Language development exam 2

Starks stages

Reflexive, control of phonation, expansion, basic canonical syllables, advanced forms

Ages of Starks stages

Reflexive: 0-2 months

Control of phonation:1-4 months

Expansion: 3-8 months

Basic canonical syllables: 5-10 months

Advanced forms: 9-18 months

What happens during the reflexive stage?

• Sounds of discomfort and vegetative sounds

• Adults respond as of reflexes are true communication attempts 

What happens during the control of phonation stage?

• Cooing and gooing

• Combine vowel like segments with consonant like segments

• Isolated consonant sounds and raspberries, trills, and clicks

What happens during the expansion stage?

• Infants produce isolated vowel sounds and vowel glides

• Experiment with loudness and pitch

• May squeal

• May use marginalized babbling(consonant like and vowel like sounds)

What happens during the basic canonical syllables stage?

• Single consonant-vowel syllables

• Canonical babbling- CV syllables “baa” “goo”

• Produces more than two CV syllables in a sequence 

• Reduplicated babbling- repeating CV pairs 

• Non reduplicated babbling (variegated babbling)- non-repeating combinations 

What happens during the advanced forms stage?

• More complex syllable forms 

• Jargon- babbling containing at least two syllables and at least two different consonants and vowels , varied stress and intonation patterns

Characteristics of infant directed speech

Exaggerated pitch contours, overall high pitch, slower tempo 

Effects of IDS on language development

• Highlights content words 

• Exaggerated vowels facilitates infants processing of words with those vowels

• Exaggerates pauses which helps infants detect syntactic units

Indicators of caregiver responsiveness (7)

• Waiting and listening- wait for initiations

• Following the child’s lead- responding verbally or non verbally

• Joining in and playing- play with dominating

• Being face to face- eye level

• Using a variety of questions - wh and yes no questions

• Encouraging turn taking- wait for responses

• Expanding and extending- add another idea using correct grammar

Adamson and Chances three phases of language development through social interaction

Attendance to social partners, emergencies and coordination of joint attention, beginning of intentional communication, transition to language

Adamson and Chance’s 1st phase

Attendance to social partners: birth- 6 mos

• Infants are interested in looking at peoples faces espically their parents faces

• Caregiver responsiveness is key 

Adamson and Chance’s 2nd phase

Emergencies and coordination of joint attention: 6 mos-1 yr

• Infants shift their attention between and object of interest and another person

• Develop joint attention

• Children who engage in longer periods of joint attention have larger vocabularies at 18 months

• Caregivers can maintain an infants attention by following their focus rather than redirecting their focus

Beginning of intentional communication: 6 mos-1 yr

• Alternating eye gaze between item and communication partner 

• Using ritualized gestures like pointing 

• Repeating and modifying attempts when communication fails 

• Imperative pointing: request adult to retrieve item

• Declarative pointing: Call an adults attention to an object , developed later than imperative pointing

Adamson and Chance’s 3rd phase

Transition to language: 1 year +

• Incorporating language into communicative interactions

• Demonstrate understanding of intentionality establishment of joint attention to have communicative exchanges 

Why is joint attention important?

Children who engage in loner periods of joint attention with caregivers have larger vocabularies at 18 months 

3 criteria for first words?

• Must be said with clear intention

• Must have recognizable pronunciation that approzimates adult production

• Must be used consistently  

Major achievements in form in infancy?

Phonology- rules to combine sounds into syllables and words

Morphology- Rules to combine parts of words into larger words

Syntax- Rules to combine words into sentences

Major achievements in content in infancy?

Semantics- Understanding words people use and the meanings behind them

Lexicon- vocabulary system

Major achievements in use in infancy?

Pragmatics: how people use language to interact with others and express personal and social needs

Preverbal language functions used by 8 mos

• Attention seeking to self

• Attention seeking to events, objects, and other people

• Greeting

• Responding

• Informing 

Deictic gesture

Meaning that changes with context

Two types of deictic gestures and their meanings

Declarative: pointing

Imperative gesture: reaching “pick me up” “give me that” 

Referential gesture

Referent is stable across contexts

Communicate a specific meaning 

ex: hand to ear for phone, baby 

How can we assess infant language skills 

• Informal language screens

• Parents report measures

• Observation

• Combination of parent report and observation

How can we assess toddler language skills?

Screenings and comprehensive evaluations

COMPREHENSIVE EVALUATIONS ARE THE ONLY WAY TO TELL IF A LANGUAGE DISORDER IS PRESENT

Intraindividual differences

• Infants don’t develop all aspects of language at the same rate

• Language comprehension precedes language expression

• Language expression requires additional effort, organization of words into sentences, and requires that children develop a relationship between language and it’s referent to express meaning

Interindividual differences 

• Some children develop more quickly than others

• Children express themselves for different purposes

• Rate of language development- both receptive and expressive varies

What is classified as a late talker

If a child has less than 50 words by the age of two they are a late talker

What is the first morpheme acquired 

-ing

Major milestones in toddlerhood

• First words

• PCF’s: phonetically consistent forms- used consistently, but not adult like, not true words

• Deictic gestures 

• Referential gestures 

Phonological processes

1. Syllable structure changes- changes the syllable strcuture by adding or deleting sounds 

2. Assimilation (harmony)- child produces a sound similar to another sound in the word

3. Place of articulation changes (substitution)- child replaces one sound or group of sounds for another 

When do grammatical morphemes occur

Around the 50 word mark- also start two word utterances

Major achievements in form in toddlerhood?

Phonology- Customary age of production: 50% of children can produce a sound in an adult like way

Morphology: Early grammatical morphemes appear around the 50 word mark, present possessive ing, preposition in and on are used around 2 years, toddlers overgeneralize

Syntax: Increased use of morphological inflections (MLU), produce longer utterances, telegraphic speech ( omit key grammatical markers)

Overextensions 

Use word because it is similar to another word

Underextentions

Very concrete, can only be one thing. If a child sees a cup and then another cup, only one of them can be a cup

Fast Mapping

Toddlers pick up after hearing a word once

MLU

Mean length utterance- number of morphemes in an utterance

Free morphemes

Can stand alone- dog, chair, hop, girl

Bound morphemes

Cannot stand alone: derivational- prefixes, suffixes

Inflectional (grammatical)- ed, plural -s, -’s, -ing

Children with a low SES have…

fewer words and a shorter MLU

Major achievements in content in infancy?

Semantics- Dramatic growth in expressive lexicon, vocabulary spurt, errors in word use (over and under extensions) , fast mapping, can learn new words with very little exposure

Major achievements in use in infancy?

7 DISCOURSE FUNCTIONS

7 discourse functions

Instrumental- to request, satisfy needs

Regulatory: control others behavior

Interactional: interact socially

personal: express feelings

heuristic: requesting info

imaginative: telling stories to pretend 

informative: provide information to others