Midterm - Speech & Language Development

Communication vs language vs speech

Communication: process of exchanging information and ideas, needs, and desires between two or more individuals

• collaborative

• Multiple modalities (spoked, signed, written)

• Occurs within a specific cultural context

• Linguistic and para-linguistic components

Language: process that involves a code, system and arbitrary signals. It also involves:

• phonetics (sounds)

• Phonology (sound structure)

• Morphology (words)

• Syntax (sentences)

• Semantics (meaning)

• Pragmatics (use)

Speech: verbal communication through articulation

properties of human language that are found in other animal communication systems or are successfully taught to other species

• Have fewer forms to express limited content for limited uses combined in limited ways

Difference between form, content, and use

Form: sound units and sequences + words and word beginnings and endings

• phonology

• Morphology

• Syntax

Content: word order and their relationships

• semantics

Use: language in context

• pragmatics

competence vs performance

competence: inner, unconscious knowledge of the rules of language

Performance: expression of the rules in everyday speech

Descriptive vs prescriptive grammar

prescriptive: specify how language and its grammar rules should be used

Descriptive: describe how people use language in daily life including standard and nonstandard varieties

Different types of methods used in acquisition research

1. Spontaneous conversational sampling or natural observation ‘

   1. Diary studies

   2. Checklists

   3. Language sample

2. Structured testing or experimental manipulation

   1. Habituation

   2. Conditioned head turn

   3. Preferential looking

   4. Neuroimaging

Diary

pros: rich qualitative and longitudinal data

Cons: memory limitations, unintentional bias, only production, time & effort consuming, validity and reliability not clear

Checklists

Usually with screening tools and criterion-referenced assessments

Pros: normed data, low cost, time efficient, uses comprehension and production, early age

Cons: bias and limited number of pre-determined items

Language sample analysis

Pros: more naturalistic and ecologically valid

Cons: time consuming and labor intensive

Habituation

Commonly use in testing phoneme distinction in infants

pro: no reliance on overt response (good for young infants)

Con: can’t fully indicate what the autonomous response actually means

Conditioned head turn

pros: multiple trials, linking stimulus and response

Cons: cannot be reliably used under 6 months of age and additional task demands

Preferential looking

pros: naturalistic response, cross-modal

Cons: limited information (know where, not why), difficulty with younger infants, observer bias

Neuroimaging

pros: reveal biological mechanisms that underlie cognitive capacities

Cons: expensive and infants are hard to make sit still

Behaviorism

• language acquisition could be explained by operant conditioning

  • Increase a behavior by pairing performance of the target behavior with a positive reward

• Empiricist theory

• Reinforcement and imitation drive language learning

• Positive reinforcement through:

  • Positive affect

  • Comprehension

nativism

• language cannot be learned through just conditioning

• Speed of acquistion is too rapid (lexical explosion)

• No other species have evolved to have complex communication system

• Errors children make (like past tense) cannot be explained by either imitation or reinforcement

Generativism

• all humans have an innate capacity for language (universal grammar or language acquisition device)

• Set of grammatical knowledge common to all the language of the world

Constructivism/cognitivism

• language acquistion emerges through cognitive skills (like object permanence)

• In learning languages, children are learning to pair words with concepts they have already acquired —> using schemas

Social interactionism

• social interaction is central to learning

• Social contexts provide scaffolding for learning

• Zone of proximal development: distance between child’s actual development level and their level of potential development