Language Development

These flashcards cover key vocabulary related to language development as discussed in the lecture.

Speech Perception

The process of understanding and interpreting spoken language.

Phoneme

The smallest unit of sound in a language that can distinguish meaning.

Phonology

The study of the sound system of languages, including the rules for combining phonemes.

Voice Onset Time (VOT)

The duration between the onset of a phoneme and the onset of vocal cord vibration.

Intermodal Perception

The ability to integrate information from different sensory modalities.

Word Segmentation

The process of recognizing the boundaries between words in a continuous stream of speech.

Fast Mapping

A strategy that allows children to quickly learn new words after hearing them just once.

Whole Object Assumption

The assumption that a word refers to a whole object rather than its parts.

Mutual Exclusivity

The principle that each object has only one label.

Shape Bias

The tendency to generalize labels based on the shape of objects.

Syntactic Bootstrapping

Using the syntactic structure of sentences to infer the meanings of words.

Pragmatics

The study of how context influences the interpretation of language.

Joint Attention

The shared focus of two individuals on an object or event.

Bilingualism

The ability to speak and understand two languages fluently.

Critical Period

A developmental time frame in which language acquisition occurs most easily.

Cognitive Flexibility

The ability to switch thinking between different concepts or perspectives.

Social-Emotional Development

The process of developing the ability to interact with others and manage emotions.

Language Acquisition Device (LAD)

A theoretical construct that suggests humans are born with an innate ability to learn language.

Overextension

The use of a single word to represent a larger category of objects or concepts than it typically would.

Underextension

The use of a word in a more restricted way than is appropriate, such as using the word 'dog' only for the family pet.

Metalinguistic Awareness

The understanding of language as a system and the ability to reflect on and manipulate language.