Midterm 1 Lecture Notes

Speech perception

Ability to hear and categorize speech sounds.

Infants prefer speech over non-speech

Speech is biologically special.

Infants prefer mother’s voice

Heard in womb.

Infants prefer native language

Rhythm recognized.

Phoneme

Smallest sound unit changing meaning.

Phonemic contrast

Sound difference that changes word.

Example of phonemic contrast

/ba/ vs /pa/.

Infants can detect contrasts at what age?

1–4 months.

Bimodal perception

Two response peaks.

Language-general sensitivities

Born with broad abilities.

What does 'universal listener' refer to?

Early infant stage.

Purpose of experimental method in studying infants

Learn what infants know.

Habituation

Boredom to repeated stimulus.

Dishabituation

Attention to new stimulus.

High-amplitude sucking

Infants suck more when interested.

Head-turn procedure

Turn head to new sound.

Preferential looking

Look longer at matching picture.

Werker et al. 1981 finding

Infants hear non-native contrasts.

Did English adults succeed in detecting Hindi contrasts?

No.

When does the shift from universal to language-specific occur?

Occurs in first year.

Werker & Tees 1984 age of loss

10–12 months.

What is consonant narrowing?

Refers to the phenomenon observed at 10–12 months.

What happens during vowel narrowing?

Occurs earlier, around 6 months.

Perceptual reorganization

Tuning to native sounds.

Neural commitment

Brain commits to native language.

When do children typically start to say their first words?

Around 12 months.

Two-word stage

Occurs at 18–24 months.

What is telegraphic speech?

Speech that includes only content words.

Omission in child speech

Leaving out sounds.

Cluster reduction example

House becomes 'ouse'.

Syllable reduction example

Computer becomes 'puter'.

What does reduplication refer to?

Water becoming 'wawa'.

Errors in child speech are described as?

Rule-based; not random.

By age 3, what percentage of sounds are usually present in children's speech?

Most sounds.

Child Directed Speech (CDS)

Special caregiver speech.

CDS characteristics

Higher pitch, slower tempo, high repetition, and exaggerated stress.

CDS helps with what aspect of language acquisition?

Segmentation.

At 18 months, how intelligible is a child's speech?

25%.

At 24 months, how intelligible is a child's speech?

50–75%.

Morphology definition

Word endings.

When do inflections appear in child speech?

With two-word stage.

Brown's morpheme that is acquired first

-ing.

Plural -s acquired at what point in development?

Acquired early.

Three -ed pronunciations based on what?

Voiceless, voiced, and t/d sounds.

What is the dual-mechanism model?

Describes rules and memory in language acquisition.

Blocking principle in language acquisition

Irregular forms block the application of grammatical rules.

Connectionist model in language learning

Single network that learns patterns.

Children who are bilingual are said to have what advantage?

Executive control.

Order of acquisition for bilinguals compared to monolinguals

Similar.