Language Acquisition Exam 1

Morphology refers to how...

Words and parts of words are combined

During the second to third year of a child's life, they will undergo changes in...

Conversational skills, articulation abilities, and underlying phonological representations

What is the view that the nature of language has nothing to do with its function?

formalism

John Locke believes that human nature is...

shaped by societal influences

The "critical period" hypothesis suggests that...

There is a biologically determined period during which acquisition of language is to occur, otherwise it is never quite as successful

What language development approach focuses on describing the nature of a child's innate knowledge?

The linguistic approach

What theoretical approach to language development views language as constructed by the child's inborn mental equipment but operated on by information from the environment?

Constructivism

During the cognitive revolution of the 1950's, cognitivism replaced what?

Behaviorism

The functionalist view claims what?

The key to language acquisition is young children's understandings that other people are trying to communicate with them

What is one data archive of child corpora that is often used in developmental research?

CHILDES

Hoff states that these two basic principles of evolutionary theory offer an explanation regarding the evolution of human language

Descent with modification and natural selection

Which neuroimaging technique provides precise information about the timing of brain events, but not about the location of the event?

EEG/ERP

The right hemisphere contributes to which of the following aspects of language

a) syntax

b) pragmatics

c) semantics

d) both b and c

D) both b and c

- pragmatics and semantics

Researchers who worked with Nim Chimpsky concluded that chimpanzees were unable to acquire human language due to all of the following EXCEPT:

a) they only produced novel productions (i.e. without prompting) about half of the time

b) their mean length of utterance (MLU) failed to increase with their development

c) longer utterances were often repetitive

d) pragmatics such as turn taking never developed

A) they only produced novel productions about half of the time

Regarding Genie's speech and language, which of the following is true?

a) her syntactic skills exceeded her semantic skills

b) her syntactic skills exceeded her vocabulary kills

c) her speech was age appropriate and included most grammatical morphemes

d) her language activity was in the right-hemisphere

d) her language activity was in the right-hemisphere

When children experience brain damage, their recovery is quicker and more complete because...

Different parts of their brains are able to take on new roles due to redundancy of neural structures

Which of the following about pidgins is false?

a) they are structurally simple

b) they will never evolve

c) they use lexical items from one or more language

d) they have a very primitive grammar

b) they will never evolve

Some researchers suggest that left-hemisphere specialization for language develops due to increasing efficiency in processing language. In the book, what is evidence for this view?

20-month-olds who have larger vocabularies, demonstrate greater left-hemisphere processing of familiar words

In the study comparing two groups of adults who were exposed to ASL after the age of nine, those who had early experience with spoken language were better at ASL than those who had no experience with spoken language. What does this suggest?

Early knowledge of one language helps the acquisition of another language

In humans, the larynx that is placed lower than other mammals. How does this benefit us?

It makes us uniquely capable of speech

When do children begin to interact with people about objects?

9 and 12 months

Which of the following refers to the ability to attend to the same object or event?

a) gaze-following

b) communicative pointing

c) object-based attention

d) joint attention

d) joint attention

Which of the following is NOT a reason for why children's use of communicative gesture predicts their subsequent language development?

a) gesture is an indicator that a child has developed an internal mapping of language

b) children's gestures elicit speech from other people

c) gesture is an indicator of developing communicative interest

d) gesture provides children with a way of entering into communicative interaction prior to language and that supports language development

a) gesture is an indicator that a child has developed an internal mapping of language

Children's use of communicative gesture is important because...

It predicts later language development

Children become aware that people can be helpful for satisfying one's goals in the_______ stage(s) of pragmatic language development

Illocutionary

At what age do children use objects to direct adult attention?

10-12 months

True or false: the locutionary phase of speech act development typically begins with the child's first words at 12 months of age

False

Which of the following conventions of human communication are learned through joint action?

a) conversational skills

b) pretend play

c) turn-taking

d) both a and c

d) both a and c

- conversational skills and turn taking

As found by Farrar et al. (1993), routines are important in the language development of a child because, in familiar situations, children are more likely to display...

Greater semantic complexity and range, longer utterances, and more unique words

The elements of emerging conversation are displayed within the interactional exchanges of _____

protoconversations

An example of two phonemes that significantly differ in voice onset time is...

/s/ and /z/

A baby's ability to develop speech sounds depends on experimental factors. What is evidence for this statement?

Hearing adults use language influences the phones and prosody used by the infant during nonreduplicated babbling

At which stage of prespeech development does marginal babbling typically emerge?

By the end of the expansion stage

If a child produces /kul/ for school, what is this phonological process called?

Consonant cluster reduction

Which of the following is true regarding speech sounds at the end of the babbling stage?

a) children who acquire American English can produce all the consonants in their language

b) children most frequently produce three and four syllable productions

c) children's utterances are most frequently made up of single syllables with some two syllable combinations

d) consonant clusters such as /kl/ or /pr/ are frequently produced

c) children's utterances are most frequently made up of single syllables with some two syllable combinations

Which of the following is true regarding newborn infant preferences from their environment?

a) infants prefer to listen to human speech and look at images that incorporate only images with black, white, and red

b) infants prefer to listen to soothing environmental noises and look at human faces

c) infants prefer to listen to soothing environmental noises and look at images that incorporate only images with black, white, and red

d) infants prefer to listen to human speech and look at human faces

d) infants prefer to listen to human speech and look at human faces

What is a method in which an infant is presented with side-by-side videos and paired audio while the time course of their eye movements towards the picture is measured?

Looking-while-listening procedure

Statistical learning

When babies count the frequency with which one stimulus is followed by another

Which of the following is FALSE regarding phonological memory?

a) it can be measured using the PPVT

b) A standard task for measuring is is a nonword repetition task

c) it is the capacity to recall the sound sequences of a newly encountered word

d) it relies on the quality of a child's phonological representations

a) it can be measured using the PPVT

To recognize a word, a listener has to...

match the acoustic signal to a representation of the sound of the word and have broad representations of words that account for variations (such as a speaker's accent)

You observe a child producing the word "bear" to refer only to their teddy bear and not any other teddy bears or types of bears. This is an example of what type of word knowledge?

Context-bound

A child is observed using the word "cat" to refer to tabby cats and persian cats but not siamese cats. This use of the word is....

an underextension

Changes in the nature of the child's ______ may contribute to the word spurt

Phonological system

English-learning infants use statistical learning and _____ to segment the speech stream and learn word boundaries

stress patterns

Studies have uses non-words to assess learning of new words. ________ refers to children's use and knowledge of language structure to learn new words

syntactic bootstrapping

The assumption that different words refer to different things is known as....

Mutual exclusivity

What is an example of the mutual exclusivity assumption?

after hearing the word "sipa," an 18 month-old looks around for a novel object

A child says, "sissy sleep." This two-word utterance would best be classified as the relational meaning....

agent + action

A study by Fernald and McRoberts showed that infants at _____ months old preferred to listen to sentences in normal word order over sentences with scrambled word order

12-14 months

The response strategy children use in interpreting complex sentences with two events is the...

order-of-mention strategy

Language

Socially shared code that is composed of arbitrary symbols and is conventional

Sounds correlate to general concepts to generate meaning

Speech

Voluntary neuromuscular behavior that allows humans to express language

Speech does not equal phonology

Communication

Process that involves exchanging information between a "sender" and "receiver"

We can communicate in different ways

- Linguistic (words or signs)

- Paralinguistic (quotes)

- Nonlinguistic (gestures)

Form

Combining sounds and words

- Phonology: how sounds are used

- Morphology: rules for word derivation (affixation)

- Syntax: rules that govern word order and sentence structure

Content

Meaning of words

- Semantics: rules governing word meanings and combinations

Use

Social rules matching language to situation

- Pragmatics: rules for the use of language in social contexts

What is the difference between receptive and expressive language?

Expressive language involves encoding what we want the listener to hear

Receptive language involves decoding what the speaker wanted to say

What are the two major types of research?

Basic and Applied research

Basic research

Focuses primarily on generating and refining our knowledge base

- Learning for the sake of wanting to know more about language

- No goal in mind

Applied research

Tests different approaches and practices as they would pertain to a real world setting

- Addresses specific problems and practices relevant to language development with the goal of finding a specific answer

- Testing with the goal of diagnosing

- Evidence Based Practice (EBP)

What are the 3 major types of research studies?

Observational vs. Experimental studies

Naturalistic vs. Controlled environments

Longitudinal vs. Cross-sectional studies

What is observational research?

observing and evaluating data

What is experimental research?

There are certain conditions that we are testing

What is naturalistic research?

collecting data in a daily life setting

What is controlled research?

providing certain settings for the experiment

What is longitudinal research?

Following one subject over multiple time periods

What is cross-sectional research?

Observing different subjects at different time points

What are other forms of research commonly used to study language development?

computational modeling and neuroimaging

Computational modeling

Predicting what's happening in the world based on computer algorithms

Neuroimaging

Brain based images that tell us what's happening in the brain

What are the 5 approaches for collecting data with infant/toddler populations?

Visual fixation procedure / eye tracking

High-amplitude sucking

Head-turn preference procedure

Behavioral testing

Brain-based method

Visual fixation procedure / eye tracking

Tracks the time that it takes for a client to move their eyes to an image that corresponds to a given word

- Pro: tells us about their processing speed

4 things on screen = visual world paradigm

2 things on screen = preferential looking

High-amplitude sucking

Newborn sucks on a pacifier that allows us to get the rate of their sucking

- Faster sucking = newborn knows that the voice is their parent's

If the newborn cannot hear the difference between a stranger and their parent's voice, they are not dishabituated

- Habituation = becoming acquired to one thing for a longer period of time

- Dishabituation = they are able to tell the difference between the stranger and the parent

Head-turn preference procedure

Certain languages have different stress placements are timing aspects that infants can distinguish between

- Studies show that infants prefer to listen to their own language

Con: infants must be able to control their trunk and head, so this study is usually done at 6 months and up

- However, it becomes less useful at 24 months and up because children can predict what is going to happen in the study

What are the three forms of behavioral testing?

Computerized Comprehension Tests

Language Sampling

Production Based Method

Computerized Comprehension Tests

Language Sampling

Production Based Method

Asking the child to say something in particular so that we can test their capabilities

Uses Normative Research

Normative Research

When we can expect children to achieve certain language milestones

Ex: Parental Report: MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory

- Parent fills out a report of whether the child knows a certain word

- Based on this questionnaire, we can tell what words children typically know by a certain stage in language development

What are the two forms of brain based methods?

fNIRS and EEG / ERP

fNIRS

Near-infrared Spectroscopy

Allows us to understand where in the brain stuff is happening to infants without using an MRI

- A light traveling through the scalp will trigger sensors that tell us where in the brain there is more blood flow

- There is an increase in blood flow when sentences are being produced

EEG

Electroencepgolography

- Extremely fast temporal resolution

- Depending on what we're studying, we look at a given time frame and analyze the brain activity (allows us to understand questions about speech perception, syntax, syntax, and pragmatics)

- Ongoing neural activity

ERP

Event-Related Potentials (ERPs)

A more specific measure that we can get from analyzing the ongoing neural activity from the EEG

N400 study

- Presents pictures of nouns and the subject hears a noun that may or not match the picture

- There is a negative peak at 400ms when the subject hears a mismatched noun

This study tells us that our brain is sensitive to subtle changes

Also tells us about vocabulary development in the brain

Theory

Hypothesis or claim about a phenomenon that has been repeatedly tested until there is enough evidence to suggest that it is something concrete about how the world works (factual)

Inception of possible fact

- Exploratory research leads to theory

- Empirical research leads to reality

What are the 2 major theoretical debates?

Nature vs. Nurture

Domain general vs. domain specific

Nature vs. Nurture

"Nature-inspired": Nativist theories; much of our knowledge is innate and genetically transmitted, rather than learned by experience

- Underlying language system is in place at birth

"Nurture-inspired": Empiricist theories; humans gain all knowledge through experience

- Infants begin with a "blank slate"

Domain specific vs. Domain general

Domain specific: each factor involved in language processing is processed in it's own way

- More nature based

- Things are processed in the brain fundamentally different

Domain general: we use the same processes in other situations as we do in language processing

- More nurture based

- Tracking statistics allow us to know how things work

What are the 5 major theories of language development?

Nativist / Structuralist

Behaviorist

Constructivist

Social Interactionist

Connectionist

All theories agree with this basic model. The child acquires her language as a function of...

Information in her environment

Mental capacities

- The approaches differ in the content of these two elements and the relative importance of each

Information from the environment leads to language acquisition

Nativist / Structuralist

Noam Chomsky

- Language is innate in human

- Language is acquired rapidly, effortlessly and without direct instruction

- Language module is specifically designed for language (domain specific)---> Universal grammar

Behaviorist

B.F. Skinner (1904-1990)

- All learning is the result of operant conditioning

- Classical conditioning: a response becomes paired with a certain stimulus after being conditioned

- Operant conditioning: behaviors that result in rewards tend to be repeated

- These can be applied to help build language skills

Constructivist

Basic tenet: Language learning is an active process in which learners construct new ideas based on current/past knowledge

- Following the learners lead

Famous proponents

- Piaget

- Vygotsky

- Tomasello

- MacWhinney

Social interactionist

"Nurture-Inspired"

Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934)

- Important of social interaction in children's language development

- Adults scaffold interaction to lead to greater participation on the part of the child which leads to learning

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD

- Understanding what the child can do by themselves, what they can do with a scaffolding, and what they cannot do by themselves

- Scaffolding allows us to interact with them socially

ZPD characterizes development dynamically

Connectionist

Edward Thorndike

- Connectionism is kind of the gray area between the nature and nurture debate

- Attempt to visually approximate the inner-workings of the brains, and model and stimulate the mechanisms responsible for language growth

- Models: Simulations that are composed of 2 important elements within a larger network: nodes and connections --> Nodes: simple processing units that are likened to neurons in the brain

Observational studies

Minimal manipulation of the environment

- Child-centered: experimenter as an observer

- Certain phenomena can be accessed and properly understood only through observation

- However, investigators have little control over the situation they are interested to observe

- The basis of scientific enquiry

Examples

- Diary studies: observing and making note of the time something was said

- Language samples: allows us to understand what sounds a child can say or can't

- Parental questionnaire: parent tells us what the child is capable of saying

What are the pros and cons of observational studies?

Pros

- Realistic, valid recordings of natural behavior

- Relatively easy to carry out

- Useful for generating hypotheses

Cons

- Observer bias: not reflecting true features

- Limited by what the child chooses to do

- Can be time consuming

Experimental studies

Generally involves a contrived situation

Usually keeps all aspects of the situation constant except one- the one we want to look at

- Ex: if we want to know the child's understanding of plural -s, we may use the wug test

Pros and cons of experimental studies

Pros

- Allows you to test specific predictions

- Can be carefully controlled

Cons

- Artificiality

- Possible cues conveying the purpose of the experiment

Components of a PICO question

P = problem, population, patient

I = intervention

C = comparison

O = outcome

In-text citations

Citations are required when you paraphrase information from a source or directly quote

(Last name of author(s), year)