Cogs 120D Unit 3 - Language Development

receptive language

language you understand; begins in utero (exposure to speech)

expressive/productive language

language you speak

what develops faster/first, receptive or expressive language?

receptive language

what will infants prefer hearing, due to exposure to sounds in utero

speech, especially speech in the language they were repeatedly exposed to, regardless if their family is monolingual or bilingual

perceptual narrowing

loss of ability to discriminate between stimuli

phonemes

smallest distinguishable unit of sound in language

phonemes and perceptual narrowing

depending on the language newborns grow up into speaking, they will lose access to discriminating between different phonemes, if those phonemes aren’t present in their predominant language(s)

infants segmenting speech

when learning language/words, infants need to hear sentences slowed down into separate words, such that they can understand individual words, rather than individual words as one fast whole word

infants and phonemes when learning language

when presented with continuous nonsense speech streams (some syllables co-occurred while others didnt), infants would stare longer when hearing non-words, implying surprise and that they use phonemes to understand what could be a word and what most likely isn’t a word

statistical learning

ability to perceive regularities/irregularities in language

do infants understand the meaning of words, even when they cannot yet express anything

in a study by bergelson and swingley (2012), infants not able to talk (6-9 months) were asked to show where an object was, and as they got older, they would often look at the correct object/object of interest more and more over time

expressive language progression

develops in milestones like motor skills; begins with cooing, laughing, vocalizing, etc., with lots of individual variation; big gap between expression and understanding

noun bias

when describing a setting or some sort of image, infants (and all people generally) have a tendency to describe it in terms of what’s present in the image (objects), before using verbs, adjectives, relational words, etc.

behaviorism on language development

people associate utterances with stimuli

quine’s dilemma

the issue with behaviorism’s take on how language is developed; children/people in general can extract an endless amount of meanings from spoken associations

nativists on language development

all languages have universal grammar/specific set of rules

mutual exclusivity

assumption that everything only has one name/title that labels it

whole object assumption

assumption that words refer to whole objects

fast-mapping

1-2 instances of being exposed to a stimuli is enough for understanding what words relate to/label that stimuli

underextension

applying words too narrowly

overextension

applying words too broadly

syntactic-bootstrapping

being able to use syntax to understand new words

infants and syntactic-bootstrapping

infants are able to figure out what a word they’ve never heard refers to (e.g. action of running), and will prefer to look at images depicting the meaning of that word; children are also able to come up with new verbs that they can apply to grammar given their knowledge of grammar, as well as picking up on syntax of foreign/novel words

critical period

biologically pre-determined time window when it’s possible to acquire language

infant-directed speech

the way we speak to infants such that our speech has a high pitch, exaggerated intonation, changes in loudness to highlight specific words, short/simple utterances, and directing to objects right in front of the baby; captures a baby’s attention toward something specific/relevant

contingent responsiveness

prompting verbal responses to a baby’s behavior (e.g. baby looks at ball → you say, ‘thats a ball!’)

contingent responsiveness and social reinforcement

when babies are reinforced specifically for making specific sounds, those babies will be able to reproduce that specific sound when tested later more often than babies who are reinforced for anything

book-reading

helps provide learning of words not present in a child’s immediate environment, as well as promoting turn-taking

bilingualism and language development

when presented with two words in different languages that mean the same thing, and then either two different objects or two of the same objects, infants will habituate toward both and come to expect either two of those displays equally; contributes to less perceptual narrowing of phonemes, better perspective-taking, and greater cognitive control

gaze attention

by 9-10 months, infants can tell when you’re paying attention to something, and will orient themselves to follow your gaze

joint attention

the ability to attend to two ore more things at once; by 12-months babies will have this ability

communicative intent

by 6-months old, babies will orient themselves toward something when verbally and visually guided to look at something; critical to language development

10-month olds and gaze-following intentionality

infants will follow the body orientation of people whose eyes are open, but not when they’re closed

9-12 month olds and pointing

babies will look at whatever people are pointing at

12-14 month olds and pointing

babies will begin to point at things with the intent to communicate; form of early language development

theory of mind

the ability to represent others’ minds; understand/have an idea of what others are thinking

understanding ignorance

understanding what others do not know

how do children ages 2-3 represent theory of mind/understanding ignorance

they’ll begin to say phrases like: “I think/know/wish”, showing they may know something you don’t, and vice versa; will also point to objects they haven’t seen

empathy

responding to someone else’s distress

newborns and empathy

when they hear the sound of other newborns crying, they will cry in response, but won’t cry in response to hearing their own crying, synthetic crying, and silence.

generally, when babies are presented with two videos focusing on a helper and hinderer character respectively, which character would they be more likely to reach for when presented them? (Hamlin, Wynn & Bloom [2007])

preferred the pro-social character

do babies care for goal completion, when presented with a failed helper, and a failed hinderer character?

no, they will consistently prefer the helper character, even though they failed to help complete a task

infants and food preferences of prosocial characters

infants prefer those with similar food preferences to them, but will also prefer to match their food preferences to be the same as those of nicer/prosocial characters

do infants like the prosocial characters over the anti-social characters

no, they actually specifically dislike the anti-social character, which is why they’ll prefer the prosocial character

how do infants react when presented with a character that harms the antisocial character

infants will prefer that harmful character over the antisocial character

scarf et, al. (2012)

proposed that the association for liking helpers over hinderers is based on dancing movements

rebuttal to scarf et, al. (2012)

the shapes in the study did not have clear goals, and their struggles weren’t made obvious, which is why they got different results from the original study

2018 article findings on infant’s capacity for recognizing morality

after analyzing results from both published and unpublished articles, found that there is some degree of morality perception in infants

2024 article findings on infant' capacity for recognizing morality

after completing 30+ labs in an attempt to replicate the original study, it was unsuccessful; 50/50 chance between preferring helper/hinderer character

self-awareness

understanding you exist and that you exist separately from others/other objects; thought to emerge around 2nd year of life (~18 months old)

rouge test

tests self-awareness by placing a mirror in front of a child, and seeing if the child recognizes themself (measured via placing some sort of mark/object on child, and seeing if they reach to remove/point at it); by ~18 months they recognize themselves in the mirror

shopping car test

tests self-awareness by tasking a baby to push a cart with a mat tied to it, such that when the baby goes to push the cart, their own body weight stops it as they are on the mat; by ~18 months, they realize their own body weight stops the cart from moving, and are able to come up with a solution to push the cart successfully

scale error

tests self-awareness by tasking an 18-month old baby to play with life-sized toys, then having them attempt to play with miniature exact replicas; despite now having self-awareness, child will not modify their behavior to be able to properly engage in play with small toys

why does scale error occur

possible dissociation between size perception and action memory, and/or possible lack of body awareness

self-identity in 18 month old babies

will show more brain activity in response to their own face over other people’s facess

self-identity in ~2 year old babies

begin to use words such as “me”, or use their own names when referring to themselves

self-identity in 2-3 year old babies

start categorizing themselves by gender (“i am a boy/girl”) and will engage in gender-stereotyped play; others will categorize them by gender, even from birth

baby X studies

when one believes they’re holding a girl baby, they’ll engage in more gentler play, but when one believes they’re holding a boy baby, there’ll be more rough and tumble play; people will guess the baby’s actual sex and there’ll be a gap between what children identify as, vs. what parents/society pushes onto themh

helpfulness

by ~18 months old, babies start to help others spontaneously, cooperate, and will expect others to be similarly cooperative, even without training/guidance/prior experience

aggression

as shown through “bobo doll” experiments (1960s), when 3-6 year olds watched an experimenter act aggressively toward a doll, they too will show aggression toward it

attachment

bonds with caregivers that are essential to survival

1920s parenting advice about attachment

showing affection was discouraged; should be as minimal as possible to avoid spoiling infant

modern parenting advice about attachment

generally, should be pretty affectionate to your children

1980s romania’s bucharest early intervention studies:

children adopted after 6 months showed very negative cognitive development compared to children who were adopted before 6 months passed/control groups; showed that there is a critical period in which consistent caretaker relationships should be established for children, though we are somewhat flexible

john bowley (1940s)

proposed aggressive behaviors arised from poor attachment to parents

harvey harlow (1950s0

found that infants are attached to mothers in order to receive comfort

mary ainsworth (1950s)

observed 3 (eventually 4) attachment styles: secure, insecure (resistant and avoidant), and disorganized, which are based on reactions to the presence/absence of a caretaker, and the ability to calm down when reunited with caretaker

secure attachment style

see caretakers as secure base; not anxious or distressed when they leave, not overly-clingy

insecure (resistant/ambivalent) attachment style

overly clingy to caretaker, experiences distress/anxiety over absence of caretaker

insecure (avoidant) attachment style

appearing indifferent to caretaker; not engaging with or caring if caretaker is absent/present.di

disorganized attachment style

infant displays incoherent/inconsistent set of behaviors not consistent to any other attachment style