Week 12 Language Development

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards detailing the psychological concepts, linguistic milestones, theoretical models, neurological structures, and empirical studies covered in the lecture on Language Development.

Symbolic Representation

The capacity to use mental categories as substitutes for physical objects and events, typically emerging in the second year of life.

Protodeclarative Communication

A form of preverbal communication where an infant uses non-verbal gestures (such as pointing or alternating gaze) to share an emotion, event, or experience with another person.

Declaratives as Expressions

A subtype of protodeclarative communication in which a child seeks to share an attitude or emotional reaction (e.g., widening eyes and smiling at a horse).

Declaratives as Informatives

A subtype of protodeclarative communication where a child directs attention to provide information to another person (e.g., pointing at a stain on their clothes).

Protoimperative Communication

A form of non-verbal communication where a child expresses a direct need, desire, or request along a continuum ranging from ordering (high urgency) to requesting and suggesting (low directivity).

Babbling

Strings of consonant and vowel combinations (e.g., 'babba', 'gugugu') produced by infants around 4 to 6 months of age, emerging in both deaf and hearing infants.

Phoneme

The smallest distinct unit of sound in a language that can distinguish one word from another, with approximately 200 used across human languages and 45 used in English.

Categorical Speech Perception

The perceptual organization of a continuous spectrum of language sounds into distinct categories (such as distinguishing 'ba' from 'pa'), which is evident in infants as young as 1 month old.

Semantics

The component of language concerned with the meanings of words, word combinations, and the mapping of sounds to objects, actions, and relational concepts.

Grammar (Syntax)

The structural rules and principles of a language that dictate how words and phrases are arranged to generate meaningful, grammatically acceptable sentences.

Pragmatics

The sociocultural rules and conventions governing the effective and contextually appropriate use of language in social interactions.

Metalinguistic Development

The acquisition of conscious knowledge about language rules and the ability to treat language itself as both an object of reflection and a communicative medium (e.g., using terms like 'say', 'ask', 'talk').

Naming Explosion (Vocabulary Spurt)

A developmental period between 18 and 24 months marked by a rapid acceleration in word learning, during which children can acquire up to 20 new words per week.

Whole-Object Assumption

A cognitive heuristic in early language learning where a child assumes a novel word label refers to an entire object rather than its discrete parts, properties, or features.

Mutual Exclusivity Assumption

A word-learning constraint where a child assumes that each object possesses only one name, prompting them to map an unfamiliar word to a novel object rather than a familiar one.

Holophrase

A single-word utterance emerging around 15 months of age that expresses a complete, multifaceted thought or sentence (e.g., saying 'Kitty' to mean 'Look at the cat').

Telegraphic Speech

Two-word utterances appearing around age 2 that omit nonessential grammatical markers and auxiliary words while preserving high-content words (e.g., 'no kitty').

Transformational Grammar

A linguistic model viewing grammar as a subconscious system of mathematical rules used to transform basic declarative sentences into various other sentence structures (e.g., forming questions like 'Where kitty?').

Collective Monologue

A conversational pattern described by Piaget where young children speak aloud alongside peers about separate topics without engaging in true communicative exchange.

Contingent Speech

Discourse utterances that sustain the same topic introduced by a conversational partner's preceding statement while adding new relevant information.

Turnabout

A conversational strategy developing around age 2 where a speaker makes a comment and immediately requests a response from their conversational partner.

Shading

A pragmatic conversational skill emerging around age 5 where a speaker gradually and smoothly shifts the focus of a dialogue from one topic to another.

Private Speech

Self-directed speech used by children (peaking between ages 4 and 7) for cognitive guidance and self-regulation during challenging tasks before internalizing into silent thought.

Broca's Area

A brain region located in the posterior portion of the left inferior frontal gyrus that controls speech and language production.

Expressive Aphasia (Broca's Aphasia)

A language disorder caused by damage to Broca's area, characterized by labored articulation, grammatical deficits, and word-finding problems despite relatively intact comprehension.

Wernicke's Area

A brain region located in the posterior portion of the left superior temporal gyrus that controls language comprehension.

Receptive Aphasia (Wernicke's Aphasia)

A language disorder resulting from damage to Wernicke's area, characterized by fluent speech with preserved intonation and grammar but incoherent semantics and impaired comprehension.

Universal Grammar

Chomsky's proposed set of innate, unconscious structural principles and rules that underlie all human languages.

Language Acquisition Device (LAD)

An inborn, biologically hardwired mechanism proposed by Chomsky that enables children to rapidly deduce grammatical rules and master language from verbal exposure.

Critical Period Hypothesis (Lenneberg)

The proposition that a biologically constrained window extending from infancy to puberty exists for language acquisition, beyond which complete lateralization restricts native-level mastery.

Less is More Hypothesis (Newport)

The hypothesis that children's limited cognitive processing and smaller working memory capacities aid language learning by forcing them to decode and analyze small segments of linguistic input.

Maturational State Hypothesis

The hypothesis proposed by Johnson and Newport demonstrating that the capacity for language acquisition declines linearly as a function of biological maturation over the lifespan.

Exercise Hypothesis

The hypothesis positing that if an individual's innate capacity for language acquisition is exercised early in life, the capacity for further language learning remains fully intact throughout adulthood.

Statistical Learning Approach

A theoretical perspective proposing that infants acquire language by using general cognitive mechanisms to detect statistical regularities and patterns in speech sounds.

Child-Directed Speech

A speech register used by adults characterized by high pitch, exaggerated intonation, simplified syntax, frequent questions, repetitions, and recasts adapted to a child's receptive ability.

Recast

A corrective verbal feedback strategy in which an adult repeats a child's grammatically incorrect utterance while subtly correcting its structural errors (e.g., 'Goed zoo' corrected to 'We went to the zoo').

Expansion

A linguistic support technique in which an adult responds to a child's statement by repeating it in a grammatically elaborated and more complex form (e.g., 'Go zoo!' expanded to 'Yes, we will go to the zoo!').

Dynamic Skills Theory

A developmental framework (examined by Bohlmann et al., 2015) proposing that expressive vocabulary and self-regulation develop concurrently as mutually reinforcing skills with bidirectional effects over time.

Tip-of-the-Tongue Phenomenon

A temporary retrieval failure occurring more frequently in late adulthood where an individual is conscious of knowing a specific word but cannot successfully retrieve it from memory.