module 6: development of language and symbol use

pp. 194-195 (intro)

language development (195-203), including box 6.1 on p. 200

process of language acquisition (pp. 203-220), including box 6.2 on p. 210 and box 6.3 on p. 215

INTRODUCTION

• symbols

  • we can use these creativity and flexibly to rep our thoughts feelings, knowledge, and to communicate

  • we focus on childrens understanding and creation of nonlinguistic symbols, like pictures and models

• dominant theme here is nature and nurture, and sociocultural context in how we acquire language across cultures and communities

• theres also individual differences as we consider developmental language disorders

• active child, comes in as children learn to use symbols to communicate

LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

• by 5 years, most children have mastered basic structure of native language or languages, spoken or manually signed

• comprehension: what others say/sign/write

• production: the act of speaking/signing/writing

• children understand more than they can say!!!

THE COMPONENTS OF LANGUAGE

• all languages share overarching similarities

• sounds —> words —> sentences —> convos

• this system is generative, meaning we use a finite set of words and can generate an infinite number of sentences + ideas from combining words

• we can also understand new words that we have never heard before bcz of familiar words and grammatical structures (ex. plural of wug is wugs, based on just the grammatical structure of the word wug)

• phonemes: are units of sound

  • ex. lake and rake are different by the one phoneme /r/ vs /l/

  • differnet languages use different phonemes (which is why speakers of some languages will have a harder time making the sounds that speakers of another language do bcz that phoneme just isn’t in their language and their mouth isnt used to using it, and those sound combinations dont occur in english at all)

• morphemes

  • smallest unit of MEANING

  • ex. dog. dog is just one morpheme. you can break it into other phonemes, but not other units of MEANING. dogS is two morphemes, bcz we have dog, meaning the animal, and the -s is a plural

  • even if you knew the meaning of each word you would not understand what they were saying unless you knew how words combined in the language

    • question. what. what is this saying. je suis confused. wdym what is being combined? is it like if i knew every word in the sentence but not the grammar i wouldn’t get it? question!! p. 196

• syntax

  • permissible combos of words from diff ctageories

  • ex. lila ate the lobster IS NOT THE SAME AS the lobster ate lila

  • diff languages orgnaize this differently, ex. russian noun ending in “a” means the entity does the eating, the same noun ending in “u” refers to the thing eaten

• pragmatics

  • the undrestanding of how language is typically used in a specific cultural context

  • this includes context, emotional tone to read between lines, in some socieites it would be bizarre to be addressed by a stranger

  • its just the cutlural rules and contextual variations of a langugae

WHAT IS REQUIRED OF LANGUAGE

A HUMAN BRAIN

• lol

• language is species-specific, meaning only humans get it in normal course of development, and its species-universal! meaning that literally all children acquire it!! (until typical development ofc)

• no other animals develop anyhting as cmoplex or general as human langauge BUT ANIMALS DO COMMUNICATE WITH EACH OTHER!!!!!

• theres been success (although limited) in training nonhuman primates to use communicative systems(!!!!) (gorillas and chimpanzees have been using manual signs, and can label objects and make requests)

KANZI

• great ape

• sign learning

• used a lexigram board (graphic symbols which repped specific objects and actions), vocab grew to over 350 words, combines symbols but whether these combined symbols can be considered syntactically structured sentences is not clear!!

  • unfort. deeply unfort. but also interesting, cause arent they just making a new language where there is a new syntax?? but also in linguistics we dont even know what a language is lol

• HAVE TAUGHT NONPRIMATE ANIMALS SPOKEN LANGAUGE!!!!

  • rico, border collie (dog), knew more than 200 words, and learned using same kinds of processes that toddlers use!!

  • but there were importnat limitations that ig distinguished language learning in humans and nonhuman animals

  • same with alex an african gray parrot!!

THE DIFFERENCE IS

• with humans, they get it naturally, bcz the brain is built for it, but nonhuman animals require concentrated training

• and nonhuman animals basically dont have much syntactic structure

• but humans suck at learning communicative systems fo other species

BRAIN-LANGUAGE LATERALIZATION

• hemispheric differences in language functioning!!

  • left-hemisphere specializes in language most of the time!!

• using PET scans, they found brain activation in left hemisphere for hearing speakers of english and deaf signers of asl and lsq when performing similar language tasks

• theory that left hemisphere is predisposed to process langauge but not other types of stimuli, but lifelong signers process sign languages in left-lateralized language centers BUT NON SIGNERS DONT!! meaning theres experience-dependent plasticity going on

  • note: non signers process sign language in a differnt part of langauge centers? not left lateralized?

  • how does this illustrate experience-dependent plasticity?

    • if you don’t acquire the language at a specific period, it wont show up there?

    • question. good office hours question.

• so basically, left-hemisphere brain regions are not solely specialized for spoken language but used for signed languages as well

  • so what does this have to do wtih experience-dependent plasticity?

SENSITIVE PERIOD FOR LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

• those who learn a second langauge in adolescent/adulthood found it much harder than those who learned a second langauge in early childhood

• ealry years, sensitive period for langauge development

• this period ends sometime between age 5 and puberty

• horrible horrible case of poor genie who was tied up and locked alone in a room, physically motorically and emotionally stunted. with intensive training, progress was made, but language ability never developed much beyond level of a toddlers

• adults are more likely to suffer permanent language impairment from brain damage than children bcz other areas can take over those parts, but for adults its more seperated

• adults who learned a second language after puberty use different neural mechanisms to process that language than adults who learned second language from infancy

• neural circuitry supporting language learning operates differently AND BETTER during early years

• key aspects of english grammar related to age where they began learning english, not exposure to language!! most proficient in english (of chinese + korean immigrants) when begun learning english before age of 7

• great deal of variabilty among “late learners”

  • some indivduals achieved skills commensurate with native learners wheras language outcomes for others were quite poor

    • AHA SO IT IS POSSIBLE TO SLAY A LANGUAGE AFTER THE SENSITIVE PERIOD. LETS GOOOOOOOO

• reasons for a sensitive period for language are still unknown!!

  • theories:

    • development changes in plasticity of language-related regions of brain + motivational differences across ages

    • one account suggests that children’s native language knowledge increasing has an effect on second langauge learning

      • as children learn more about first knoweldge, this interferes with their second langauge

    • also that poorer working memory lets them extract and store smaller chunks of langauge than adults do (and since they only remember small things and morphemes are super small, this might help them learn langaues better, whereas adults go with the larger chunks of words and words and sentences themselvs which makes it harder to learn smaller parts of languages)

• practical implications of a sensitive period in language acquisition

  • deaf children exposed to sign language early as possible so they can have a native language during the sensitive period!!

    • otherwise they wont be fluent in anything

  • also when learning 2 languages in school, should makke sure they learn it as early as possible

A HUMAN ENVIRONMENT

• children need to be exposed to other people using langauge

• infant’s auditory preferences are fine-tuned thorugh experience with human language (as they prefer nonhuman vocalizations to nonspeech sounds)

  • not sure the link but whatever. question maybe?

IIFNANT DIRECTED SPEECH

• its bsically speech wtih greater pitch variability, slower speech, shorter utterances, more word repetition, and more questions, clearer vowels, adjusted sound of voices

• its just exaggerated speech wtih exaggerated facial expressions

• IN A TON OF LANGUAGES, arabic, french, italian, japanese, mandarin, spanish AND SIGNED LANGUAGES

• IDS is used to share important info even wehn infants dont know meaning of words

  • ex. cooed warm sound, approval, sharp falling pitch to say “no no”

• infants exhibit appropriate facial emotion when listening to pitch patterns even wehn language is unfamiliar

• infants prefer IDS to adult-directed speech!!! even when IDS is in a diff langauge than their own!!

• infants pay greater attention to it, so they learn and reocgnize words better in IDS than when in ADS, and it helps them discriminate vowel sounds

  • behavioural effects ARE MIRRORED BY REACTIONS IN INFANT BRAINS!!!! GREATER ACTIVATION WHEN HEARING IDS THAN ADS!!!

• cultural context is important to consider

  • kaluli infants face outward to engage wtih other members of group, immersed in languag eeven tho not addressed by caregivers

  • tsimane of bolivia, they hear less than 1 minute of speech directed to them per dayliht hour

REVIEW QUESTION

considering the importance of exposure and environment in language development, especially during sensitive periods, what interventions can you think of to ensure adequate opportunities for experience?

• making sure kids are around people who are speaking all the time at specific ages, high socialization during sensitive periods, attention from parents, encouragement to use IDS, encouragement to teach a secondary language during sensitive period, implementing immersion in second langauge programs very early on

BOX 6.1 —> TWO LANGUAGES ARE BETTER THAN ONE

• evidence that being bilingual improves aspects of cognitive functioning in childhood and beyond

• bilingual learning can begin in womb

  • bilingual infants discrimiante speech sounds of 2 langauges at same pace that monolingual ifants distingish sounds of one language, BCZ BILINGUAL INFANTS ATTENTION TO SPEECH CUES IS HEIGTENED RELATIVE TO MONOLINGUAL INFANTS!!!!!!!!

    • theyre better at using only visual ifo to discriinate btwn languages

  • they build 2 seperate linguistic systems

• language switching, code mixing or code switching

  • inserting words or phrases from one langauge into another

• bilingual toddlers just as fast as monolingual peers at recognizing familiar words

• CHILDREN WHO ARE CMOPETENT IN TWO LANGUAGES PERFORM BETTER ON A VARIETY OF MEASURES OF EXECUTIVE FUNCTION AND COGNITIVE CONTROL THAN MONOLINGUAL CHILDREN

• bilingual ifnants show greater cognitive flexibility in learning tasks

  • bcz they have to switch btwn languae sin comprehension and production

  • also outperform on word learning tasks in new langaugs, increased openness to non-native languages

• bilingual studnets more successful in learning both langagues when school environment provides support for both langauges

THE PROCESS OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

SPEECH PERCEPTION

• prosody

  • characteristic rhythmic and intonation patterns a language is spoken with

• task of speech perception begins in womb as they like mothers voice nad language they hear her speak

• speech perception is figuring out which differences btwn specch sounds are important and which can be ignored

  • young infants perceive speech just like adults do!!!

CATEGORICAL PERCEPTION OF SPEECH SOUNDS

• categorical perception

  • perceiving speech sounds as belonging to categories

• study:

  • liteners hear /b/ gradually change into /p/

  • theyre produced the same way!! its just that hte length of time between when air passes throgh lips and vocal cords start vibrating is different

  • this lag is VOICE ONSETN TIME (VOT)

    • its less than 25ms for /b/ and more than 25 ms for /p/'

    • like ba happens immediatley, pa has a teensy bit more time bfore you say the thing

  • adults didnt perceive the continuous change into series of sounds, they more so were like

    • all the ones that were less than 25ms those are /b/ and all those greater than 25ms were /p/

    • BUT IT WAS A CONTINUUM THEY CHANGED IT SOOO SLOWLY so there were chnages in super small parts of it

    • but the fact that they put it in categories is important bcz it only focuses on ifferences that are LINGUSTICALLY MEANINGFUL ignoring meaningless differences

      • ex. 10ms VOT /b/ vs 20 ms VOT /b/ VS /b/ vs /p/

YOUNG INFANTS DRAW THE SAME SHARP DISTINCTIONS BTWN SPEECH SOUNDS

• they used a pacfiier hooked to a computer, the harder they sucked the more often they heard repetitions of a single syllable

• if sucking rate increased when tehy switched, then they were dishabituated, and they could tell the difference btwn the two syllables

• after habituated to /b/, infants increased rate hwen new sound came from a IDFFERENT PHONEMIC CATEGORY, habituation contnued hwen new sound was within same cateory as original

  • so they do think of sounds in categories!!!!!

INFANTS MAKE MORE DISTINCTINOS THAN ADULTS DO

• speakres of arabic perceive diffrence in /k/ sounds in “keep” nad “cool”

• english adults don’t cause its not linguistically meaningful

• but infants can distinguish btwn phonemic contrasts in ALL LANGUAGES OF WORLD

  • 600 consonants and 200 vowels!!!

• this is bcz infants are primed to start learning whichever of the world’s languages they happen to ehear around them

  • which is experience-independent

QUESTION:

• so whats the difference between experience-independent, and experience-dependent, and experience-expectant?????

  • experience-independent, its innate, not something they develop with experience?

  • experience-dependent, they develop it with experience

  • idk chat gotta come back to this

experience-dependent

• brain develop occurs as a result of unique, indivudal experiences. changes are specific to each person, depend on what theyre used to. for example, child learsn to play the piano. this skill isnt prepirogrammed, and it depends on practice. new sybaspes form in respones to learning

experience-independent

• aspects of development that happen REGARDLESS of environmental input

• pre-programmed ibological processes that unfold naturally

• ex. formation of basic brain structures (like neurons, spinal cord,) happen even if hte baby is in isolation. theyre like genetically driven processes, like neural tube development

experience-expectant developmet

• brain development that relies on typical, universla experiences most indivduals encounter

• expecting of certain inputs to shape normal development (like visual or uaditory stimuli), if these inputs are missing, development may be impaired.

• for ex. babies need to exposed to langauge ealry on, if they dont hear language within a critical period, ability to learn it later is severely affected. so tehse are things like sensitive periods of learning langauge, or developing vision through interacting wtih the enviornment

DEVELPMENTAL CHANGES IN SPEECH PERCEPTION

• perceptual narrowing!!!!!!1

  • infants specialize even mre as they grow up, meaning they cant really see differences in non-native faces

  • this also happens for speech perception!!!! cause they become less sensitive to differences btwn non-native speech soudns

    • like remember /k/ differences in cool and keep? infants can do that, but if they start learning english, they will become less sensitie to that and wont even hear it anymore

• study

  • if infants turned head following sound change, they were rewarded iwth itneresting visual display (and praise!!)

  • using this, tehy foundt hat if infants turned heads immediatley after a sound change, they detected teh change

  • 6-8mos, canadian englihs leanring readily dscirminated between non-english phonemes, (one hindi from another, one nthlakapmx syllable from anotehr)

    • BUTTTTT AT 10-12MOS THEY COULDN’T FIGURE OUT THOSE DIFFERENCES!!!!!1

      • quesiton, could they figure out differences between hindi and nthlakapmx? is it that those differences between those lagnauges theyre not learning, those syllables have been perceptually narrowed so /k/ in hindi between two syllables that arne’t in english, they wouldn’t understand that anymore??????????????/

      • COME BACK CHAT IM SO CONFUSED

• this isn’t a entirel passive process

  • learned more abut phonetic structure of mandrain from interacting wtih mandarin speaker than watching a video of one

  • active learning!!!!!!!!!!!!! active leraning, engaging with material better, encodes better

• also, infants more successful at learning mandarin phonemes from screen wehn they did wth a peer!

WORD SEGMENTATINO

• so spoken lagnuae doesn thave subtitles. everything comes together, almost as if its one word like “haveyoueverseensuchaprettybaby?”

  • they ahve to figure out where words start and end, which is WORD SEGMETNION

    • this starts during second half of the first year.

• preferential-looking technique to see if they can pull sepcific words out of the stream of speech

  • testedon repetitions of words presented in sentences

  • infants listened longer to words they had heard in passages of fluent speech compared with words that never occured in passages

  • length of time infant spends looking at light on one side where speaker was making sound provided a measure of degree to which infant is attracted to that sound

    • so however long the infant looked at that side was what they were measuring

      • dk how this study worked gotta get back to it

• how do infants find words in pause-free speech?

  1. stress patterning

     • element in prosody

     • in engish, first syllable more likely to be strssed than second syllable in 2 syllable words

     • by 8 months, they expected stressed syllables to beginw rods, and used this to seperate words in fluent speech

     • in quebec french, stress falls at end of phrase, so they pay atteniton to that

  2. distributional properties

     1. infnats are so good at statistical learning

     2. sounds that are part of same word more likely to occur together than others

     3. theyre sensitive to these regularities

     4. so 2 minute recording of 4 diff 3 syllabue words with no pause between, then using preferntial listening test, found that infants discriminated between words nad sequnces that wernet words

        1. how???

           • well!! they used the predictable sound patterns that they had detected when the syllables were organized in the way they were to fish out words of the stream of speech!!!!!!! they occured together a lot more so they were able to go “oh yeah this one is the same here, and this one is different so its not an acc word” even tho theyre all not words lol

  3. THEY ALSO LOVE THEIR NAME LOL

     1. they pick their own name out of background info and they use it as a pivot point to figure out new words in speech stream

        1. ex. “its jerry’s cup!”, well cup came after jerry, so hes more likely to remember that

        2. and as they learn more words, they can use thos words as pivot points too

PREPARATION FOR PRODUCTION

• they coo, “ooohh” or “aahh”, click, smack, squeal, blow raspberries

• they gain mtoor control over vocaliations

• they know their sounds elicit resonses from others and coo recirpocally

• infants with more responsiive caregvers are more likely to use more mature vocalization patterns

BABBLING

• babies begin babbling between 6-10 months of age (average at 7 months)

• consonant-vowel syllabues from limited set of sounds regardless of language theyre learning

• language exposure is key component in it

• deaf infants regularly exposed to signed langauges like ASL BABBLE WITH HANDS!!!!!

  • repetive hand movements of pieces of full ASL signs

• so infants seem to expeiremnt with elements that evnetually become words of native langauge

• in one study of english and chinese 12 month olds, adult listeners were unable to tell from babbles alone which languages tehey were learning, BUT the babbling gradually takes on sounds, rhtythmsn and intionational patterns of the langguaes they see daily

  • its just too early to be super distinct

EARLY INTERACTIONS

• mature participants alternate between speaking and listening

• learning to take turns, peekaboo, give and take

• in dialgoues, infant alternates btwn passive and active role like conversation, so they learn how to conversee LMAFO

• caregivers resond to babbling might have same function of enforcing bidirecitonal communication

• babbling also signals that infant wants to learn

  • infant babbles, adult labels object, infant learns more than if they lableled and infant dindt babble (babbling means theyre paying attention!!)

• INTERSUBJECTIVITY

  • two itneracting pattenrs shrae a mutural undrestanding

  • super important for scucessful communicaiton

• JOINT ATTENTION

  • caregiver follows babys oelad!!! whatever baby lookks at, caregiver comments on, and by 12 months they realize communicative nture of pointing and ifnants also point themselves!!!!!!

FIRST WORDS

• how to babies take hte sounds and assign it meaning? sure they can recognize the sounds of hte wrod “bunny” but what IS a bunny?

EARLY WROD RECOGNTION

• when 6 month olds hear mommy or daddy, they lookk at image of the right person

• study

  • researchers put pictures of common foods and body parts, racked eye gze when one picture named

  • EVEN 66 MONTHS OLD LOOKED TO RIGHT PICTURE (significantly more often than would be expected by change!! a = 0.05, p<0.05 type beat (although idk their acc alpha)

• so inants acc know the meanings of a lot more words than caregivers realize!!

• even autistic toddlers who have delayed language abilities underatnd more wordsthan their parents think they do

• we learn a lot about what infants know the meanings of without acc saying it thorgh eye tracking studies

• in studies where infants were presented pair of objects and heard one labelled, 15 months waited until whole word to look at it BUT 24 MONTH OLDS LOOKD AT THE RIGHT ONE AFTER HEARING THE FIRST PART, LIKE ADULTS DO!!!!!

  • older children like toddlers lso use context, like gender of an article to speed reocgnition of the noun

EARLY WORD PRODUCTION

• we’re not sure what a first word is lol

• like babbling can be word-like,

• “woof”, to refer to dog next door

• infants produce first words between 10-15 months of age, but early words are mispronounced a lot

  • like nana for banana, or bubba for brother, wabbit for rabbit

  • or cagoshin for chicago!

    • which is an example of reordering parts of a word

• early words often refer to family members, pets, importnat objects

• also frequent routines like up, bye bye, night night,

  • mine, hot, all gone as modifiers

• cultural context!!

  • lots of cross-lingusitic similarities

  • many of infants first words referred to specific people or sound effects

    • so infants do be having the same prioriites all around the world!!!!

• overextnesion

  • kids wanna talk about things that are bigger than exactly what words they know

  • so theyll use the word “dog” for any four legged animal, or hot for any reflective metal

  • its just too broad, cause they dont have the words for it

• undreextnesion

  • teh opposite, where they use a word in a more limited contex than appropriate, believing that dog is ONLY THEIR DOG, not neoghbours dog too

• these reflect incorrect mappings btwn wrods and meanings, need to be revised as language learning cotninues

WORD LEARNING

• after producing first words, children go ahead slowly, learn about 50 words by 18 months of age

• then rate of learning acelerates, VOCAB SPLURT!!

  • not sure if this is for all or most children, buttt whats clear is that they are learning more

ADULT INFLUENCES ON WORD LEARNIGN

• IDS hellps

• stressing or repeating new words also helps

• naming games, like “wheres your nose”, “wheres your tummy”

• toddlers show better word learning when object being labelled is centered in visual field than in periphery

• early word learning influnced by contexts where words are used

  • like words in kitchens or bathrooms used very specifically in there like “soap” and “toilet” are produced earlier than words across a bucnh of contexts

• also toddlers are somehow better at learning names for solid substances than nonsolid substances (im not sure why lol) but theyalso are better at this when theyre in a high chair, cuse thats when the yet their food

• caregivers also facilitate word learning by maintaing spatial consistnency with objects labelling

  • when objects are alwyas in the same locations, it easier for them to name them, cause they can map these words onto the objects an the events

CHILDRENS CONTRIBUTIONS TO WORD LEARNING

• when given new words,children use the context the word was used in to figure out its menaing

• expect that one entity will only have one name which is MUTUAL EXCLUSIVITY

• bilingul and trilingual infants who are used to hearing more than one name for a give objct, are less likely to follow muutual exclusivity

  • when given two objects, they have the name for one object, but not the other,a dn theyre given the word “blicket” they sasume its for the one they dont know, isnead of consdiering it could be for the one they know as well bcz they think “oh it already has a name and it can only hav eone name”

• whole-object assumption

  • chilren expect a new word to rfer to a WHOEL OBJECT than a part property, action or other aspect of object (like colour, texture)

  • ex. label “bunny” to the whole animal, not twitching of nose or its tail

• pragmatic cues

  • they pay attention to social contexts in which words are used to learn its meaning

  • ex. children use an adults focus of attention as a cue to word meaning

    • study:

      • showed 18 month olds 2 new objects, then put them in 2 diff containers

  • when asked for “modi”, infant picked the one the experimenter was looking at when saying the label

  • infants can use adults meotinal response to infer name too

    • “find the gazzer” picked one up, suepr disappointed, picked hte other one up, adult super happy, infant was liek ‘THATS HTE GAZZER THE ONE THAT MADE THEM HAPPY”

  • if adults labelling of object conflicts with childsknoweldge of it, they will ccept hte label if the adult used it intentionally

    • if you call a cat a dog, theyre gonna go “wtf i dont think this ones right in the head,im not gonna trust what it tells me”

    • but if you go “you are NOT GONNA BELIEVE THIS, but this is acc a dog!!” showing a ton of intentionality, theyll go “oh my gaursh, thats crazy i believe you”

• also use linguistic ocntext to infer meaning

  • showed preschool children a pair of hands kjneading mass of material

  • if they said sibbing, they went “oh its the action”

  • if they went “a sib”, they were like “oh its the object”, of “some sib”, theyre like “oh its some of hte object” or whatever, like they distinguisehd from aciton, count noun, or mass noun based on teh grammar of hte new word

    • count noun —> like something you can physically count, like 1, 2, 3 apples. its a noun that can form a plural like apple, bcz it can be applies

    • mass noun —> a noun that is just what it is, liek water or air. it cant be 2 waters or 2 airs. you can say some water or a lot of air though. its just an “uncountable” noun.

• infants nad toddlre can use these ilnks to find menaing as well

OBJECT SHAPE

• shape tells us a lot aobut what category its in

• children readily extend a new noun to new objects of same shape, even if theyre usper differnet in size colour and texture

  • like shape overrules everything else, even size, colour and texture

• a U shapped wooden block + U-shapped object in blue fur, and u-shaped piece in red wire, ALL DAX but if its a wooden block of a differnt shape compared to a u shaped wooden block, thyell go “not dax sorry!!”

• we acc know that they care a lot about the shape of objects in categorizing things even before they have a lot of words, and shape is evident in how they recognize the same words

  • with objects iwth wrong colours, toddlers still look at cow when they hear cow

    • like if its a pink cow theyll still go “oh thats a cow just a differnet colour”

• another useful cue is repeated correspondence btwn the wrods the child hears and the object it sees in the world

  • ex. if they hear dax among a bunch of object sthey already know they dont know which one is dax!! but if dax is said in a bunch of contexts where one is always present, theyre prolly gonna go “well thats one commanlity there, thats gotta be dax”

THIS IS CALLED CROSS-SITUATIONAL WORD LEARNING

• bcz theyre using info from differnt situations to figure out the meanings of the new word

SYNTACTIC BOOTSTRAPPING

• is when kids use the grammatical structure of the sentences words occur in to figure out the meanings of the new words

• study

  • 1 group heard “the duck is kradding the rabbit” the other heard “the rabbit and duck are kradding”

  • put two videos side by side, one showing duck pushing on rabbit the other showing both animals waving arms in circles

  • wheninstructed to find kradding, they lookedat hte event that matched teh syntax of what they hard

  • group 1 chose the one wehre the duck is pushing on rabbit, and group 2 chose hte one where they are both waving even tho its the same word, what they thought the word meant was based on the STRUCTURE OF THE SENTENCE

BOX 6.2 —> LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT + SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS

• one of key determinants of langauge children hear is socioecnomic status of parents

• the average child of parents on welfare received half as much lingustic expeirence than kid with working class parents, nad less than one third of child in proefssional family

• this is bcz of diffrence sin how paernts talked to children

  • more questions and convos initaited in higher income families

  • but new research says that this difference may be exaggerated bcz they didnt take into account speech not given by primarycaregiver, and the kids have other ppl talking to them

• children from higher SES have bigger vocab than children from lower SES

• diff in amt of languag einput affects how quickly toddlres recognize familiar words

  • more mtohers talked to them, able to recognzie words quicker

  • question!!!!

    • is it cause the kids arent being talked to as much? cause parents are busy? is that why they have smaller vocabs? lack of interactoin bcz parents are at work?????

    • could it also be cycle of poverty, they dont know as many words so they cant tell the infants more words?????

• great variability in amount of input parents provide even within group of similar SES

  • 19 month olds who heard more speech had larger vocab and were faster at proessing words 6 months later

  • richness of communicative context (joint engagenet, routines, rituals, fluency, predicted children’s lagnauge attinamnet a year later)

• children who experienced hgiher-quality langauge input (more convos back and forth) greater activation in language areas of brain and icnreased cortical surface area in left hemispheric lagnag regions (we know that left hemisphere is specialized in language)

  • physical enviornments children learn language also influences quality of langauge input

    • harder to learn new words in noisy home enviornments, noise pollution also makes it ahrder to process lnaguage input

  • low language sills kids in peers iwth also low language skills, less lnaguage growth than with kids who have high languge skills

  • this has implictions for programs designed to help wtih early litearcy for kids living in poverty

    • negative peer fffects can be offset by positive teacher effects

• intervention

  • increased access to childrens book, words praents dont usually use in convo wtih other infants

  • age-specfic advice about reading to children to increase family literacy-related behaviours

• also inceaisng time lower SES parents spend talking to children, encouraging parents to onverse with kids about foods seen in market

• providing parents wtih recording devics that track how much they speak to baby so they can montiro and icnrease amount of speech as well

• educaitng parents about thier own role has psoive effect on language development

• also more teacher trainigns in low income school settings

BOX 6.3 —> iBabies: Tech + Language Learning

• study

  • trying to figure out if a best selling education dvd had an impcat on infant language development

  • 4 groups of 12 to 18mos

    1. infants in video with interaction with parent

    2. infants in video without interaction wtih parent watching along with them

    3. infants in parent teaching group, didntd watch it at all parents were given list of 25 words in vdeo and taguht infants in ways that felt more natual to them

    4. contorl group, no intervention

  • findings

    • infants in parent teaching showed greatest vocab development

    • in dvd conditions learned no more, and how much they learend was unrelated to how much parents thought infant had learned

    • but if parents like dvd, they thought the infant learned more from it

  • passive viewing isnt sllay adn tehy do learn more hwen itneracting wtih humans tho

  • the most recent screen time recommendation

• were getting a ton of education apps, but effect on child development remains largely unknown

• parents asked to teach 2 new words to 2 year olds

  • during learning session of one of 2 words, parents interrupted by phone call

  • they learned better when they didnt have phoen interruption, suggesting that interruptions in interactions WHICH AHPPEN AT LOT WHEN WERE ALL ADDICTED TO OUR DAMN PHONES can hinder childrens opportunities to learn

    • could thsi be because of getting out of the flow state, takes more enregy to focus again? attention and focus is impaired?

PUTTING WORDS TOGETHER

• wehn children start combining words into sentences, they can express more comlex ideas!!

FIRST SENTENCES

• most children beign to combine words into simple senteces by end of second year

• young children undrstand word combos earlier than they can product them tho

• two word utterances —> TELEGRAPHIC SPEECH

  • bcz telegrams, can only speak in short sentences bcz you’re paying by the word

  • '“read me”, “can you please read me this book”

  • “all wet”, “it appears i have spilled this liquid onto myself, resulting in my garments being soaked. i myself, my mortal being, also seems to be wet. i will be requiring some assistance”

• many children continue to rpoduce short uterrrrances for a bit, then they start putting sentences of 3+ words together

• rapid increase in mean length of utterances studied longitudinally

  • lgenght of iutterances increase in part CAUSE NOW THEY INCROPRATE SOME ELEMNTS MISSING FROM TELEGRAHPIC SPEECH

    • ex. like connecting words like “and”, “read to me” with the key word being “to”?

LECTURE NOTES:

6A: what is language?

• language, strucuted, rule baes dsystem of comunicaiton to communicate meaning

ways of symbolically repping dog

• through the letters, the wrod itself uttered being a symbol for it, the ASL sign for dog, but theyre all arbitrary whatever the sounds are

• a symbol is nathing that represnts osmething else too, its the shared undersatnidng with other speakers thats what its all about

• environmental cues, like context, tone and other stuff affect interpretation. “meet my dog!” —> furry dog, pet. “hey thats my dog” at a cookout, —> hotdog. same word tho

• pragmatics: knowlefge of how language is used in a given context. cultural context involved here but also environmental context (i think)

• language is generative. you can generate infinite number of stences that are totallyu unique, and you can interpet infinite numbers too.

  • ex. “snake eating a hotdog”

    • never seen that, know what that looks like tho

• structures are important cause they change meaning. carl hit roger is diff from roger hit carl.

those are 4 key components of language

1. language is symbolic (ex. the word dog is a symbol for the animal. whats imp is the shared understanding we have of it, because everything is arbitrary)

2. cues alter how we interpret languge (pragmatic cues)

3. language is generative

4. language has structural rules unique to human language not in other animals, adn we have to follow those to communicate the right ideas

productive vocab

• all words you can spontaneously use yourself

receptive vocabulary: what words youd undesatnding if you encountered them (you are recipient of language)

• for babies, they recognize more than thye can say

• also we hear words that we recognize and understand but we might have trouble using them ourselves

GENERATIVITY VIDEO CLIP:

what is generativity?

• capacity for language to generate infinite number of setences to express infinite number of ideas

• no matter how bizarre a setence, you can put it all together as long as its using words you know, symbols you undestand, using grammatical rules you know

unique property of language not found in communication of other species on earth!!

• ex. monekys hav epredator-specific alarms. if they see apredator they do that specific call

  • one call for leapoards, one for snakes.

  • but these are still general. theres no specificty to a situation. its just “snake!! danger!!” not “Snake to the right side of the brown tree, don’t go there”

• no innfinite number of idesa to communicate

• communicaiton exists across animals, but not all communicaiton is langauge. language is only for humans.

PHONEMES AND MORPHMES

• phonemes

  • elemntary units of sound

  • /p/, /b/ —> phonemes

  • around 200 across all worlds languages, but each lagnauge only uses a specific amount. for those that don’t use phonemes that another language uses, its hard to say them, adn youll say them differntly

  • /k/ and /c/ are differnet sounds in arabic (i think), those are both phonemes. fro an english speaker its not linguistically meaningful so its hard to tell the difference. in arabic, its linguistically meaningful, so they can tell the difference,a nd produce that sound if theyve been learning it seince like ibrht

• bulk of learning occurs in first few yeras of life.

  • befor ethey can even speak, theyre figuring out what sounds are imp in lnguage, how to dinstuigsh btwn them

dog —> d-, aw-, g-

• 3 phonemes that make it up

• each is just like a sound, they dont have indivudally meaning

what has MEANING is a morpheme

morpheme —> smallest unit of MEANing

• dog —> 1 morpheme. one unit of meaning

• butterfly —> 2 morphomes. butter + fly, two units of meaning. can’t keep breaking them up tho.

suffixies and prefixxes also morphemes cause theyre meaningful additions

• -s, de-, pre-…

semantic dev

• expressing meaning in a lagnauge

• taking morphemes and striging them together meaningfully

• word leanring, modifying languge, hw oto epxress meaning in meaningful and intelligeble way

morphemes —> not just words, not just syllables either!

• dog, -s, —> dogs

• as long as they have meaning

SYNTAX

• syntax —> rules for how diff words can be combined

• ex. “cat bit the dog” vs “the dog bit the cat” vs “the dog was bitten by the cat”

• not just word order!! also grammatical tensing (where hte subject is based on whats happenig to what? idk man its not important)

syntatical development

• synatactical rules of language, understanding grammatical rules of language HAPPENS NATURALLY. INTUITIVE, EFFORTLESS

noam chomsky

• idea of universal grammar, superficial differences between langauge

• grammar of french and english is diff, but chomskys like they all have some of the same things

• subjects, verbs objects, tenses, asame core properties. so he argues langauge has evolved to be a central part of humans innate communicative abilities

• a sentence can grammatically make sense, but content might not!!!”

• ex. “the most magical thing a human can do is become a transparent butterfly brimming with peonies”

  • this makes no sense wtf is going on, but my grammar is on point

• again, talking about generativity of language

6 more videos for unit 6

12 for unit 7

11 for unit 8

SPEED RUNNING MODULE 6:

any new info?

• comunicaiton is diff from language. only humans learn language and in typical development, all humans learn language (species-specific, and species-universal)

• kanzi, bonobo

  • able to recognize 300 words, doesnt spontaneously reporudce them tho, can follow verbal instructions tho, nad undrestand verbal symbols and syntax

  • but!! its not language, becuase hes not understand generativity and usage of syntax like a human child would

• not much support for language in anything beyond humans,

LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT IN HUMANS

• sensitive periods for langauge

  • the window where language develops most optimally, and effortlessly.

  • its ages 0-7/8

• can also learn multiple leanguages during this period and be fluent in them

• study where immigrnat children, between ages of 3 and 7, masered english like hte kids born there, because theyre still in sensitive period, but after this, for those who entered btwn 8, 10, 39 all that, mastery of english much lower cause out of sensitive period

• infant-directed speech (warm and positive, highlights positive meoitons, high in pitch, slower enunciation, exaggerated facial expressions, big open eyes)

  • across many but not all cultures, draws attention to conrasts between speech sounds, IMPROVES WORD RECOGNITION

  • even without it they do still learn language!!

SPEECH PERCEPTION

perceptual narrowing

/p/, /b/ differnet in the diff in onset of making the sound (difference in voice onset time)

• first, showed infants /p/, then habituated to that, they played /b/, and infants were disahbiutated, saw it as different

• these are 1 month and 4 month old infants as well

• so they are drawing categorical distinctions between phonemes

for the next one, they had /d/ and /d3/, which are the same thing in englihs, not linguistically meaningful distnction, but in diff languages you would dsitnguish cause they are diff phonemes

• 12 month olds, didn’t dishabituate

• but 8 month olds did!! they hadn’t perceptually narrowed yet

WORD SEGMENTATION

• telling the diff words apart in a long stream of words

• how do they do this?

  1. prosody: rhythmn and intonational patterns in a spoken language, so STRESS PATTERNS

• some language stress at beginning, some at end, this helps them figure out wher teh words start and end

• also distributioanl properties of speech. statistical learning, some syllabules occur together frequently, some don’t ever

• third, using contextual cues, like their own name. they pivot off their name to learn more cups

SPEECH PRODUCTION

• at birth, they just cry

• 6-8 weeks, communicatve signals like cooing, grunting, raspberries

• 6-10 months, babbling, even sign babbling, after some expoure to phonemes

so 6-7 month olds, babble, repetitive consonant vowel sequences, practicing production of important sounds in lanauge . babbling with asl of hand signs htey use

soon, they gesture more, point, not using languge but joint attention and gaze following gets better. engaging in conversation with parents, taking turns, social interaction, but still babbling

then they learn words, using word segmentation, figuring out which words map onto which things in the world. ex. “word dog. is that the big furry thing there?”

word learning in the FIRST YEAR. year 1, start speaking

10-15 months, first word production.

holophrastic period —> after learning first words. use single words to communicate whole ideas.

holo —> whole

phrastic —> phrase.

whole phrase in one word

ex. “drink” for “i need water”

overextension

• newly learned word, use it more generally than they should

• ex. juice —> any beverage, even coke

underextension

• specifiying a word to less than it acc means

• ex. kitty —>just their cat, not all cats

18 months, 50 words in vocabularly

from here, word learning increaes rapidly —> vocabulary spurt

rapid word learning after about 18 months (on average)

WORD LEARNING AND BUILDING SENTENCES

• mutual exclusivity

  • one thing must have one word, can’t have multiple things that you call it

• fast mapping —> rapidly learninga new word from hearing the cotrastive use of a familiar word and an unfamiliar word

• monolingual —> you hear that word and an unfailiar word, you map unfamiliar word onto the unfamiliar object,

  • ex. you see two objects, one is cup other is new. they take new word and put it on the object they don’t know

  • its fast its intuitive

  • but blingual infants are like “oh it could be the one i know too cause things can have multiple names”

• cross-situationl word learning

• if you go “look at ducks” over and over in diff situations where theres ducks aorund, theyll go “ah statistical learning, thats prolly a duck”

• pragmatic cues

  • using soical info to learn new words

  • ex. eye gaze, looking at one thing, super happy, looking at other thing, sad. so the thing theyre looking for has got to be what theyre happy about seeing right.

  • eye gaze hwen they just see a thing ,emtoinal cues hwen they use emtoin

• syntactic boostrapping

  • using grammatical structure of whoel setences to figure otu the meaning

  • ex. “rabbit is kradding the duck”, its a verb, its an action

  • vs “rabbit is hugging the krad”, its a noun

    • use the context to figure out hwere krad fits in

• pst the holophrastic period, they use telegraphic speech

• instead of one word sentences, its 2 word sentences

• “eat cookie”,

  • piecing things together, the wrods in the right order (you put verbs before nouns)

• in tellegraphic speech, using newly learned grammar rules where theyre not correct

• ex. “look, mooses”, because theres esceptiosn in plluralization and stuff

• thats not their fault, we just have a weird langauge (ex. eated —> ate)

  • ex. of overregularization