SPAU 3303 - Exam 2

Normal Language Development

learning from TV

-after 12 months, the kids get worse at distinguishing phonemes
-the kids watching the video (audio-visual), they learn nothing!
-before the age of 2, kids learn nothing from TV (being engaged is different from learning)

social gating

-things from social interactions (the filter/gate) get encoded more
-the social function of language "gates" children's attention which allows them to learn (you can't encode everything)

joint attention

-two people attend to the same object or event
-3 criteria: 2 people and an object (can be parent and child lead; e.g. eye gaze or pointing to elicit attention)
-increases from 10-15 months; predicts language
-joint attention supports language but isn't necessary; only 25% of child/parent interactions have learning

gaze following

-child looks where a person looks
-around 10-15 months

communicative pointing

-child points to an object and looks at a person
-10 months to 1 year
-a request or provide information (for the want to share experience and to communicate)

intention reading

-realizing others have intentions
-babies at a young age already know humans are intentional people (and those intentions have to be fulfilled)
-early evidence that infants attribute intentions to others comes from the finding that they imitate others' intended acts
-discerning what intentions are can take longer for kids to understand

intention reading used for language learning

-new labels go to what the adult is looking at, not what the child is looking at (around 24 months)
-social information and eye gaze for labeling

spontaneous gestures

-created by the child
-symbolic communication (consistent in meaning)
-different from baby signs
-symbol to context idea is a foundation of learning words
-predicts vocabulary and syntax development (gestures + word \= syntax)
-common e.g. blow on food (means its hot or asking if it is), open & close hand (symbol of to give)
-child specific e.g. "bunny" options (different children have different symbols/gestures for bunny)

how to test infants

-habituation/dishabituation
-head turn
-preferential looking
-eye tracking
-(test is used based on age and the question being addressed)

habituation/dishabituation

-when does a child get used to a stimulus that they don't react to it anymore
-a general term, in this case, based on boredom
-habituation: become acclimated to (bored of)
-dishabituation: regain interest (e.g. visual stimuli and measuring looking time)
-what this tells us: infants can categorize and differentiate (can tell when something is different)

high amplitude sucking

-study in habituation
-when an infant is interested in something, the sucking rate is faster but when an infant is not interested, the sucking rate is slow
-sucking rate increases with new sound if it is heard as a different sound
-e.g. mom's voice vs. voice of a stranger (all go the necessary speed to hear their mom's voice)

head turn paradigm/procedure

-a procedure used to assess infants' abilities to discriminate stimuli
-the procedure beings by presenting an infant with sound changes that we know infants can detect
-as soon as the sound changes, an interesting and rewarding visual stimulus is presented
-infants quickly learn to anticipate the interesting visual stimulus following a sound change, and they turn their heads in anticipation
-then researchers can use this conditioned response to see when infants can discriminate a change in other stimuli

preferential looking paradigm

-a procedure that assesses language comprehension
-infants are shown side-by-side slides or videos, as the infant hears an audio presentation that matches only one of the videos
-if infants consistently look longer at the matching video, it is taken as evidence that they unstand the language of the audio

eye tracking

-typically kids like to look at faces
-eye tracking of a child with ASD (autism spectrum disorder): if given the option of looking at human faces or other objects, they will look at the other objects

what infants prefer

-language (human voice) to other audio
-mother's voice to other women
-stories they've heard in the womb (hearing the overall rhythm of the story)
-native language (the overall rhythm of the language)
-familiarity (based fully on what they are exposed to)

infant abilities

-differentiate: all languages' phonemes \= "universal listener"
-link visual face cues to language sounds at around 5 months of age
-prefer linked audio and visual (e.g. we hate it when the audio doesn't match up with the visual)
-linking up how the human mouth has to move in order for a sound to be produced
-but after 5 months, they get tricked by the McGurk effect (integrating the visual and audio information together)

tuning of speech perception

-how children move from universal to language-specific listeners
-/ra/ vs. /la/ experiment
-english (we can differentiate /ra/ and /la/ since it is in the language) vs. japanese learners (can't hear the difference)
-at 6 to 8 months: American and Japanese equal at hearing /ra/ and /la/
-by 10 to 12 months: tuned to hear their own language (the American kids are getting better at it/getting better at their own language and worse in other languages)

how does tuning of speech perception happen?

-distribution of the sounds
-many sounds fall along a continuum (/ra/ vs. /la/, /da/ vs. /ta/)
-in languages where /ra/ and /la/ differentiate meaning, there are lots of clear examples of each and fewer intermediate sounds
-tuning is faster in infant's native language \= faster language development between 11 and 30 months
-infants who are BETTER distinguishing non-native sounds are SLOWER at word learning (you want to be really good at your own language so that you can learn)
-this is why we can't understand the different phonemes (we have to lose the languages that we don't use so that we can learn more in our own language)

conceptual foundations

pre-linguistic children (those who don't have language yet) understand: categories, properties of objects vs. objects, recognize and categorize motion events (path vs. manner)

importance of categories

-infants form categories by 4 to 6 months (they can distinguish dogs vs horses)
-importance: most nouns label categories (e.g. the word dog doesn't only reference one dog, it references different dogs

importance of categorizing properties of objects

-differentiate adjectives vs. noun
-e.g. the word red is a word for a property and can be categorized as its own

importance of categorizing motion events

-differentiate path vs. manner
-path: the direction the agent moves in
-manner: they way the agent moves
-importance: prepositions (path) vs. verbs (manner)
-infants can categorize paths no matter the manner; and vice versa

statistical learning

counting the frequency with which one stimulus is followed by another

role of statistical learning in grammar learning

identifying word boundaries by 8 months

phonological memory

capacity to remember newly encountered sound sequences

non-word repetition task

-play recording of made-up words and the words get longer and longer
-how well can they encode the phonology and repeat it back

phonological memory vs. language development

better the phonological memory, better the
-vocabulary
-grammar
-second language learning

central executive center

-executive functions
-located in the prefrontal cortex
-allocates mental resources among competing demands
-e.g. you talking on the phone in the restaurant and you have to block out all the other sounds around you

evidence that children's limited abilities in the central executive center influence language

-not just a matter of having or not having the required knowldege, it is also a matter of being able to handle the multiple demands of the task
-e.g. infants who can discriminate two sounds are not necessarily able to distinguish new words on the basis of that sound distinction
-e.g. very young children's contributions to conversation tend to be less related tot he ongoing topic than older children's (not because of differences in linguistic skill, but rather because of differences in the ability to allocate cognitive resources

sleep

-sleep is better for memory in general
-statistical learning is improved if babies nap between learning and test
-sleep improves retention of learning and remembers new words in preschoolers
-domain-general

frequent frames in speech

-particular syntactic frames that are used over and over again in talking to children
-they cue syntactic categories -\> kids can identify what words go where
-e.g. "you\_______ it" (verb)
-e.g. "the \_______ is" (noun)

prosody of speech

the overall melody of language, stress patterns

prosodic and phonological bootstrapping

-using prosody and phonology to learn syntax or word meaning
-e.g. nouns vs verbs in syllable stress (nouns have a first syllable stress in English, and verbs have a later or second syllable stress)
-pauses at phrase boundaries help group information (e.g. "the fuzzy brown bear / walked into the store"); clustering information/aspects of grammar together; kids by 12 months prefer to listen to things clustered correctly

properties of infant directed speech

-gets the kid's attention
-driven by the child since they get engaged so it encourages parents to keep doing it
-higher and wider range of pitch
-shorter phrases (helps with syntax development) and slower tempo
-longer more prototypical vowels (the best example of it the vowel) (e.g. "wow!")
-highlight particular words (more emphasis on the important/more meaningful words)
-preferred by infants
-improves phonological processing

role of feedback

-parents correct some things, but they rarely correct things like grammar
-correcting factual errors, bad words, some mispronunciations
-not direct "you're wrong"
-subtle feedback through expansion and reframing that is unique to kids
-the difference between what the kid said vs what the parent says is the feedback that helps

expansion

-when the kid says one word and the parent would expand
-e.g. "bottle" -\> "you want your bottle?"

reframing

-the kid can identify the mismatch
-e.g. "my feets are cold" -\> "oh! your feet are cold? let me get you socks"

role of maternal responsivity

-parents have a role of "conversational partners" at birth
-children whose mothers are more responsive to their communication have better language earlier
-responses to crying (active responding to their crying, during the day, will improve their language which is in contrast to common belief)
-following kid's attention (following what your kid is engaged in will improve their language)

type of input

-how parents talk to their kids is predictive of language development
-quality and quantity

quality of maternal input

-the wide range of vocabulary -\> kids have better language development
-complexity of sentences
-chances for the child to respond

quantity of maternal input

more speech that children hear spoken to them relates to higher vocabulary

hart & risley SES study

-children of parents with higher socioeconomic status (SES) have higher vocabularies
-number of words heard (input) over the course of childhood varies significantly across children (high SES: heard 11,000 words a day; low SES: heard 7,000 words a day)
-income itself isn't the main predictor, the main reason is the mother's education level
-but not just the number of words (not just quantity but also quality)

differences in type of language relating to SES

-variety and amount of information differs
-type of language: directives vs. eliciting speech
-directives are used in higher stressed homes ("pick that up now")
-eliciting speech is better in language production (e.g. "what do we do after playing?")
-responsiveness (labelling what kids attend to; responding to kids' communications, babble, and speech)
-**mother's education is the best measure of SES for language outcomes

phonological knowledge

knowledge of the sounds and sound patterns of a language (phonological differences among languages are not just in what sounds are used but also how the sounds are used)

phones

-all of the different sounds that can be used in a language
-200 possible, each language uses about 45
-e.g. [p], [pᑋ], and [b]

phonemes

-a phonetic feature that creates a difference in meaning (speech sounds that signal a difference in meaning in a particular language)
-distinctive feature of language
-e.g. /b/ and /p/ - "bat" and "pat"

allophones

-sounds/phones that occur in a language but do no differentiate meaning (varies across languages)
-as English speakers, we produce both phonemes and allophones all the time but we don't hear the difference easily and we have to consciously work to produce the difference

/r/ and /L/ sounds

-in English, they are distinct and differentiates meaning (e.g. "rent" vs. "lent")
-Japanese has both but they do not differentiate meaning (they are allophones for Japanese)

/z/ and /s/ sounds

-phonemes in English
-allophones in (some dialects of) Spanish

\[pᑋ] vs. [p]

-[pᑋ] aspirated (burst of air) like in the word "pin"
-[p] non-aspirated like in the word "spin"
-allophones in English
-but phonemes in Thai: [paa] means forest, [pᑋaa] means to split

adult representations of sounds

-adults process language on the phoneme language
-adults are phonologically aware
-e.g. note onset and rhythms, manipulate sounds, like in the word "cup" (teasing apart words or phonemes)
-can count the number of syllables in a word, recognize rhymes

spoonerisms

-a speech error in which phonemes are moved from one word to another in a sentence
-provides evidence that at some level of mental representation a word is composed of separable phonemes
-e.g. the dear old Queen → the queer old dean

phonotactic knowledge

-constraints on sound sequences and rules for putting them together (broader)
-e.g. in english /sp/ is frequent, /pt/ is rare, and /kp/ is not allowed

phonological rules

-other rules of how sounds go together in a language
-voicing assimilation, plural, and past tense

voicing

-a feature of sound production in which the vocal cords vibrate as air is released in the production of a consonant
-/z/ is voiced; /s/ is voiceless

voicing assimilation

-when two consonants are together in a word, they match in terms of voicing
-e.g. "s" is pronounced /s/ after all voiceless consonants and pronounced /z/ after all voiced sounds (like for "wug" -\> wug/z/)
-by the age of 4, English-speaking children display this

phonetic feature

-speech sounds can be described in terms of their physical properties and in terms of how they are produced
-a characteristic of the way speech sounds are produced that is used to describe differences and similarities among speech sounds
-e.g. [b] and [p] differ in the feature of voicing

articulatory phonetics

describing speech sounds in terms of HOW they are produced

vowels vs. consonants in articulation

-consonants: airflow is obstructed
-vowels: airflow is not obstructed (e.g. you normally hold a vowel in singing)

manner of articulation

-how the airflow is obstructed as a consonant is produced
-stops: stops airflow (/g/, /d/, /b/)
-fricatives: airflow is not completely stopped (/v/, /th/, /f/)

place of articulation

-where the airflow is obstructed
-bilabial: airflow stops at the lips (/b/, /p/)
-labiodental: airflow stops at the teeth and lips (/f/, /v/)

vowels

-no airflow obstruction
-position of the tongue (high or low) and lips (round or non-round) matter
-hard to differentiate and find commonality since there are many varieties (high frequency help infants with this)

vegetative sounds

-sounds that accompany biological functions (not necessarily communicating but includes some features that will later be used to produce speech sounds)
-first occur in newborns
-e.g. crying, burping, etc.

cooing

-at 6 to 8 weeks
-sounds that babies make when they appear to be happy and contented and have social interaction
-cooing consists of vowels

vocal play

-the period between 16 weeks to 30 weeks
-increase in variety of different consonant-like and vowel-like sounds (still not distinct)
-practice, not communicative
-all babies sound the same at this point regardless of language and deaf or hearing

canonical babbling

-aka reduplicated babbling
-happens at 6 to 9 months
-presence of true syllables
-these syllables are typically produced in reduplicated series of the same consonant and vowel combinations
-e.g. [bababababa] or [dadada]
-rare in babies who are deaf (but they would babble with their hands)
-self-stimulating (non-communicative)
-messing with sounds, but as a parent imitates them, it encourages the baby to keep babbling

nonreduplicated babbling

-aka variegated babbling
-type of babbling that contains sequences of different syllables; as opposed to repetition of the same syllable over and over, as in reduplicated babbling
-range and types of sounds increase

jargon

-happens around 10 months
-babbling with prosody
-prosody added to the string of nonreduplicated babbles
-not a goal to communicate a specific thing but a goal to socially engage

babbling drift

-starting to sound like their native language
-their babbling "drifts in the direction of the speech the infant hears"
-begins as early as 6 months
-importance: shows how the environment influences language

role of prosody in babbling drift

kids get the melody of the language (prosody) before the actual sounds

first study of language specific babbling

-use the judgments of competent speakers to determine whether they can tell the differences among the babblings of babies who are acquiring different languages
-can tell that differences in the babbling depend on the target language, but cannot tell how they are different
-adult French raters listened to babbling from French, Arabic, and Chinese learning babies at 6, 8, and 10 months of age; the goal of the raters were to distinguish what language the babies were babbling
-outcome: the babbling of 8-month-olds of French can be identified by novice raters; the babbling of 6-month-olds of French can be identified by expert raters

second study of language specific babbling

-record babblings of children who are acquiring different languages and analyze them for the presence and frequency of features in the respective adult languages
-can tell that both differences in the babbling depend on the target language and how they are different
-identified vowels and consonants depend on characteristics of the language spoken by others in the infants' environment
-differences already at 9 months

physical growth relating to speech sound development

-vocal tract: smaller, different shape, muscles are still developing
-facial skeleton getting larger
-the ratio is off (the tongue is bigger than the skull which makes it harder to talk)

brain development relating to speech sound development

-limbic system (emotion - cooing is the first step of engaging the limbic system especially in the first 6 weeks)
-motor cortex (does not have the connections in order to create such fine tune movements)

experience relating to speech sound development

-practice moving the tongue helps to develop the motor cortex for language
-hearing self: children who are deaf increase in manual babbling since they cannot hear themselves; and those who hear themselves would continue to babble more

infant representation of speech sounds in comprehension

-at what level is this information stored for comprehension? at what level do you differentiate sounds?
-young children through adults are at the phoneme level (e.g. ba vs. bu - there is 1 difference and 1 similarity; ba vs. du - there are 2 differences)
-newborns to 2 months old are at the syllable levels (clustering the sounds together) e.g. ba vs. bu - one difference; ba vs. du - one difference

phonology in word learning

-how does your ability to differentiate phonemes affect your ability to learn new words?
-phonological similar words are harder to label for 14 month olders (e.g. toma vs. tomy)
-phonological distinct novel words are easier to label for 14 month olders (e.g. toma vs. brack)
-14 months learned only the distinct words; 18 months can learned both
-harder for 14 months to learn both since the phonological processing is still developing and would use more cognitive resources

phonology and word comprehension

-children are still able to comprehend words even with mispronunciation of some syllables
-18-month-olds hear /vaby/ vs. /baby/ experiment
-finding in the picture of a baby and a truck; faster at /baby/ than /vaby/ but they are flexible in hearing (already have a label for the truck so they comprehend /vaby/ for also the baby

early errors of word production

-reduplication
-deletion of weak syllable
-stopping

reduplication error

-saying the first 2 syllables of the word
-shows that repetition is a lot easier than changing speech sounds
-e.g. ball \= baba

deletion of weak syllable error

-dropping the first syllable in a word when the word doesn't follow the rules of having a first syllable stress
-more common in English since nouns have first syllable stress
-e.g. banana \= nana

stopping error

-making a fricative stop
-e.g. see \= tee

phonological idioms

-child produces sound correctly in one word, but mispronounces in another
-e.g. "wa-bit" for rabbit but pronounces "rag" correctly

lexical selection

-kids' early words are biased to the phonemes that they can pronounce (they avoid harder words which is true for all languages)
-argument that building better vocabulary will force you to have better phonology

mastery of phonemes in native language

by around 4 to 7 years, children have mastered phonology in their native language except for phonological awareness (individual's awareness of the phonetic structure of words)

phonological awareness

-conscious awareness of the phonological properties of language; such as the ability to count the number of syllables in a word and to identify rhymes
-individual's awareness of the phonetic structure of words
-knowledge of sounds and syllables and of the sound structure of words
-begins at age 2
-predict a child's success in learning to read

mental lexicon

the mental dictionary of words you know and their meanings

features of language in lexicon

behaviorist view of phonological development

-imitation and reinforcement
-problems of this view: adults don't correct phonology in young children; this view cannot explain "system and regularities" (like voicing) which are seen as subconscious abilities
-but parent responsiveness helps

biological view of phonological development

-phonological development explained by physical development
-evidence: similar development across babies; cross-linguistic similarities
-problems of this view: focuses on production and not comprehension; doesn't explain why languages differ at all; doesn't explain the system of regularities (voicing and rules on how to produce sounds and putting sounds together)

connectionism view of phonological development

-type of usage-based account; shaped by input (environment)
-connections, based on associations
-self-babbling: association between motor coordination (how they produce the sounds) and a sound they make (the acoustic sounds that they make); they notice what they are doing starts to build the association to the sound that they produced and what they hear
-hearing sounds by others: link sounds they make to sounds mom makes
-accounts for: universal to language-specific sound perception; error production (error productions are from weak connections); learning the system of regularities

word

a sound sequence that symbolizes meaning and can stand alone (morpheme)

features of a word

-arbitrary symbol
-reference

arbitrary symbol

stands for something without being a part of it (e.g. cat - talking about the properties, not just one cat)

reference

-"word to world mapping"
-symbol standing for a whole concept
-e.g. cat: talking about the properties of cats, not just talking about only one cat or one cat in a particular situation

referential vs. context-bound words

-referential: not bound to a specific use (using words how adults use it)
-e.g. the word "dog" for all dogs
-context-bound: tied to a particular context (doesn't understand the meaning)
-e.g. the word "dog" only for the dog in a specific picture book

pattern of referential and context bound words in young children

-early vocabularies are a mix of both context-bound and referential words
-but slowly more referential and fewer context-bound words

50 word point

-around 15 to 20 months, kids hit 50 words in their lexicon
-after they hit 50 words, it seems to be a shift in language and they learn more (doesn't matter on the age)

makeup of early vocabularies

-different from adults (in adults, we have the same noun and verb vocabulary, but kids have a noun bias)
-made up of nominals, action words, modifiers, personal social words, grammatical function words (e.g. what, is), noun bias

nominals

-nouns
-the dominant category of kids' vocabulary
-specific: mommy, fluffy (their own dog)
-general: ball, blanket