Language Development (Unit 3)

Question 1

How do infants communicate?

Answer 1

-2-4, 8-12
- Connection to sight → cooing by seeing things around them
- Remember first few months, can’t see people or color clearly

1. Crying - distress, need to be changed, need to be fed
2. Cooing (single vowel sounds i.e. “aah”, “ooo” etc.)
   - First start to coo around 2-4 months - gurgling sounds that are usually made to express pleasure
3. Babbling - produce vocalization before they actually speak recognizable words - the function is to practice making sounds, communication & attract attention

• Gestures - start using gestures around 8-12 months (waving bye, nodding, showing an empty cup)
• Linked to language development as parents will generally talk about what they are gesturing towards
• They understand words before they can say them - the appearance of a first word (around 10-15 months) is just a continuation of that

Question 2

First words - infancy

Answer 2

• Vocab spurt: once the first word is spoken, an infant’s vocab increases dramatically
  a) 18 month old = 50 word average
  b) 2 year old = 200 word average
• By the time they are 18-24 months, they vocalize in 2 word utterances
  a) See doggie; more milk; mama walk; where ball
  b) Usually heavy reliance on gestures, tone & context

Question 3

Initial inaccuracies during infancy

Answer 3

1. Underextension
   - Use of words to refer to a narrow category of objects or events that term signifies (initial stage)
   - Ex. the child uses the word “CAT” only for the family cat and no other feline, sometimes unable to connect what they are seeing, schema is more narrow in this (schema for piaget’s theory)
2. Holophrase
   - Single word that expresses a complete thought
   - Ex. a kid tugs on parents leg saying bye bye in demanding tone to express his desire to leave
3. Overextension
   - Applying the word to several objects that share a particular characteristic
   - Ex. the infant overgeneralizes and calls everything with 4 legs a dog → schema part comes in, larger

Question 4

What happens during early childhood?

Answer 4

• Age 2-3 → toddlers transition from 2 words to 3-4 word complex sentences (school age time)
  Have knowledge of language, and now building sentences
• Can produce all vowel sounds & consonant sounds; demonstrate knowledge of syntax; semantics & morphology (order of words) rules
  a) Use prepositions like “an” and “in”; “the” or “a” and various forms of the verb “to be”
  b) I was going to the store
• Best evidence for changes in children’s use of morphological rules occurs when they switch from “foots” to “feet”; or “goed” to “went”

ex. wug test

Question 5

Early childhood - gaining semantics:

Answer 5

-18-6 months, 1 new word an hour and CONNECTIONS
- Vocab development is dramatic between 18 months and 6 years of age → child learn new word every hour → know 14000 words by grade 1
- Why can children learn so many new words so quickly?
A) Fast mapping → child’s ability to make an initial connection between a word and its referent after only limited exposure to the word

Researchers have found that exposure to a word on multiple occasion over several days result in more successful word learning than exposure to a word the same amount of time but over a single day

Question 6

6 Key Principles of Young Children’s Vocabulary Development:

Answer 6

1. What they hear most often
   They learn the words they encounter with their families, teachers, sibling & books
2. Meaningful context
   New words encountered in integrated contexts (part of their day to day life) rather than isolated facts
3. Things and events of interest
   Parents and teachers should direct young children to experience words in contexts they enjoy and playful peer interactions
4. Access clear meaning
   - Parents and teachers need to be sensitive to words the children may not understand and provide support with hints about meaning
   - They should avoid stating new words without mentioning whether child understands
5. Responsive and interactive
   - The context cannot be passive
   - Rather, if children experience turn-taking, joint focusing and positive/sensitive social skills → more likely to learn
6. Grammar and vocab
   Large number of words in a wide variety of sentences = richer vocabulary and better understanding of grammar. Vocabulary & grammar have to be connected

Question 7

What happens in middle-late childhood?

Answer 7

• Attending school drastically changes a child’s abilities with language because they are constantly gaining new skills
• Children’s vocabulary increases from an average of 14,000 words when they enter grade 1 to 40,000 words by grade 5
• They develop metalinguistic awareness which is knowledge about language, such as knowing what a preposition is or being able to discuss the sounds of language
• It allows children to think about their language, understand and define what words are.
• Children also make progress in understanding pragmatics, i.e. knowing the rules for language in everyday contexts, what is appropriate and inappropriate to say

Question 8

What happens in adolescence?

Answer 8

• Language development during adolescence includes greater sophistication in the use of words.
• With an increase in abstract thinking, adolescents are much better than children at analyzing a role a word plays in a sentence.
  Example: Understanding things like metaphor or satire, that young children could never grasp.
• Adolescents are also much better at writing than children.
  Example: Adolescents are able to organize their ideas before and while they write (introduction, body and conclusion paragraphs), can distinguish general vs. specific points, and string together complex sentences.

Question 9

What happens in adulthood?

Answer 9

• ## learn more vocab, but other things decline
• Language development in adulthood often depends on education level, social interaction and occupational roles,
  a) i.e. how often you use language in your career
• Vocabulary is thought to increase over adulthood, until older adulthood where it starts to decline due to many reasons: difficulty understanding speech due to hearing loss, poor health, loss in memory, etc.
• Language does change among individuals with Alzheimer’s;
• in fact, word-finding/generating difficulties is one of the earliest symptoms of the disease