Exam 2: Pre-Linguistic & Early Language Development

Pre-intentional communication

Crying, moving limbs, and smiling.

Caregiver actions that influence infant behavior

Turn-taking, responding to the infant as a person, and mirroring the infant.

Joint reference/joint attention

Caregiver and child both focus on the same object at the same time.

Motherese/Parentese

Short, simple sentences. Uses slightly higher pitch and exaggerated intonation. Repeating child utterances.

Conversation

Informal talk in which two or more people exchange thoughts, feelings, or ideas, or in which news or information is given or discussed.

Expansion

When a caregiver expands a child’s utterance into a complete form (ex. “Mommy book” → Yes, Mommy will get the book).

Extension

When a caregiver does more than expand the child’s utterance by providing a more syntactically accurate model and additional semantic information (ex. “Daddy go” → Yes, Daddy went to work).

Hart & Risley (1995)

A longitudinal study that found that talkative parents will result in a talkative child. 

LENA Foundation Study

A study that found that the more adult words children were exposed to, the higher the language scores a year or more later.

Utterance

A complete thought.

Language comprehension requires what?

Interactions in daily routine.

What is typical toddler vocabulary growth?

Vocabulary learned without
direct teaching.