PSYC2030 WEEK 4

ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE IN INFANCY 

• Peripheral auditory system matures by 26 weeks' gestation 

  • Pitch, rhythm, phonetic information 

NEWBORN PREFERENCES FOR

• Human speech sounds 

• Infant-directed speech 

  • Allows them separate words from sentences 

• Native language 

• Native accent  

 

PREFERENTIAL SUCKING PROCEDURE 

• Makes use of the sucking reflex 

• Newborns – 3 months  

• Suckle fast = play native language sound 

• Suckle slow = play non-native language sound 

AUDITORY SPEECH DISCRIMINATION 

• Habituation-dishabituation procedure 

  • Native (ba vs pa ) 

  • Non-native (ki vs qi) 

• Infants are born with 'universal' ears  

  • Lose non-native phoneme ability 10-12 months 

VISUAL SPEECH DISCRIMINATION 

• Habituation-dishabituation procedure 

  • Native vs non-native 

  • Non-native vs non-native 

• Infants reliance on visual cues shifts with age 

  • 4 months = eyes 

  • 8 months = mouth 

  • 12 months = eyes 

BABBLING

• Newborns = cries, burps, grunts 

• 3 months = cooing 

• 4 months = monosyllables 

• 6 months = repetitive babbling  

• 9 months = conversational babbling 

  • Turn-taking 

  • Language-specific speech perception & production 

FOUNDATIONS OF WORD LEARNING 

• 6 months  

  • word segmentation + joint attention 

• 12 months  

  • receptive vocabulary (70 words) + communicative intent (pointing) + first word production + referential problems 

• 18 months  

  • Productive vocabulary (50-75 words) + vocabulary spurt + telegraphic speech 

JOINT ATTENTION

• They watch to see what people are attending to as they speak 

• Gaze -> gestures  

FIRST WORDS

• Important people 

• Common objects 

REFERENTIAL PROBLEMS

• Overgeneralisation 

  • Applying a word to a wider collection of objects and events than is appropriate 

• Undergeneralization 

  • Applying a word too narrowly than is appropriate 

VOCABULARY SPLURT

• Rate of vocabulary acquisition increases rapidly 

• Average of 9 words per day 

  • Brain maturation (nature)? 

  • Referential or 'naming' insight (nurture)? 

TELEGRAPHIC SPEECH

• Leave out smaller and less important words 

• Start with two word utterances (1 verb + 1 object)  

• Word order errors are rare 

ACQUISITION OF SYNTAX

Morphological markers 

• Around 3 years old 

• 's' for plurals 

• 'ed' for past tense 

• Use of past tense 

• Noticeable overregularization errors between 3-8 years 

LANGUAGE AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC STATUS  

• Children from high SES backgrounds were exposed to 30million more words than children from low SES backgrounds 

• Meta-analysis showed gap between low and high was actually smaller than above 

• The gap was bigger when focused on just child-directed speech. If comparing all speech, the gap is not as big.  

ACCENT AS SOCIAL GROUP MEMBERSHIP CUE  

• Comes from the survival instinct of friend vs foe  

• Linguistic cue (accent) -> social categorisation -> social inferencing -> social preferencing 

• Based on stereotypes 

• We prioritise accent over race  

SIMULTANEOUS BILINGUALISM

• Both languages learned from infancy at the same time  

• Both languages develop together 

SEQUENTIAL BILINGUALISM

• Child learns one language first and the second language later  

• The age at which the second language is learned can influenced speech sounds/phonetics and accent 

PHENOMES

• The smallest units of sounds that distinguish words  

• Humans capable of producing roughly 800 phenomes, but individual languages only use a subset of these 

PERCEPTUAL NARROWING

The developmental process in which infants become increasingly specialised in perceiving the speech sounds of their native language.  

BILINGUAL INFANTS

• Children exposed to two languages from infancy maintain sensitivity to the phenomes used by both languages 

• People who learn a second language later in life are more likely to retain an accent 

DO BILINGUAL CHILDREN GET CONFUSED?

• No  

• Bilingual children can distinguish the two languages very early in childhood 

They learn: 

• What sounds belong to what language 

• Rules/syntax of each language 

• Different rhythms of each language 

PROSODY

The rhythm, stress and intonation patterns of speech. 

• Differences in rhythm can provide infants with information about which language they are hearing 

CODE-SWITCHING

Switching between two languages during communication.  

• Bilingual children can understand when and with whom it is appropriate to use each language  

• Code switching does not = confusion 

 

HOW BILINGUAL CHILDREN LEARN WORDS?

Mutual exclusivity: 

• Assumption that one object = one label, therefore, child likely to associate new words with unfamiliar object 

• Monolingual children commonly use this 

• Bilingual children rely less on this as they know one object can have multiple labels 

Visual information: 

• Bilingual children focus on audio-visual information 

• Pay attention to the speaker's mouth 

DOES BILINGUALISM DELAY LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT?

A bilingual child may know 

• 50 words in english 

• 50 words in spanish  

They may appear behind in ONE language, but their total vocabulary could be equal or greater than monolingual child.  

BILINGUALISM AND EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONING

• Both languages are active in the brain 

• Attend to = the language being used 

• Inhibit = the second language  

• Repeated practice of attention + inhibition can improve executive functioning 

LONG-TERM BENEFITS

Bilingualism is associated with greater cognitive resilience with aging  

• Contributes to cognitive reserve 

• Associated with a later diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease