Developmental Psychology - Language Acquisition 1

What is needed to master language?

The ability to:

• Recognise own language

• Recognise & Understand Words and their meanings

• Speak words & create sentences

• Use syntax
  

What skills are involved in learning a language?

• Association

• Generalisation

• Recognition

• Retrieval

What type of skills is used in language acquisition?

Domain-general skills.

What role do patterns play in language acquisition?

Learning patterns for how sounds fit together are used to form words and how word types fit together in order.

What comes first in language learning, comprehension or production?

Comprehension

Define Comprehension and Production in the context of language.

• Comprehension: Understanding what others say

• Production: Speaking to others.

How does socio-economic status (SES) affect vocabulary size?

High/middle SES children are more talkative and produce more words, while low SES children produce fewer words.

What is the Matthew Effect in Developmental Psychology?

A phenomenon where differences between groups widen over time, e.g., reading ability in children from different SES backgrounds. (“the rich get richer”)

When can foetuses begin to hear?

From 15–18 weeks (in the womb).

What sounds do infants initially prefer?

• Muffled sounds

• Their mother’s voice

• Their native language(s) (over others).

What is cadence, and when can foetuses and infants learn it?

"rhythm”. Newborns can learn and recall cadence in the womb.

What did DeCasper & Spence (1987) find about cadence?

Infants preferred stories heard in the womb over new ones, showing they recall cadence.

At what age can infants segment speech?

8 months.

What did research on infants and made-up languages show about speech segmentation?

Infants could distinguish between individual words and part words, using patterns to learn language.

How does Infant Directed Speech help children learn words?

By using:

• higher/more ranged pitch

• exaggerated tone

• simple structure

• high grammar

• slow speed

• repetition.

What is the impact of Infant Directed Speech on language learning?

It helps isolate words and significantly aids vocabulary development.

How does Child Directed Speech (CDS) impact language development?

Children exposed to CDS have larger vocabularies and better sentence comprehension.

At what age can infants recognise their own names?

By 4 months.

At what age can infants understand "mommy" and "daddy"?

By 6 months.

What did Miller et al. (2017) find about word recognition and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)?

Infants with ASD showed higher rates of failing to recognise words. Name recognition at 9 months may help with ASD pre-screening.

Does Speech Processing differ between monolingual and bilingual children?

Speech development remains similar, showing the robustness of language acquisition.

How does language influence categorisation in infants?

Linguistic labels help infants group objects by shared features, aiding early cognitive development.

How does categorisation influence language learning?

Most input is for categories (nouns), shaping early vocabularies toward solid, shape-based nouns.

What is shape bias in language learning?

A tendency to categorise objects based on their shapes, aiding vocabulary acquisition.

What did Samuelson (2002) find about shape bias?

Children trained on shape categories developed shape bias, showing it results from word learning.