- harder to learn from books with more illustrations > harder to narrow focus - easier to remember object names if you were exposed to several examples from the category - harder to do well if the experimenter changes

Question 31

word learning as a product of the past

Answer 31

- children who heard the same stories repeatedly learned words significantly better - AND retained words significantly better

Question 32

bedtime stories

Answer 32

- Those who had different stories (which had worse results previously) but then napped → began to catch up with the ideal condition of ‘same story’ with ‘naptime’ - Those who had different stories AND did not nap improved over time but NEVER performed better than the other kids

Question 33

why does repetition help

Answer 33

- Helps by knowing more on what to focus - If we know what to expect - can focus on the finer details in the repeated readings e.g. what the words mean

Question 34

canonical babbling

Answer 34

a string of adult-like consonant vowel sequences - predicts first words - those who begin doing this later = smaller spoken vocabularies

Question 35

vocabulary explosion

Answer 35

18-20 months 20 new words per week due to learning multiple new words and the same time AND some words take longer to learn than others

Question 36

combining words

Answer 36

minimum of what you need to get idea across comparable to texting pay-by-word - smallest no of words possible

Question 37

telegraphic speech

Answer 37

simple sentences two words: noun + noun or noun + verb

Question 38

late talkers

Answer 38

- not all children have rapid vocab growth - 3-5 words per week - less than 50 words t age 2 and do not combine words - some are 'late bloomers' who later catch up - others are diagnosed with developmental language disorders

Question 39

weaker language skills give risk of

Answer 39

poor self regulation victimisation poor self esteem

Question 40

overextension

Answer 40

extend a known word to something beyond their vocabulary

Question 41

3 types of over-extension

Answer 41

categorical relation: squirrel = dog analogical relation apple = ball predicate-based relation (co-occurrence) key = door

Question 42

irregular verbs

Answer 42

- children learn few irregular verbs first - then the -ed rule - which they begin to overgeneralise - then relearn correct usage

Question 43

percentage of overgeneralised irregular verbs

Answer 43

14%