FLA keywords

Prosody - in earliest receptive learning and speech production

— Melodic line of speech

• first windows babies have into structure of language

• in womb via rhythmic sound waves

Categorical Perception (children)

— Brain groups continuous sensory inputs (like sounds/colours) into categories

Children

• 6-8m discriminate subtle phonetics

• 3-6y establish categories for speech sounds and facial expressions

Categorical Perception (adults)

• categories become sharper - refined and consistent

• better at ignoring within-category variations (diff versions of letter d)

• can process words automatically

Habituation/Dishabituation

• H - decrease in response to a repeated stimulus (tune out)

• D - rapid recovery of original response, triggered by introduction of sudden or new stimulus

— live by airport and don’t hear them anymore BUT storm wakes you up and hyper-aware of planes again

Lack of invariance problem

• no 1-to-1 unchangeable RS between specific speech sounds (phonemes) and its representation

• due to coarticulation or speaker difference (accent)

Visual attention in development (4)

• how infants and children learn to select, process and focus on visual info in their environment

1. Newborn phrase (involuntary) - babies drawn to high contrast movement and bridghtness

2. 2-6m (emerging cortical control) - process finer detail, attention from external features to internal facial features (eyes/mouth)

3. 6-12m (joint attention) - endogenous control and focus on toys/tasks longer

4. Early childhood to adolescence (exec control) - learn to ignore distractions and focus on tasks for longer 9selective vs sustained attention)

Speech segmentation

— process of identifying boundaries between words, syllables or phonemes

• listeners utilise stress patterns and pitch changes

• tracks probability of syllables occurring together and sound combinations

— ie in another language

Statistical Learning

— detecting implicit probabilities in sound stream

• infants show they can isolate words based on frequency and probability

• challenges innate ideas

Comprehension vs Production

C - what is heard or read

• starts in womb

• 6-9m basic word recognition

• Age 1 = dozens of commands but produce ½

P - Speaking of Writing

• lags behind comp

• first words around 12m

• combining words 18-24m

Maturation Model

• language driven by genetically programmed biological processes

• innate abilities

Template model

• theoretical frameworks where children implicitly use structural templates to map out and produce complex language

• nature approach - social interactions

Noun-first bias and controversy

— learning concrete objects and people quicker than verbs/adjectives in early vocabs

• controversy = is bias innate or byproduct of languages spoken to them?

Fast-Mapping

— children rapidly acquire/retain meanings of new words after minimal exposure

• builds ‘skeletal’ placeholder for its meanings and refines over time and exposure

Referential Indeterminacy (Quine 1960 Gavagai)

• No objective fact of the matter regarding exactly what object or concept a word’s meaning is from

• Rabbit could mean verb, part of the animal etc

Whole object assumption/bias

• children naturally assume new word refers to entire object than its individual parts, properties or actions

— ball could mean to kick, the colour, the shape, etc

Mutual exclusivity assumption

• where children assume that object can only have one single name

— if child knows that dog is and hears adult point at unfamiliar dog and say wug, child assign’s wug to the unfamiliar animal.

Joint attention & social-pragmatic accounts

JA

• coordinate attention between person, object and other person - 9-12m

SPA

• Bruner/Tomasello

• children learn how to use language by understanding communicative intentions of others

Telegraphic stage

• infants 18-30m speak in short, simple, 2-3 word phrases

• primarily using nouns, verbs and adjectives

— Daddy go

— Where ball

Holophrastic Speech

• single word to express entire idea

• 9-18m

• heavily relies on context and tone.

— food

— ball

— up

‘Wug Test’ Berko 1958

• children generalised grammatical rules rather than memorising words

• experimenter asks child to pluralise a ‘wug’ creature

• supports nativism - brain wired to apply rules when needed

Factors in learning grammatical morphemes

1. semantic complexity - how easy concept is to understand

2. Input frequency - often its heard

3. perceptual salience - noticeable in speech

4. native language transfer - for L2

Over-regularisation

• children apply regular grammar rules t irregular words

• goed/went

• tooth/teeth

• sign of cognitive development

U-shaped curve

• non-linear learning where performance starts high, temporarily declines, then rises again

1. High accuracy - children memorise through imitation

2. Dip - overgeneralisation (goed/went)

3. Target performance - figure expectations to rules and synthesise learning

Poverty of stimulus argument

• nativist - Chomsky 1980

• children acquire lang to quickly for it to be explained solely by environment

• environment too limited

Parameter-setting model

• Humans born with universal grammar principles and binary switches (para).

• Child acquires native lang by setting mental switches baed on what they hear

Verb island hypothesis

Tomasello 1992

• young children don’t initially possess abstract grammatical rules

• learn verbs as isolated ‘islands’

• cannot grasp syntactic categories

Simultaneous bilingualism

• when child acquires two native langs concurrently from birth/very young

• relies on neuroplasticity

Sequential bilingualism

• child acquires second language after establishing their first lang

bilingualism and lang discrimination

• glottophobia = unfair treatment or prejudice of individuals based on lang/accent/vocab.

• bilinguals = biases against non-native accents or code-switching

bilingualism and vocab size

• while bilinguals have smaller vocabs in single lang, their total vocab across both languages is equal or larger to monolinguals

• grasping underlying concept of words

Critical vs Sensitive period

• C - strict, bio determined window of time when environmental input is required for normal acquisition, consequences suggest irreversible defects

• S - Flexible, gradual window whereby language development requires inputs, consequences suggest harder learning

Imperfect learning model

• L2 acquisition

• difficulty fully internalising certain features of a non-native language

• missing native-like mastery of specific grammar features

Spatial Modulation (signed langs)

• 3D signing space to represent grammar, establish characters and convey RS between nouns