Child Language Development Exam 2 Review (Units 3-6)

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering joint attention, cognitive processes, prelinguistic stages, utterance structures, and grammatical concepts from Units 3 to 6.

dyadic joint-attention

Attention shared directly between a child and an adult.

triadic joint-attention

Attention coordinated between people and objects resulting in a referential triangle of child, adult, and the object or event to which they share attention; develops around 9 months of age.

common ground (joint attentional frame)

The objects and goal-directed activities that child and adult both know are part of the attentional focus of them both.

communicative intention reading

An understanding of other persons as intentional agents who intend things toward one's own intentional/attentional state.

role-reversal imitation

A human-specific form of cultural learning emerging between 9-12 months in which a child learns to use a symbol/tool toward an adult in the same way that the adult uses it toward the child.

pattern-finding

The statistical learning of concrete and abstract patterns.

joint-action routine

A ritualized interaction pattern involving joint action, unified by a specific theme or goal, following a logical sequence with a clear beginning point, where each participant plays a recognized role with specific response expectancies.

attachment

The use of a preferred person as a secure base from which to explore and as a haven of safety or comfort when needed.

secure attachment

Confidence that the secure base person will "always be there for me," available, responsive, and able to help or save me.

insecure attachment

Lacking confidence that the secure base person will "always be there for me," available, responsive, and able to help or save me.

object permanence

The knowledge that objects have an existence in time and space, independent of whether or not they can be seen or touched.

Means-end

The process in which a problem solver begins by envisioning the end, the ultimate goal, and then determines the best strategy for attaining the goal in a situation.

Schema

Organized representation of knowledge; psychological structures that allow a child to organize knowledge about objects, entities, concepts, and actions.

Adaptation

The process of changing a schema in response to a new entity (new information).

Assimilation

A process that involves fitting a new entity into an existing schema.

Accommodation

A process that involves changing an existing schema to make the new entity fit.

Equilibrium

A state of "cognitive balance".

Cooing

A stage in infants' prelinguistic speech development that consists of the productions of single-syllable, vowel-like sounds.

reduplicative babbling

Repeated sequences of repeated consonant-vowel like sounds (e.g., "babababa").

variegated babbling

A stage in babbling characterized by varied sequences of sounds in syllables (e.g., "babigoogi").

Jargon

Sequences of variegated babbling that have the intonation shape of the child's native language.

Holophrase

Early one-word utterances that convey a holistic communicative intention.

Over-extension

A process in which a child applies a word's meaning to more exemplars than an adult would, making the child's definition too broad and beyond acceptable adult usage.

Under-extension

A process in which a child applies a word meaning to fewer exemplars than an adult would, resulting in a definition that is too restrictive and limited.

word combinations

Two-word utterances consisting of roughly equivalent words that divide an experience into multiple units.

pivot schemas

Two-word utterances in which one word or phrase (such as "want" or "more") structures the utterance by determining its overall intent (such as a demand) alongside variable object labels.

item based constructions

Two-word utterances seemingly based on word-order rules with specific words influenced by how a child has heard a particular word being used.

referential style of communication

A relative child language learning style where the infant has more adult contacts, uses more single words, and employs an analytic (bottom-up) strategy for gradually building longer utterances with different words.

function style of communication

A relative child language learning style where the infant has more peer contacts, attempts longer units, and employs a holistic (top-down) strategy where longer utterances are gradually broken into their parts.

Proto-imperatives

Preverbal communicative acts used to get an adult to do or not do something, such as requests for objects, requests for action, or rejections and protests.

Proto-declaratives

Preverbal attempts to get an adult to focus on an object or event by showing off or pointing out objects for the purpose of establishing social interaction or joint attention.

Morpheme

The smallest meaningful unit of language, such as "run" in "running" or the plural "-s" in "dogs".

Mean Length of Utterance (MLU)

A calculation used to track language development in children, determined by dividing the total number of morphemes by the total number of utterances.

Contractible Copula

A grammatical morpheme where a form of the linking verb "to be" connects the subject to a complement and can be contracted (e.g., "The puppy is funny").

Uncontractible Copula

A grammatical morpheme where the main linking verb "to be" cannot grammatically be contracted in context (e.g., "The house is blue", "The boys are happy").

Contractible Auxiliary

A grammatical morpheme where a helping verb accompanying another verb can be contracted (e.g., "They are sleeping" contracted to "they're").

Uncontractible Auxiliary

A grammatical morpheme where a helping verb accompanying a main verb cannot be contracted in context (e.g., "The dogs are swimming").