Language development week 1

Content

What are we talking about

Form

The linguistic form that we use for a concept, object, or action

Use

Purpose/intention for our utterance

Visual perception 

At two weeks, the baby can distinguish their caregiver from others by face and voice 

Auditory perception

Heart rate changes indicate that fetus reacts to sound changes when pure tones are applied to the mothers stomach at 26 weeks 

Fetus can hear frequencies represented by female voice 

Human speech 

3 day old babies can recognize their mothers voice and discriminate it from other voices 

Born with biological perceptual abilities to receive and interpret speech 

Pruning

Surplus connections (synapses not being used) are eliminated through childhood and adolescence while repeated uses strengthens a synapse 

Year 2

Increase in myelination, brain can perform complex tasks, self awareness develops, emotions and intentions 

Year 3

Prefrontal cortex develops and forms connections with other areas

Some areas that are important for higher level cognitive tasks do not develop until much later 

Mapping/incidental learning of words

A heard word must match a string of sounds stored in memory and match the object in the physical world

Motherese/parentese

Exaggerated prosody for words, phrases, sentences—speak in a prosody that draws baby to mother and mother is able to change pitch of voice more drastically

Reinforcing

Reinforcing baby’s behaviors

Frequency and probability

Words occur in spoken language with different levels of frequency

Speech sound sequences also occur with different levels of statistical probability

Lahey Level 1 analysis

Precursors of content, form, and use

Precursors of content

Childs understanding of objects and actions

1. Object identity and search (gazing at moving object, object search during free play)

2. Action on an object (looking at action adult is doing, imitate object specific actions)

3. Object to object relations (separate objects, join objects)

Precursors of form

1. Imitate (motor and vocal behavior from adult, new behaviors as well like clapping)

2. Approximating adult linguistic forms (reduplicated CV sequences, nonreduplicated sequences)

3. Nonconventional interactions (consistent phonetic forms for objects/actions)

Precursors of use

1. Interpersonal behavior (gazing/eye contact, joint attention, taking turns in routines)

2. Making references (show, give, point out object)

3. Regulating others behaviors (gesture to request, protest or reject, reach towards)

Content/form interaction content categories 

Words to categorize:

1. Existence 

2. Nonexistence

3. Recurrence 

4. Rejection 

5. Denial

6. Attribution 

7. Possession 

8. Action

9. Locative action 

Ideas and perceptions

Knowledge about language is stored in memory, from previous experience and from information from our senses

Object relations

1. relation to itself (ex: cooke allgone)

2. interclass—how objects differ (ex: attribution and quantity)

3. interclass—the way that objects from different classes relate to one another (ex: x eat cake, x like cake)

4. relationships between two different events or within one single event 

Language form

1. phonology

2. morphology: inflections and functions of words

3. vocabulary 

4. grammar/syntax: word order rules 

Language USE

1. comment 

2. direct action 

3. call attention 

4. protest

5. obtain response 

6. respond 

Use of info from the context (environment) to determine what we say in order to achieve the goal 

Use of the interaction (linguistic context) between people to initiate, maintain, and terminate coversations