The Path to Language

The Path to Language

Part 1

  • Professor: Christina Reuterskiöld

  • Institution: New York University, NYU STEINHARDT

Language

  • Language is specific to humans.

  • Infants show the capacity for language; the question arises whether they communicate.

  • Most theories of language development see the child’s talking as the starting point (Locke, 1995).

Intentional Communication: Content/Form/Use (C/F/U)

Definitions from Bloom & Lahey (1978); Lahey (1988)

  • Content: Refers to the propositions; what is being discussed.

  • Form: The linguistic format used to express concepts, objects, or actions.

  • Use: The intention or purpose behind an utterance.

C/F/U of Language

  • Example: "Eat apple!"

    • Content: Action (command)

    • Form: Consists of two words structured as verb + complement

    • Use: Regulating someone’s behavior, prompting them to eat.

Language as Communication

  • Communication involves sending and receiving signals.

  • Supported by various perception and sensory systems, notably:

    • Vision

    • Hearing

    • Motor Systems

Quote by Michael Studdert-Kennedy (1991)

  • “Language is not an object, or even a skill, that lies outside the child and has somehow to be acquired or internalized. Rather it is a mode of action into which the child grows because the mode is implicit in the human developmental system.” (p. 10)

Communication and Infants

  • Infants possess a profound biological need to interact emotionally with caregivers.

  • They study movements of faces and voices, replicating these behaviors.

Physiological Underpinnings

  • Genetic Makeup:

    • Determines development of the nervous system (NS).

    • Genes guide newly formed neurons to their correct locations in the brain and influence their interactions.

  • Genes provide a blueprint for the brain, while a child’s environment and experiences help shape its development.

Interaction of Genes, Neurons, and Environment

  • Genes allow the brain to adjust in response to environmental input.

  • Sensory inputs (vision, hearing, etc.) stimulate neural activity in the brain.

Visual Perception

  • Vital for bonding between adults and children.

  • The first sensory system that infants manage.

  • Eye Contact: Crucial from an early age; typically achieved at a distance of about 8 inches during feeding.

  • Faces serve as mediums for affective and social communication.

Development of Visual Perception

  • At three months, infants can control eye movements to choose what they want to look at.

  • Infants turn away from uninteresting stimuli and show strong interest in human faces and contrasting colors.

The Path to Language

Part 2

Faces and Voice

  • Faces are the origin of the human voice; both serve as channels for emotional communication.

Development of Face and Voice Recognition

  • At two weeks, infants can distinguish their caregivers by face and voice.

  • At three weeks, they can respond with smiles to caregivers and others.

  • By three months, infants engage in gaze exchanges resembling conversational turn-taking.

Auditory Perception

  • Cardiac Activity: Heart rate changes indicate that the fetus reacts to sound changes, responding to pure tones applied to the mother’s stomach, particularly at around 26 weeks.

Evidence of Auditory Growth

  • Ultrasound shows fetuses blink in response to sounds between 24-28 weeks.

  • The fetus is capable of hearing frequencies associated with female voices (200–250 Hz), meaning they can hear their mother’s voice.

Postnatal Auditory Recognition

  • Evidence shows a 3-day-old baby can recognize its mother’s voice and differentiate it from others, suggesting innate perceptual abilities to interpret speech.

Brain Development

  • Prenatal Development: Involves the structural formation of the central nervous system (CNS), a genetically programmed process.

  • Postnatal Development: Involves dendritic arborization, myelination, and synaptic elaboration; still mainly regulated by genetics but sensitive to neuronal activity and environmental experiences.

Blooming and Pruning of Synapses

  • Blooming: Synapses form rapidly through the process of myelination.

    • By age 2-3, the brain possesses twice as many synapses as it will in adulthood.

    • At birth, all neurons are present.

    • The brain doubles in size in the first year, reaching 80% of adult volume by age 3.

  • Pruning: Surplus connections are eliminated during childhood and adolescence through repeated use, strengthening specific synapses.

    • For example, infants can distinguish speech sounds from different languages in the first few months, but this ability diminishes as the brain fine-tunes to familiar sounds at home.

Continued Brain Development

  • In the second year, myelination accelerates and allows the brain to perform complex tasks, including the development of self-awareness and emotional understanding.

  • In the third year, the prefrontal cortex forms connections with other brain regions, leading to enhanced cognitive abilities, including understanding time and cause-effect relationships.

  • Some higher cognitive functions develop much later, such as coordination among temporal, parietal, and occipital lobes, explaining why children should not engage in potentially dangerous activities like riding bikes in traffic.

The Path to Language

Part 3

Understanding Words: Segmentation Problem

  • Occurs between 6-12 months of age.

  • A word heard must correspond with a string of stored sounds in memory, and match with an object in the physical world – this is referred to as mapping.

    • Example: blablablablaDaddyblablablaDaddyblablablablablablDaddy indicates that speech is unsegmented.

Supporting the Infant

  • Motherese/Parentese: Exaggerated prosody serves as a bridge to words, phrases, and sentences.

  • It aids in mapping and incidental learning of new words, as well as reinforcing language development.

Statistical Properties of Language

  • Words in spoken language occur with varying levels of frequency; likewise, speech sound sequences show differing levels of statistical probability.

  • Both typically developing children and those with language impairments are more successful at learning high-probability patterns as opposed to low-probability patterns.

Behavioral Description of Infants

  • Behaviors can be categorized using the Content/Form/Use framework.

  • When children start using conventional words, there is an interaction between C/F/U of language.

Precursors of Language

  • Before the use of conventional words, infants effectively communicate feelings and desires.

    • They indicate happiness or unhappiness, express wants or dislikes, or seek attention.

Analysis of Precursory Behaviors (Lahey Level 1 Analysis)

  • Precursors of Content:

    1. Object Identity and Search:

    • Gaze at moving objects, search for objects during play (indicative of object permanence), relate one object to another.

    1. Action on an Object:

    • Being attentive to adult actions on objects, imitate object-specific actions, and demonstrate those actions.

    1. Object to Object Relations:

    • Separate, join, and relate objects in new specific ways.

Precursors of Form (Lahey, 1988)

  1. Imitation:

    • Adults imitate child motor and vocal behavior, and children reciprocate by copying both observable and non-observable behaviors.

  2. Approximating Adult Linguistic Forms:

    • Through reduplicated and non-reduplicated syllables, as well as nonsegmental features.

  3. Nonconventional Interactions:

    • Establishing consistent phonetic forms for objects or actions.

Precursors of Use (Lahey, 1988)

  1. Interpersonal Behavior:

    • Involves gazing interpersonally, joint attention, and turn-taking in routines.

  2. Making Reference:

    • Demonstrated through showing, giving, and pointing out objects.

  3. Regulating Others’ Behavior:

    • Involves gestures and vocalizations to request actions or to protest/reject.

Intentional Communication: Content/Form/Use

Recap of C/F/U Framework

  • Reinforced with theories from Bloom & Lahey (1978); Lahey (1988).

Early Words

Part 1

Defining Language

  • Definition: A language is a code whereby ideas about the world are articulated through a conventional system of arbitrary signals used for communication and expression.

Social Convention

  • The system's elements and rules are agreed upon and accepted (implicitly) by community members, who share a common understanding of words and their combinations.

Communication and Context

  • Children learn language primarily for the purpose of communication and intent expression, developing the ability to adjust their speech according to the listener, situation, goals, and purposes.

Ideas and Perceptions

  • Language utilizes semantics to express ideas about objects and events, utilizing knowledge stored in memory drawn from prior experiences and sensory information.

Content/Form Interactions

  • Single Words and Their Meanings:

    • Existence: e.g., car

    • Nonexistence: e.g., all gone

    • Recurrence: e.g., more

    • Rejection: e.g., no

    • Denial: e.g., no

    • Attribution: e.g., big

    • Possession: e.g., mine

    • Action: e.g., eat

    • Locative Action: e.g., go (Bloom & Lahey, 1978; Lahey, 1988).

Content/Topic Analysis

  • Propositional Level:

    • "Eat" = action.

    • "A cookie!" (Topic = the cookie).

    • "My cookie!" (Topic = the relationship between the speaker and the cookie).

    • "Go to bed!" (Topic = relationship between listener and either the bed/state of alertness/time).

Language Content

  • Refers to:

    • Specific objects (particular items)

    • Relationships between those objects

    • Connections between events.

CONTENT: Object Relations

  • Categories of Interaction:

    • Reflexive: Relation to itself (e.g., that cookie).

    • Existence: Reference to a present object.

    • Disappearance/Nonexistence: Reference to something that is no longer present (e.g., cookie all gone).

    • Recurrence: Reference to something that comes back (e.g., more cookie).

CONTENT: Object Relations Interclass

  • Attribution: Comparison of object qualities (e.g., big ball vs little ball).

  • Quantity: Numbers of items (e.g., two balls).

CONTENT: Interclass Relations

  • Action Relations: (e.g., x eat cake).

  • State Relations: (e.g., x like cake).

  • Possession Relations: (e.g., daddy shoe).

  • Locative State Relations: (e.g., x on bed).

CONTENT: Event Relations

  • Relationships: Refers to the connections between different events or dynamics within a single event.

  • Types of Relationships:

    • Temporal: (e.g., you kick the ball then you run).

    • Causal: (e.g., I eat because I’m hungry).

    • Temporal within an event: (e.g., I went home last week).

Early Words

Part 2

Language as a Code

  • Language is used to signify one thing as represented by another.

  • A word or utterance acts as a symbol for an object, event, or relationship, allowing for shared consideration.

The Code/Form

  • Sound, word, and sentence combinations are systematic and predictable, governed by the rules of grammar that dictate how these elements combine.

Components of Language Form

  • Phonology: Surface-level sound structure (includes suprasegmentals); distinguishing sounds such as /p/ vs /b/; as seen in comparing ‘monkey’ vs. ‘banana.’

  • Morphology: Refers to inflections and function words.

  • Vocabulary: The set of words known and used.

  • Grammar/Syntax: Rules about word order and sentence structure.

Early Words

Part 3

Language Use

  • Functions of Communication:

    • Commentary

    • Direct actions

    • Calling attention

    • Protesting

    • Obtaining responses

    • Responding to others.

Goals of Language Use

  • Involves using language to fulfill various goals and objectives.

  • Children utilize context (both linguistic and nonlinguistic) to inform their speech according to situational needs.

  • Engagement in interactions involves leveraging linguistic context to initiate, maintain, and conclude conversations.

Contextual Factors in Language Use

  • Nonlinguistic Context: Indicators supporting early child language acquisition.

  • Linguistic Context: How a current utterance relates to the previous speech in conversation.

    • Noncontingent: Introduces a new topic.

    • Contingent: Continues the topic thread by sharing or expanding the narrative.

Sample Exchanges with Coding

  • Example 1:

    • Child: "baba" while pointing to bubbles, looking at bubbles, then at the adult.

    • Adult: "Yes, bubbles."

    • Coding:

    • Content: Existence.

    • Form: SW "baba" (consistent phonetic form).

    • Use: Commenting.

  • Example 2:

    • Child: "baba baba!!!" reaching and looking at bubbles, then at the adult.

    • Adult: "Oh, you want the bubbles."

    • Coding:

    • Content: Existence.

    • Form: SW "baba" (consistent phonetic form).

    • Use: Direct action/obtain object.

Early Words

Part 4

The Plan (Lahey, 1988)

  • Document extensively covers eight phases of language development as described in the referenced plans (p. 186-187).


Analysis of Precursory Behaviors (Lahey Level 1 Analysis)

Precursors of Content:

  1. Object Identity and Search:

    • Gaze at moving objects.

    • Search for objects during play (indicative of object permanence).

    • Relate one object to another.

  2. Action on an Object:

    • Being attentive to adult actions on objects, demonstrating an understanding of functional relationships.

    • Imitate object-specific actions, showing a capacity to understand purpose and function.

  3. Object to Object Relations:

    • Separate, join, and relate objects in new specific ways

    • Explore causality through manipulation, such as pushing or dropping objects to see what happens.

  4. Symbolic Representation:

    • Transition from direct interaction with objects to using objects as symbols to represent other things, such as using a block as a phone.

  5. Gestural Communication:

    • Use gestures to communicate intentions and meanings about objects, which involve pointing, showing, or reaching.

  6. Variability in Responses:

    • Engage in varied responses to different situations—demonstrating adaptability in understanding object use and relationships.

  7. Emergence of Joint Attention:

    • Coordinate attention with others towards an object of mutual interest, showing awareness of shared focus, which facilitates learning about object meanings.

  8. Development of Affective Connections:

    • Express attachment or aversion to objects, suggesting emotional connectivity and meaning attributed to specific items.

  9. Use of Labels:

    • Begin to use labels for identified objects or actions as verbal representations emerge, showcasing early stages of lexical development. I