L6: Language Acquisition

Does hearing of external sounds begin in the womb?

Yes, from 29 + weeks a mean change in heart rate increases when external stimulus onset of sound is presented (Lecanuet et al 1995)

Can foetus' process speech before birth?

babies are actively processing speech before birth (recognise this speech once born) De Casper & Spence 1968

What is it called when babies learn during the prenatal period that is remembered during the postnatal period?

Transnatal learning

How did De Casper & Spence (1986) support their findings?

Babies altered their sucking pattern to hear the familiar passage (cat in the hat) but not the unfamiliar one. even when passage was read by unfamiliar person.

Did babies recognise the words being read whilst they were in the womb?

no, they were familiar to the intonation and rhythm. Melody of speech without the percussion of consonants

- PROSODY

what does prosody mean?

the patterns of stress/rhythm and intonation in a language.

Can babies differentiate between two languages on the basis of their prosody?

Christophe & Morton (1998)

English vs japanesee English vs dutch

- babies could only tell the difference between english and japanese due to the significant difference in prosody between the two.

what did Christophe & Morton (1998) conclude from their study?

Babies use Prosody to distinguish languages.

Why is it useful that babies have to ability to distinguish between languages using prosody and rhythm?

Helps to learn a language effectively without getting muddled with other languages not relevant (contradictory rules). So separate the input.

What are phonemes?

The smallest sound unit that carry distinctions between one meaning and another e.g 'b' and 'p'. e.g bat and pat mean different things depending on whether the phone b or p is at the beginning. need to tell these apart to recognise different word and meanings.

what is a phoneme boundary?

where a physical parameter such as voice onset tome changes perception from one phoneme to another. How people pronounce p and b (e.g using voice box)

Why is it crucial to be able to tell apart different variants of the same phoneme as the same?

As there will be many variation the baby will need to perceive every instance of 'p' as the same to avoid language development being very difficult. tune out the noise.

Can babies discriminate phonemes?

YES

what paradigm did Eimas et al (1971) develop to test infants discrimination of speech sounds?

The high amplitude sucking paradigm (HAS)

what happens in the high amplitude sucking paradigm?

As babies habituate to an audio their sucking rate will decline but if they perceive a difference in the phoneme they are presented with their sucking rate will revive again.

Eimas et al. (1971) findings

babies ages 1-4 months

- babies who heard 'p' (difference in phoneme sound from 'b') increased their sucking rate.

- babies who heard a new variant of the phoneme 'b' did not increase sucking rate

Eimas et al. (1971) conclusions

Babies can distinguish between different phonemes.

Phonetic discrimination

Newborn babies have the potential to make any phonetic discrimination. adults DO NOT have this same ability (only discriminate phonetic differences in own language)

Werker & Tees (1984)

How does language experience shape infants speech perception?

- can English babies discriminate between Hindi 'Da' 'da' phonemes?

- does it change over the first year?

How did Werker & Tees (1984) measure babies phoneme discrimination?

Conditioned head turn paradigm.

- babies look in anticipation towards toy when they perceive a change in the audio.

- an observer judges whether the infant heard a stimulus change based on their actions.

Werker & Tees (1984) findings

At 6-8 months, english babies could distinguish between english and hindi contrasts.

Werker & Tees (1984) what happened in babies responding at 10-12 months?

English infants responding to Hindi contrasts reduces significantly (20%) but remains high for English - no longer able to discriminate between contrasts in different languages.

Why may infants ability to tell the difference between similar phonemes in different languages reduce significantly by 12 months old?

Because there is no exposure to other nion-native languages - exposure and experience to contrasts is what enables the system to remain tuned to these differences

Why is it beneficial for babies to stop perceiving phonetic differences in other languages?

To tune out information that isn't useful in order to become a specialist in the babies native language - not relevant to them

- fine tuned to relavent contrasts

What did Kuhl et al (2003) aim to research?

Whether children can reverse decline in non-native speech perception. (Chinese/english)

Kuhl et al (2003) method

Exposed 9 month old American infants only exposed to english to 12 sessions of speaking to a Chinese speaker

Kuhl et al (2003) findings

At 10-12 month, thee babies retained the ability to tell apart Chinese phonemes (level of discrimination on par with Chinese babies)

- down to experience

Critique of perceptual narrowing

Cannot make claims that it is a fundamental developmental process that applies universally as its linguistic and gegraraphical diversity evidence is very limited

- does it apply across cultures?

What did Singh et al (2022) find about the diversity of studies of infant 'perceptual narrowing'

Most studies in north America and majority of infants english speakers in these studies - questions claims of universality.

In what area does perceptual narrowing also occur during infancy?

Face recognition in other races vs own - 'the other race effect' - by the time babies are 9 months old they find it much more difficult to distinguish between faces from other races to their own.