L6- Language Acquisition

What did Lecanuet et al. (1995) study regarding fetal response?

They studied changes in fetal heart rate in response to sounds, showing that humans perceive auditory stimuli before birth.

What is transnatal learning?

It is the learning that occurs prenatally and is remembered postnatally, as evidenced by DeCasper & Spence (1986) where babies recognized a story heard in the womb.

What method did DeCasper & Spence (1986) use to test babies' recognition of a story?

Pregnant women read a passage from The Cat in the Hat twice daily during the last 6 weeks of pregnancy, and babies' sucking responses were measured after birth.

What was the outcome of DeCasper & Spence's experiment regarding babies' sucking patterns?

Babies altered their sucking pattern to hear The Cat in the Hat but not an unfamiliar passage, indicating recognition of the story.

What did Christophe and Morton (1998) find about language discrimination in infants?

They found that 2-month-old English babies could distinguish English from Japanese but not from Dutch, indicating the use of prosody ( "melody" of speech—specifically its rhythm, stress patterns, and intonation rather than individual words)in language differentiation.

What is a phoneme?

The smallest sound unit that distinguishes meaning, such as /b/ vs /p/.

What did Eimas et al. (1971) pioneer in infant speech sound discrimination?

They pioneered the High Amplitude Sucking (HAS) paradigm to test infants' ability to discriminate speech sounds.

What were the phases of Eimas et al.'s (1971) experiment?

Phase 1 involved presenting the sound /b/ to babies, leading to increased sucking rate, while Phase 2 introduced a new sound, either /p/ or a variant of /b/.

What did the results of Eimas et al. (1971) indicate about infants' discrimination of sounds?

Babies who heard /p/ increased their sucking rate, indicating they recognized the new sound, while those who heard /b/ did not.

What is perceptual narrowing in infants?

It is the process where infants start as universal language perceivers but become specialized in their native language contrasts as they grow.

What did Kuhl et al. (2003) discover about infants' exposure to foreign languages?

Infants exposed to a foreign language through live interaction maintained their ability to discriminate non-native speech sounds, unlike those with only audio/video exposure.

What is the conditioned headturn paradigm?

A procedure where infants are trained to look at a toy whenever they detect a change in auditory stimulus, allowing researchers to assess their perception of sound changes.

What did Werker & Tees (1984) study about language experience?

They studied how language experience shapes infants' speech perception, finding that English babies could not discriminate Hindi phonemes like /ḍa/ vs /da/.

What is speech segmentation?

It is how babies figure out where one word ends and the next begins in continuous speech, relying on cues like statistical regularities and prosody.

What did Jusczyk & Aslin (1995) demonstrate about infants' ability to extract words?

They showed that 7.5-month-old infants could segment words from continuous speech and recognize familiar words using preferential listening ( listen longer).

What is the preferential listening paradigm?

A procedure where infants sit on a caregiver's lap, and their looking time at sound sources is measured to assess their preferences or recognition.

What is the significance of statistical regularities in speech segmentation?

Statistical regularities help infants identify co-occurring sounds within words, aiding in word boundary detection.

What is the role of prosody in speech segmentation for infants?

Prosody, including stress patterns and intonation, helps signal word boundaries in continuous speech.

What caution is noted regarding perceptual narrowing of speech?

While proposed as a universal developmental process, evidence is limited in linguistic and geographic diversity, with calls for more diverse research.

What did Singh et al. (2022; 2023) find regarding infants' speech perception?

They found that infants generally improve at native contrasts and worsen at non-native contrasts, but the effect is less consistent for non-native sounds.

What is the importance of diversity in studies of infant speech perception?

Most studies focus on English-learning infants from Western countries, limiting the generalizability of findings on perceptual narrowing.

What is Infant-directed speech (IDS)?

A speech style that helps babies detect words more easily, characterized by higher pitch, exaggerated intonation, slower tempo, and clearer articulation.

What are the key features of Infant-directed speech?

Higher pitch, exaggerated intonation, slower tempo, longer pauses, and clearer articulation of words.

How does IDS support speech segmentation?

By making word boundaries and sounds more salient, aiding in the learning process.

What is the difference in pitch between Adult-directed speech (ADS) and Infant-directed speech (IDS)?

IDS has a higher overall pitch, often reaching 600-800 Hz, while ADS stays mostly below 300 Hz.

How does intonation differ between IDS and ADS?

IDS features exaggerated intonation with dramatic pitch variations, while ADS is relatively flat and rhythmic.

What role do prosodic cues play in word segmentation for infants?

Infants use prosodic cues like syllable stress to identify word boundaries.

What is the strong-weak stress pattern in English?

About 90% of English words have stress on the first syllable, which infants can use as a cue to word beginnings.

What did Jusczyk, Cutler & Redanz (1993) find about infants' sensitivity to syllable stress?

6-month-olds showed no preference, while 9-month-olds listened longer to strong-weak words, indicating sensitivity to stress patterns.

What is transitional probability (TP) in language learning?

The likelihood that one syllable follows another, helping infants identify word boundaries.

How do infants use transitional probabilities to segment speech?

They track syllable sequences that occur more frequently within words compared to across words.

What was the design of Saffran et al. (1996) study on transitional probabilities?

8-month-olds were familiarized with artificial 'words' repeated in random order to test their ability to distinguish words from part-words.

What were the results of Saffran et al. (1996) regarding infants' ability to segment speech?

Infants could segment a continuous speech stream using statistical cues alone after just 2 minutes of exposure.

What cognitive steps are involved in the journey from perception to comprehension of words?

Comprehension (speech segmentation, phonological memory, semantic mapping) and production (vocal imitation, contextual application).

What methods are used to measure early vocabulary comprehension in infants?

Parental reports, home observations, video recordings, and lab tasks where infants choose named objects.

What did Tincoff & Jusczyk (1999) find about infants' word-referent recognition?

6-month-olds looked longer at the video that matched the word they heard, indicating early word-referent recognition. Referent: The actual entity or concept that a word stands for or refers to.

• Referent Recognition: The ability to understand what "it," "she," "that," or a specific noun refers to within a given context.

• Word-Referent Mapping: A key part of language development where individuals learn to connect a label (word) with its specific referent

At what age do infants begin to understand the meaning of common nouns?

By 6-9 months, infants understand meanings of many common nouns like food and body parts.

What is fast mapping in language acquisition?

The ability of young children to learn a word rapidly from minimal exposure and information.

How many words do typically developing children know by 16 months ( 1Y & 4 months)?

Between 70 and 270 words.

What is the significance of caregiver linguistic input on vocabulary development?

Individual differences in vocabulary are linked to the quality of caregiver linguistic input.