Childhood Language Quiz 2

What two factors help communication develop?

biology plus social support

infants have the biological capacity for communication

capacity is not enough communication develops through social interaction

Do children learn from TV or interaction?

children learn from interaction, not TV (Anderson and Pempek 2005)

evidence: toddlers learned words from LIVE video chat, but not from the same content prerecorded (Myers et al. 2017)

What effect did Covid have on children’s language development?

covid closures caused screen time to ride, but vocab gains came in higher than expected

likely explanation for this is that caregiver-infant interaction increased

interpretation: context and contingency matter more than minutes

researchers cannot yet say that screen time hinders language- context is what the evidence points to

What is the AAP guidance for children and screen time?

no screens before 18-24 months except video chat

ages 2-5: about an hour of high quality and watched together

What is infant directed speech?

we call it baby talk, infant-directed speech (IDS), child-directed speech (CDS), and motherese/parentese

features of IDS: higher pitch, more variable pitch, exaggerated stress

this is found in many languages, from mothers and fathers

most of these modifications happen without our awareness

all of these features are prosody- the melody, rhythm, and stress of speech

this helps infants find clause boundaries and improves word learning in both infants and adults

How did researchers test if infants preferred IDS?

used HPP (head turn preference procedure) infant on caregiver’s lap in a three-sided booth, sounds play left or right and the look time toward the sound source demonstrates interest

found infants prefer IDS even in languages they’ve never heard

also found that 6-month-olds preferred positive affect with or without baby-talk acoustics (happy talk)

Is IDS universal?

no

even though this is not in every language, babies everywhere learn to speak, and no feature of baby talk is proven necessary

What did Snow (1977) find with caregivers holding conversations with preverbal infants?

caregivers treat infants as conversational partners from the start

at 3 months, anything counts as the baby’s turn- a smile, even a burp

at 7 months: only vocalizations count

at 12 months: vocalizations get interpreted as words

What is a contingent response?

a response given immediately after, and because of, a child’s specific behavior- its timing and its content both depend on what the child just did

adults give contingent responses when infants sounds become more speechlike

What is direct talk?

speech addressed to the child, the child is the intended listener, as opposed to speech the child overhears between others

no single pattern of caregiver-infant interaction is required for language development, but amount of direct child-directed talk correlates with later language

When do infants turn their attention to objects?

at around 6 months (caregivers pivot with them, joint object play, labeling what the child sees, words stick best when the caregiver FOLLOWS the child’s interest)

What are the styles of interaction?

responsive style: child points at bottle → “bottle”

intrusive style: “look at your book”

interest and timing both matter: label what the child attends to, at that moment

What is joint attention?

caregiver and child attend to the same object at the same time- a mutual shared experience

caregivers who encourage joint attention + supply labels see faster vocabulary growth

impaired early joint attention leads to lower expressive vocabulary

What are the ways you can interrupt joint attention?

“learning on hold” word-teaching interrupted by a phone call (that word was not learned, but the uninterrupted word was learned)

“technoference” absorbed caregivers respond less to children’s bids (partial still-face)

What helps support early communication?

routines and book reading

routines help infants notice sound-meaning correspondences

book readings works from infancy (the same book again and again is a feature- repetition is how routines teach)

True or false: children can not learn language without loving interaction

false

children can learn language even without loving interaction

what evidence supports so far: respond to the child, follow the child’s interest, timing matters

What are the vocal developments in the first year?

birth (including preterm) photophones: vocants, squeals growls

6-8 weeks: cooing

-16 weeks: laughter

6-7 moths: canonical babbling- repeated consonant-vowel syllables

by 12 months: babies drifts toward the sound patterns of the ambient language

What is communicative intent?

making a signal expecting it to have a specific effect on the partner

first clear signs: between 8 and 10 months

What is communicative behavior?

gestures and vocalizations used on purpose- the observable act clinicians count

What are communicative functions?

the purpose the message serves

requesting, rejecting, getting attention, showing things to others

When does pointing emerge?

6-10 months infants begin pointing

9-12 months infants respond to others’ points- looking where the finger points, not at the finger

by 12 months infants point, then shift gaze to the partner, checking that the point was noticed

When do infants begin to understand other people as intentional beings?

around 9 months

first step towards theory of mind

early pointers tend to be early word-understanders

What are baby signs?

babies invent their own consistent gestures- caregivers often never notice

taught “baby signs” appear slightly before words

What are protowords?

consistent, invented sound-forms- “lala'“ for blanket

Describe variation in learning to communicate

“not speaking yet” never means “not learning yet”

newborn hearing screenings- intervention in the first 6 months matters most

risk comes from lack of access to a perceivable language

early flags: reduced response to name, reduced joint attention

late talks: under 50 words at 24 months

What is the order of emergence of prelinguistic skill?

newborn- turns head toward sound, prefers the native language and the mother’s voice, discriminates many speech sounds

1-2 months- smiles when spoken to

4-6 months- recognizes own name and first words

6-8 moths- segments words from fluent speech

8-10 months- begins losing nonnative sound discrimination- responds to own name and familiar routines (“wave bye-bye”)

by 12 months- clear recognition of first words

What is the international Phonetic Alphabet?

every sound in every language gets ONE symbol

most ipa consonant symbols correspond directly to their standard English alphabet letters

What is the criteria for describing consonants?

place of articulation: where the airflow is constricted

voice: are the vocal folds vibrating or not

manner: how the air flow is constricted in the vocal tract

What are the landmarks of the vocal tract? (front to back)

lips

teeth

alveolar ridge

hard palate

velum

glottis

What are the manners of articulation?

stops: air fully blocked, then released

fricatives: air moves through a narrow constriction creating friction

affricates: a stop that changes into a fricative

nasals: air exits through the nose

liquids: air flows smoothly around a partial obstruction in the mouth

glides: barely constricted, vowel-like

What is the order for classifying consonants?

voicing + place + manner

What are the characteristics of vowels?

a vowel is produced with an unconstricted, open vocal tract

vowels are classified using: height, backness, and rounding

height- how high or low the tongue is

backness: where the highest point of the tongue is positioned (front, central, or back)

lip rounding: whether the lips are round

What is a diphthong?

gliding speech sounds produced by transitioning seamlessly from one vowel quality to another within the same syllable

What are suprasegmentals?

segmental: the individual build block sounds (consonants and vowels)

suprasegmental: the features layered over those sounds

• - stress: emphasis on specific syllables or words

• - rhythm: the beat and timing of speech

• - pitch: the fundamental acoustic feature

intonation contour: the overall pitch pattern or “melody” across a sentence that communicates meaning or emotion

What is categorical perception?

how the brain processes continuous acoustic signals

continuous vs. discrete: speech sounds exist on a continuous acoustic spectrum, but our brains process them as discrete phonemic categories

within-category equivalence: acoustic variations within a category boundary are heard as identical

across-boundary discrimination: small acoustic changes that cross a phonetic boundary trigger a sharp perceptual shift to a new sound category

What are the differences in categorical perception between adults and infants?

boundaries: adults discriminate only the phonemic boundaries in their native language, infants discriminate every phonemic contrast

perceptual filtering: adults ignore acoustic variations within a language; infants detect contrasts from languages they’ve never heard

non-native contrasts: adults are perceptually “deaf” to foreign phonemic distinctions, infants at 6 months can easily pass discrimination tasks for foreign contrasts

How do phoneme boundaries differ across languages?

language-specific mapping: phonetic boundaries are not universal, every language carves up the acoustic spectrum differently

some languages have fewer categories than English

some languages have more categories than English

adult perceptual filtering: adult brains become tuned strictly to native boundaries, making non-native contrasts extremely difficult to perceive

When does perceptual narrowing occur?

at and before 6 months infants are able to discriminate both native and non-native contrasts

by 10-12 months non-native discrimination fades and native contrasts sharper

“Citizens of the world” to “culture-bound listeners” by the first birthday

What are the stages of babbling?

reflexive vocalization (0-2 months)) automatic, involuntary sounds responding too internal physiological states

cooing (2-4 months) production of comfortable, open vowel like sounds and back consonant combinations

vocal play (4-6 months): active exploration of vocal tract capabilities, including pitch extremes, volume shifts, squeals, growls, and rasping sounds

canonical babbling (6-10 months) production of true, rhythmic CV syllables, divided into reduplication

jargon stage (10-12+ months) complex strings of non-word vocalizations delivered with adult-like suprasegmental features

What are the sound types within reflexive vocalization?

vegetative sounds: coughing, burping, sucking, grunting

distress sounds: automatic crying and fussing

What is a clinical red flag with canonical babbling?

failure to produce canonical balling by 10 months strongly correlates with hearing loss or speech-language delay

What role does feedback have in speech acquisition?

internal (sensorimotor) feedback: hearing their own voice enables infants to map motor commands to acoustic outcomes, sensing mouth movement, tongue placement, and vocal fold vibration, drives vocal play

external (social) feedback: caregivers respond contingently to mature infants sounds, exposure to native language speech shapes infants babbling, catalyzes the transition into canonical

adult-to-child contingency (parent responsiveness): adults respond more frequently and enthusiastically to speech-like vocalization

child-to-adult contingency (infant adaption): infants modify their subsequent vocal output based on caregivers immediate response

What is phonology?

the sound system of a language

it describes the patterns of sounds that occur in a language

What is phonotactics?

the rules governing possible phoneme/sound combinations

the set of language-specific rules that govern which sound sequences are permissible and where they may occur within a syllable or word

What are the typical errors in phonological development when combining sounds?

articulation: lacks fine motor control to physically produce the sound (motor execution- phonetic) (physical distortion confined to ONE sound)

phonological: mental representation and organization of sound is incorrect (linguistic rules- phonemic) (rule that reaches across a whole CLASS of sounds)

What is a phonological process?

systematic, rule-based pattern that young children naturally use to simplify adult speech sounds and complex syllable structures while their speech system develops

What are the types of phonological processes?

substitutions: systematically replacing one sound with another

syllable structure: modifying, simplifying, or deleting sounds to alter the shape of a syllable

assimilation: changing a sound to make it more similar or identical to a neighboring sound in the word

What are types of substitutions?

gliding: liquids → glides

stopping: fricatives/affricates → stops

fronting: velars → alveolars

prevocalic voicing: voiceless → voiced before vowel

final devoicing: voice → voiceless at word end

What are types of syllable structures?

cluster reduction: deletes ≥ 1 consonant from a cluster

weak syllable deletion: omits an unstressed syllable

final consonant deletion: omits coda consonant (leaves open vowel)

reduplication: repeats full or partial syllable

What are types of assimilations?

velar assimilation: sound becomes velar near a velar sound

nasal assimilation: sound becomes nasal near a nasal sound

labial assimilation: sound becomes labial near a labial sound

What is the timeline of typical phonological process suppression?

age 3: velar and nasal assimilation, final consonant deletion, stopping

age 4: fronting, stopping, deaffrication, weak syllable deletion, cluster reduction

age 5: stopping, cluster reduction

ages 6-7: gliding

What are indicators of a phonological disorder?

persistence: typical processes continue past the normal age of suppression

atypical patterns: production of rare, non-developmental errors

high frequency: simplifications occur constantly across contexts significantly reducing intelligibility

loss of contrast: sound substitutions collapse phonemic distinctions into single sounds

What are four common types of atypical phonological development?

phonological disorder: functional deficit featuring non-developmental, atypical error patterns rather than simple delays

dysarthria: muscle weakness, paralysis, or poor coordination in the speech mechanism

childhood apraxia of speech (CAS): difficulty planning and sequencing motor movements for speech in the brain

hearing loss: reduced or distorted auditory input leading to insufficient quality exposure to ambient speech sounds

What are transitional probabilities?

measures how likely a specific sound or syllable is to come right after another

What did Saffran, Aslin, and Newport 1996 study?

word segmentation in 8-month-old infants via implicit statistical learning

8-month-old infants heard a 2 minute continuous stream of artificial speech, infants showed a significant novelty preference (longer listening time) for novel non-words compared to trained words

How do infants identify word boundaries if speech signal is continuous?

within-word sequence: high statistical probability; sounds co-occur consistently

cross-boundary sequences: low statistical probability; variable sound combinations

key insights: drop in statistical probability signal structural word boundaries to the listener

What is the “Gavagai” problem?

Quine (1960) a speaker points at a rabbit and says “gavagai”

the problem: ambiguity, what does “gavagai” mean?

How do children solve the mapping task/link new words to the correct meanings?

word learning constraints

cognitive and learning processes

socio-pragmatic cues

What are the word learning constraints?

whole-object assumption: children assume a novel word refers to an entire physical object rather than a sub-part or a property (eliminates endless possibilities, making word learning fast and clear)

mutual-exclusivity principle: children assume that each object only has one name (allows children to learn new words easily, even in a cluttered environment filled with familiar items)

What are the cognitive and learning processes?

fast mapping: forming an initial hypothesis about a word’s meaning after minimal exposure, occurs naturally during everyday interactions there is no explicit teaching needed (engine behind the vocabulary spurt)

associative learning: words and their referents co-occur repeatedly in the same situation (peanut butter goes with jelly) slower and less flashy than fast mapping- but doing enormous background work

What are socio-pragmatic cues?

adults narrow the referent further with eye gaze and pointing

a child who follows the adult’s eyes or point is already halfway to the right meaning before a word is even said

What is word extension?

how children generalize labels to new objects

taxonomic principle: words extend to items in the SAME CATEGORY, not items that are merely contextually related (dog with dog rather than dog with leash)

What are the theories that helps children decide if things are “similar enough”?

semantic feature theory: objects that share key perceptual or functional features are grouped into the same category (a child checks if a novel object possesses the necessary features)

prototype theory: category membership is based on similarity to an ideal, central representation- the prototype (instead of checking strict feature checklists, a child compares new items to a mental “average” of that category)

What are the three stages of early world learning?

speech segmentation: extract individual word forms from continuous speech streams

word mapping: assign meaning or concept to a newly learned word

word extension: generalize the word appropriately to new, novel instances in the word