Dev of Speech Test 3: Chapters 6 and 7

communicative competence

requires the appropriate use of language in social settings; difficult to define and assess

7.5

Jean Piaget argued that young children think and act egocentrically until about ___ years.

egocentrism

the inability to understand others’ knowledge, feelings, thoughts, and perceptions; lack of theory of mind

examples of egocentrism

• Child doesn’t wait for an answer after asking a question

• Waving at the telephone rather than saying hello

• Talking about someone or something out of context without including introductory details

Referential communication

the ability to describe an item from a set of similar items so that a listener can identify it

nonegocentrically

The demands of a referential communication task can influence whether preschoolers communicate in this way

context, task

the ability for preschoolers to communicate nonegocentrically depends on _____ and the type of ___

examples of nonegocentric language

•Vocabulary differences in speaking with mother vs siblings

• Difference in answering questions of mothers, 8-year-old siblings, 5-year-old siblings

(although scaffolds or support for language learning can contribute to results so not entirely clear if this is evidence)

indirect requests

• Adults are thought to infer the meaning of these by

considering form and the context.

• 2 year olds can respond appropriately to these

•may be so common in everyday speech their intent is

obvious

E.g.,

• I’m bored.

• Do you remember the book I lent you?

intensifiers, softeners

Children tend to address direct requests with semantic ______ (more direct) to listeners of relatively lower status and indirect requests with semantic ______ (more polite) to listeners of relatively higher status

lack

Preschoolers (possess or lack?) precise timing of turns and tend to rely on obvious cues that the speaker is done.

cohesive devices

As preschoolers’ conversations become increasingly collaborative, they learn to use these:

• Ellipsis – I sometimes eat Cheerios and sometimes I don’t.

• Pronouns – Where are the students? They are in class.

back-channel feedback

• Verbal and non-verbal behaviors that indicate continuing attention and

satisfactory comprehension (or lack thereof).

E.g., Head nods, quizzical expressions.

Registers, dialects, languages

Language varieties:

• R____s– Forms of language that vary according to participants,

settings, topics

• D____s – Mutually intelligible forms of a language associated with a

particular region or group of people

• L______s – Not mutually intelligible

increases, decreases

Although children’s capacity to use AAE features ______ (increases/decreases) during the school years, actual use of AAE _______ (increases/decreases).

more similar

The speech styles of young boys and girls are more similar or more different?

code-switching

the practice of speakers alternating between two or more languages, dialects, or registers in conversation

challenges of acquiring communicative competence

• There are usually no strict rules for communicative competence.

• Many polite forms have no clear referents.

• The conventions for competent communication vary among setting.

lexical, grammatical

First-born children may exhibit more advanced l____ and g_____ development.

conversational

Later-born children may have more developed c______ skills.

verbal reinforcement

Parental input such as saying, “I like the way you say [X] is an example of ____ _______.

Modeling

Parental input such as commenting on younger sibling’s behavior is an example of ______.

direct comment

Parental input such as explicitly pointing out a behavior that the child should correct or produce is an example of ______ _______

Prompts

Direct/indirect comment on error or omission and anticipatory suggestion are what kinds of parental input?

scripts

Children often use _____, or abstract knowledge about familiar, everyday events to achieve communicative competence. (They also develop and test hypotheses with this knowledge.)

Theory of mind, social orientation, and general linguistic ability

What three things are relevant for the acquisition of communicative competence.

Why communicative competence matters

• Predictor of later literacy skills

• Necessary for understanding and functioning in a classroom

• Associated with being more well-liked by peers and adults

competence

individual’s knowledge of language

performance

actual instances of language use

(behavioral language learning) operant conditioning

assumes that children’s productive speech is shaped by differential reinforcers and punishments supplied by environmental agents (e.g., parents, caretakers, etc.)

(behavioral language learning) classical conditioning

associations formed between arbitrary verbal stimuli and internal responses (unconditioned/conditioned stimulus, unconditioned/conditioned response)

independent

Chomsky proposed that the structure of grammar is _______ of language use.

language faculty

Component of the brain dedicated to language; initial state is genetically determined and similar across most humans

Universal Grammar

Initial state of language faculty; contains the system of grammatical rules and categories common to all the world’s languages. (like a switch box with different parameters)

Poverty of the Stimulus

Chomsky proposes that because There is not sufficient useful language-related input available to children to learn language, most of language acquisition relying on innate abilities or structures

Interactionist

Approach that says many factors affect development.

• Factors are dependent on one another, interact with one another, and impact one another.

• Example factors: social, linguistic, maturational, cognitive

• Three types: Cognitive, Social, Usage-based/gestural

Cognitive

Approach that shares features with traditional linguistic approaches (like order of acquisition, distinctions between competence and performance + intentions and spoken sentences)

BUT also differs in that language is not a separate innate component; instead, it is the result of cognitive development

performance

Piagetians believe this also provides information about children’s knowledge of the structure of language. (Because it shows knowledge of both their language structure and knowledge structure)

Sensorimotor Period

(Birth to 18-24 months) – Piaget proposes

• Children understand the world through direct sensation (sensory) and activities they perform (motor).

• Children need to complete this period before using language.

• Period is prelinguistic

object permanence and semantic relationships

Examples of cognitive skills that develop before language emerges

competition model

-information-processing approach

-all syntactic and phonetic forms/patterns compete for meaning/function at once, and forms most frequently addressed will be learned before

-emphasizes structure (language structures that allow for grammatical judgments) and function (communicative functions like establishing locality) in learning language

-is empirical and not nativistic

serial processing

operations are performed sequentially

parallel processing

multiple operations are performed at the same time (more recent cognitive approaches involve this)

Parallel-distributed processors

also known as PDPs

-series of processing units - nodes (model neurons)

-nodes are connected other nodes by pathways of varying connection strengths

-base of the competition model

PDP

_____ networks allow syntactic forms, words, and phonetic patterns to compete simultaneously

social interaction approach

combines aspects of traditional behavioral and linguistic approaches

-linguistic: language has structure and follows rules; diff. from other behaviors

-behavioral: skills develop from rote associations/imitations in environment and social contexts

scaffold

caretakers facilitate early communication and provide these to aid communication despite the child’s primitive linguistic system; can lead to children appearing more linguistically sophisticated than they actually are

gestural and usage-based approach

(approach)

human language was likely a manual-visual sign communication system, and spoken language is a social and cognitive development of evolution

Usage-Based Theory

(Tomasello 2003) only a small number of general cognitive (e.g., pattern finding) and social processes (e.g., interactions with caregivers) are necessary to account for lang. acq.

-language is a social phenomenon learned within the context of social interaction

-impt. skills: joint attention, learning to identify others’ intentions, ability to act on objects similarly to adults