Chapter 6 - Development of Language and Symbol Use

Comprehension

Comprehension

• understanding what others say, sign or write

Production

• the process of speaking, signing, or writing

Language is generative

• meaning it is a system in which a finite set of words can be combined to generate an infinite number of sentences.

• This system lets us understand sentences we have never heard before, because they make use of familiar words and grammatical structures.

Phonemes

• units of sound speech is composed of

• change in phoneme changes the meaning of a word (ex. rake vs lake)

Syntax

• the rules specifying how words from different categories (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.) can be combined, and the order in which words can appear in a sentence is crucial to the meaning. (ex. Lila ate the lobster vs the lobster ate Lila.)

Pragmatics

• the understanding of how language is typically used in a specific cultural context, and they are necessary to go beyond the words to understand what the speaker is really trying to communicate using context and emotional tone.

Brain-language lateralization

• Language is primarily controlled by the left hemisphere, and this emerges very early in life.

• the _____ supporting language learning operates differently and better during the early years.

neural circuitry

Infant-directed speech (IDS)

• the distinctive mode of speech used when speaking to infants and toddlers.

  • Adults tend to speak with greater pitch variability, slower speech, shorter utterances, more word repetition and more question.

  • They also enhance the clarity of vowels, adjust the sound of their voice, and exaggerate their facial expressions.

• Infants prefer this to adult-directed speech (ADS), even when it’s in another language.

• IDS is not universal, but it is common due to different cultures.

Prosody

• basis to speech perception

• characteristic rhythm and intonational patterns with which a language is spoken.

Categorical perception

• the perception of speech sounds as belonging to categories.

Young infants make ____ distinctions than adults

more

By 12 months, infants become ___ sensitive to differences between nonnative speech sounds

less

Word segmentation

the process of discovering where words begin and end in fluent speech.

stress-patterning

• infants expect stressed syllables to begin words and use this information to pull words out of fluent speech.

distributional properties of speech

• the certain sounds that are more likely to occur together than others.

Infants with more responsive caregivers are ___ likely to use mature vocalization patterns

more

babbling

• saying repetitive consonant-vowel sequences like “bababa…” or hand movements (for learners of sign languages) between 6-10 months of age.

Intersubjectivity

when two partners share a mutual understanding

With linguistic experience, infants become ____ at rapid word comprehension

skilled

Overextension

• Infants express their thoughts with one-word utterances, but they don’t have enough vocabulary to talk about what they want to talk about, so they use a word in a broader context than is appropriate

Underextension

• using the word in a more limited context than appropriate.

Mutual exclusivity

• Children expect that a given entitity has only one name

whole-object assumpton

• when children expect a novel word to refer to a whole object rather than to a part, property, action or other aspect of the object.

• If an adult’s labeling of an object conflicts with a child’s knowledge of it, they will ____ the adult’s label if they used it intentionally.

accept

• Object shape is useful in word learning because shape is a good cue to _____

• category membership.

cross-situational word learning

• repeated correspondence between words the child hears, and objects the child observes in the world

syntactic bootstrapping

• figuring out meanings of new words by using the grammatical structure of the sentences in which those words occur

telegraphic speech

• nonessential elements are left out.

overrregularization

• speech errors in which children treat irregular forms of words as if they are regular.

collective monologue

• conversations not linking to each other at all.

narratives

• descriptions of past events with the form of a story

Universal Grammar

1. a hard-wired set of principles and rules that govern grammar in all languages

2 key dimensions in understanding language development

1. The contributions of nature vs nurture

2. Did the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying language learning evolve solely to support language learning (domain specific) or are they used for leanring many different kinds of things (domain general)?

Connectionism

• type of computational model that emphasizes the simultaneous activity of numerous interconnected processing units.

dual representation

• the artifact needs to be treated as a real object, and as a symbol for something other than itself.

• Young children have particular difficulty with symbols intended to represent themselves, even when they are the same size as the child.

• Increasing ability to achieve dual representation lets children discover the abstract nature of symbolic artifacts.