Language

What is infant-directed speech (motherese)?

A style of speech used in almost all cultures when speaking to infants.

What are the characteristics of infant-directed speech?

Emotional or sweet tone; exaggerated vocal pitch and prosody; slower speech rate and longer pauses; often exaggerated facial expressions.

What is speech segmentation?

The process of identifying individual words within a continuous stream of speech.

What are the five main aspects of language?

Phonology, morphology, semantics, syntax, and pragmatics.

What is phonology?

The sound system of a language and how sounds are produced and combined.

What is a phoneme?

A small unit of sound used in a language.

Approximately how many distinct sounds does English have?

Approximately 34 distinct sounds, fewer than 45.

What physical structures help produce different speech sounds?

The lips, jaw, tongue, vocal folds, and larynx.

How are phonemes and morphemes related?

Phonemes combine to create morphemes, which are meaningful language units.

What happens during Stage 1 of babbling (0–8 weeks)?

Infants produce reflexive crying and vegetative sounds such as burping, coughing, and sneezing.

Why is sound production difficult during Stage 1 of babbling?

The larynx is high in the neck and the tongue fills the oral cavity, allowing simultaneous breathing and swallowing but making sound production difficult.

What happens during Stage 2 of babbling (8–20 weeks)?

Infants begin cooing and laughing, producing pleasant sounds that are mostly vowels, especially during social interactions.

How does crying change during Stage 2 of babbling?

Crying becomes more of a sign of distress, and sustained laughter begins.

What happens during Stage 3 of babbling (16–30 weeks)?

Infants engage in vocal play, transitioning from cooing to true babbling and producing single syllables such as “ba” and “ga.”

What types of sounds occur during Stage 3 of babbling?

Both vowel and consonant sounds.

What happens during Stage 4 of babbling (25–50 weeks)?

Reduplicated babbling appears, with repeated consonant-vowel patterns such as “mamamama” and variations in pitch.

Where does Stage 4 reduplicated babbling occur?

Both in social settings and when infants are alone.

What happens during Stage 5 of babbling (9–18 months)?

Infants produce jargon, or variegated babbling, using non-repeated consonant-vowel syllables such as “badayaga.”

What makes Stage 5 jargon sound like conversation?

Changes in pitch and intonation make it sound as though the infant is carrying on a conversation.

Can congenitally deaf babies babble?

Yes, but they generally progress through the first three stages without developing vocal reduplicated babbling because they lack auditory experience.

What kind of babbling can deaf infants develop if exposed to ASL early?

Manual babbling, which resembles the repeated patterns of spoken babbling but uses signs and hand movements.

What did Petitto and Marentette (1991) demonstrate?

Deaf infants exposed to sign language can produce manual babbling, suggesting that babbling-like production before six months is not necessarily based on auditory experience.

Until approximately what age does sound development continue?

Approximately 8–9 years old.

How many consonants can children produce by age 2?

Approximately 10–20 consonants.

What is children's speech production generally like by age 6?

They can produce most vowels and consonants.

What can children do with speech sounds by age 9?

They can produce all the sounds of their language correctly about 75% of the time.

What is phonological awareness?

Awareness that words are made up of individual sounds.

When does phonological awareness begin to emerge?

Around preschool age.

What early literacy skills are predicted by phonological awareness?

Recognizing syllables, identifying word-initial sounds, learning to rhyme, and identifying individual phonemes.

What is morphology?

The study of morphemes and how meaningful units are used in language.

What is a morpheme?

The smallest language unit with meaning that cannot be divided into smaller meaningful units.

What are free morphemes?

Morphemes that can stand alone as words, such as “fire,” “dog,” and “grass.”

What are bound morphemes?

Morphemes that cannot stand alone, such as “a-,” “un-,” “-s,” “-ed,” and “-ness.”

How do children apply morphological rules during development?

They apply rules widely, sometimes incorrectly.

What is a morphological overgeneralization error?

Applying a language rule to a word when the rule does not correctly apply, such as saying “taked,” “runned,” or “goed.”

When do morphological overgeneralization errors begin and how long can they last?

They begin around 20 months and can last until approximately 5 years old.

What did Berko (1958) investigate?

Children's acquisition and use of morphological rules.

What is joint attention?

Shared attention between a child and another person toward the same object or event.

Why is joint attention important?

It is critical for communication and helps children connect words with the objects or events adults are discussing.

How does joint attention develop during infancy?

Around 6 months, infants follow adults' gaze; around 9 months, they follow adults' pointing; around 11–12 months, they can point themselves; around 2 years, they intentionally direct others' attention.

What is semantics?

The meaning of words and the ways words relate to one another.

What does semantics focus on during early language development?

Vocabulary acquisition.

What is one of the first words infants learn to recognize?

Their own name.

At approximately what age can many infants recognize their own name?

Approximately 4.5 months.

How can recognizing their own name help infants learn other words?

It may help them attend to other words, such as when an adult says, “That's Tommy's spoon.”

How does infant-directed speech help word learning?

It makes it easier for children to identify word boundaries.

When does semantic comprehension begin?

Approximately 8–10 months.

What is an early sign of semantic comprehension?

Responding to basic commands.

How do gestures support vocabulary acquisition?

Gestures help children understand and learn the meanings of words.

When do children typically produce their first word?

Around 1 year old.

What is required for a child to produce a first word?

The child must know the word and be able to produce it in a way an adult understands.

What kinds of words dominate children's early vocabulary?

Predominantly nouns.

How many new words do children typically learn per month early in language development?

Approximately 8–11 new words per month.

How many words do children typically know by 18 months?

Approximately 50 words.

What is the vocabulary spurt?

A period of rapid growth in vocabulary knowledge and learning, occurring from approximately 18 months to 6 years.

How many new words per month may children learn during the vocabulary spurt?

Approximately 22–37 new words per month.

What kinds of words are commonly learned during the vocabulary spurt?

Nouns referring to people, toys, and foods, as well as social words such as “hi” and “bye-bye.”

Why might the vocabulary spurt occur?

Children learn that words refer to objects, develop categorization, use leveraged learning, and are influenced by adults' experiences and language.

What is leveraged learning in vocabulary development?

Using existing knowledge or learning to make acquiring additional words easier.

What was the Speechome Project?

A project led by Deb Roy at MIT that studied a child's language development in a natural environment.

What relationship did the Speechome Project find between word frequency and age of acquisition?

The frequency of a particular word in the child's input was associated with the age at which the child learned that word.

What happened to the child's speaking over time in the Speechome Project?

The child did more of the speaking as time passed.

What did the Speechome Project suggest about the rate of vocabulary growth?

Vocabulary growth across the lifespan peaked in rate around 20 months in the child studied.

What limitation should be remembered about the original Speechome Project?

It studied one child (N = 1), so its findings cannot automatically be generalized to all children.

How did caregivers' sentence length change as the child learned a word in the Speechome Project?

Caregivers tended to use the word in shorter sentences as the child learned it; mean utterance length decreased before the word appeared in the child's vocabulary.

How does children's word comprehension compare with word production?

Children generally understand more words than they can produce.

By age 6, approximately how many words can children produce and understand?

They can produce approximately 6,000 words and understand approximately 14,000 words.

What was the “30 million word gap” described by Hart and Risley (1995)?

Their study of 42 families reported that high-income children had been exposed to 30 million more words by age 3 than children living in poverty.

What did Hart and Risley (1995) find about early language exposure?

The reported difference in word exposure predicted vocabulary and literacy at age 9.

What did the Speechome Project study of autism and verb tense compare?

Audrey, a child on the autism spectrum with language delays, and Cleo, a typically developing child.

What were the findings about Audrey's and Cleo's verb tense usage?

They used verb tenses at similar levels; Audrey was as productive, or more productive, in using verb tense, but her use of tense markers was less consistent.

What is an overextension in word learning?

Using a word too broadly, such as calling any four-legged animal “doggie.”

What is an underextension in word learning?

Using a word too narrowly, such as calling only one's own cat a “cat” while giving other cats different labels.

What is mutual exclusivity in word learning?

The assumption that each category should have only one label.

What is the whole-object assumption?

The assumption that a new label refers to an entire object rather than one of its parts or properties.

Which researchers are associated with the whole-object assumption in the lecture?

Markman et al. (1989, 1998).

What is social referencing in word learning?

Children learn a word when a speaker refers to a specific object, particularly when the speaker's gaze and label indicate the same object.

Which researcher is associated with social referencing in word learning?

Baldwin (1993).

How does intentionality help children learn words?

Children assume adults act intentionally and learn labels adults appear to use intentionally.

How can emotional cues help children learn words?

Children use the speaker's emotionality and emotional cues to help interpret which objects or events are being labeled.

What is syntactic bootstrapping?

Using grammatical structure to infer the meaning of a word.

How can grammatical context help a child infer a word's meaning?

Contrasting phrases such as “This is my dax,” “This is a dax one,” and “This is daxish” provide grammatical clues about the word's possible meaning.

How does prior knowledge affect word learning?

Children learn a word more easily when it fits with words they already know, especially at older ages such as preschool.

What is syntax?

The structure or grammatical rules of language, including how words are combined into sentences.

What is a holophrase?

A single word used as a sentence to convey a broader meaning.

How can gestures contribute to a holophrase?

Gestures help clarify the intended meaning of the single word.

What are possible meanings of the holophrase “juice”?

It could mean “I want some juice,” “This is juice,” or “I like juice,” depending on context and gesture.

What is telegraphic speech?

Utterances that omit small function words while retaining important content words.

Which words are typically included in telegraphic speech?

Content or open-class words, such as nouns and verbs.

Which words are typically omitted in telegraphic speech?

Function or closed-class words, such as “of,” “the,” “a,” and “and.”

What is an example of early two-word telegraphic speech?

“See doggie!”

Can telegraphic speech occur in longer utterances?

Yes. For example, “Daddy give me milk!” omits some function words.

When do children begin producing more complex sentences?

Around 2–2.5 years old, when they begin putting four or more words together.

What is an example of a more complex sentence produced around age 2–2.5?

“Look at me hit the ball.”

When do children begin connecting ideas with “and”?

Around 3 years old.

By what age do most children use complex sentences?

By approximately 4 years old.

What kinds of clauses do children begin linking in complex sentences?

Main and subordinate clauses using words such as “if,” “because,” “until,” and “while.”

By what age is syntax largely developed?

By approximately 5 years old, although some development continues into school age.

What grammatical skills continue developing during school age?

Subject–verb agreement and personal pronoun use.

What is an example of a subject–verb agreement error?

Saying “They was” instead of “They were.”