psych 130 chapter 9 – Flashcards
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phonology
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refers to the rules governing the structure and sequence of speech sounds
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Semantics
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involves vocabulary—the way underlying concepts are expressed in words and word combinations.
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Grammar, the third component of language, consists of two main parts:
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syntax, the rules by which words are arranged into sentences. morphology, the use of grammatical markers indicating number, tense, case, person, gender, active or passive voice, and other meanings (the endings -s and -ed are examples in English).
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pragmatics refers to the rules for engaging in appropriate and effective communication.
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pragmatics refers to the rules for engaging in appropriate and effective communication. Furthermore, because society dictates how language should be spoken, pragmatics involves sociolinguistic knowledge
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Linguist Noam Chomsky
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proposed a nativist theory that regards language as a uniquely human accomplishment, etched into the structure of the brain. Focusing on grammar, Chomsky reasoned that the rules for sentence organization are too complex to be directly taught to or discovered by even a cognitively sophisticated young child.
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Chomsky proposed that all children have a language acquisition device (LAD)
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an innate system that permits them, once they have acquired sufficient vocabulary, to combine words into grammatically consistent, novel utterances and to understand the meaning of sentences they hear.
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according to Chomsky within the LAD is a universal grammar
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a built-in storehouse of rules common to all human languages
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The broad association of language functions with left-hemispheric regions is consistent with Chomsky's notion of a brain prepared to process language. But recall from Chapter 5 that at birth, the brain is not fully lateralized; it is highly plastic. Language areas in the cerebral cortex develop as children acquire language
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Although the left hemisphere is biased for language processing, if it is injured in the first few years, other regions take over language functions, and most such children eventually attain normal language competence
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Is acquiring a second language also harder after a sensitive period has passed?
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As age of immigration increased from infancy and early childhood into adulthood, English proficiency declined, regardless of respondents' level of education Furthermore, ERP and fMRI measures of brain activity indicate that second-language processing is less lateralized, and also overlaps less with brain areas devoted to first-language process- ing, in older than in younger learners. But second-language competence does not drop sharply at a certain age. Rather, a continuous, age-related decrease occurs.
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What factors underlie the younger-age language-learning advantage?
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Some researchers assign a key role to the narrow-ing of speech perception during the second half of the first year—from discrimination among nearly all language sounds to heightened sensitivity to sound distinctions in the language (or languages) the baby hears. -As a result, neural networks become dedicated to processing native-language sounds, strengthening native-language learn- ing while weakening capacity to acquire unfamiliar languages
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Williams syndrome, a rare disorder occur- ring in only one in 7,500 births, results from deletion of genetic material on the seventh chromosome. they are just as mentally impaired as individuals with Down syndrome—yet they are far more advanced in language skills
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Infants with Williams syndrome are strongly oriented toward the social world—extremely gregarious and fascinated by faces and voices. Their language development, though delayed, is impressive. Yet affected individuals have trouble with highly challenging grammatical rules.
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Recent ideas about language development emphasize interactions between inner capacities and environmental influences
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One type of interactionist theory applies the information- processing perspective to language development. A second type emphasizes social interaction.
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The most influential information-processing accounts are derived from research with connectionist, or artificial neural network, models.
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Connection- ist researchers design computer systems to simulate the multilayered networks of neural con- nections in the brain and program them with basic learning procedures. If the network's overall pattern of responses resembles that of children of different ages, researchers conclude that the network is a good model of human learning and development.
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infants are amazing statistical analyzers of the sound stream, capable of detecting which adjacent sounds often occur together and which do not—a skill that helps them discriminate words in fluent speech.
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Using this statistical learning capacity, infants identify basic language patterns by applying the same strategies they use to make sense of their nonlinguistic experiences.
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Proponents of information-processing approaches draw on biological evidence, pointing out that regions of the brain housing language also govern other similar perceptual, motor, and cognitive abilities.
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ERP and fMRI studies reveal that damage to the left hemisphere, including Wernicke's area, results in difficulty comprehending both language and other patterned stimuli, such as music and series of moving lights that depict familiar shapes. Indeed, Wernicke's area—once thought to be language-specific—is actually more strongly associated with com- prehension of nonverbal than of verbal sound
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And humans—as well as other primates and chin- chillas—categorize not only speech but also nonspeech sounds
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These findings indicate that categorical perception is not unique to linguistic input. Rather, it is a property of the auditory system, and human languages take advantage of it.
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We have seen that they are vigilant statistical analyzers of sound patterns; in the second half of the first year, they can distinguish adjacent syllables that frequently occur together (signaling that they belong to the same word) from those that seldom occur together (signaling a word boundary).
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Furthermore, babies of this age are budding rule learners. At 7 months, they can distinguish an ABA from an ABB pattern in the structure of short, non- sense-word sequences—a capacity that may eventually help them grasp basic syntax
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But if auditory input is not restored until after age 2 (the usual time for cochlear implant surgery), children remain behind in language development. And if implantation occurs after age 4, language delays are severe and persisten
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These outcomes suggest an early sensitive period in which exposure to speech is essential for the brain to develop the necessary organization for normal speech processing.
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Infants and toddlers who frequently experience it sustain attention longer, comprehend more language, produce meaningful gestures and words earlier, and show faster vocabulary development through 2 years of age
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Gains in joint atten- tion at the end of the first year enable babies to establish a "common ground" with the adult, through which they can figure out the meaning of the adult's verbal labels.
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Between 4 and 6 months, interactions between caregivers and babies begin to include give-and-take, as in pat-a-cake and peekaboo games. At first, the parent starts the game and the baby is an amused observer. But even 4-month-olds are sensitive to the structure and timing of these inter- actions, smiling more at an organized than a disorganized peekaboo exchange
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By 12 months, babies par- ticipate actively, trading roles with the caregiver. As they do so, they prac- tice the turn-taking pattern of human conversation, a vital context for acquiring language and communication skills. Infants' play maturity and vocalizations during games predict advanced language progress in the second year
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By the middle of the second year, children move from trying to pronounce whole syllables and words to trying to pronounce each individual sound within a word.
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This marks an intermediate phase of development in which pronunciation is partly right and partly wrong. Unique-sounding words are generally difficult to pronounce. A close look reveals that children apply systematic strategies to challenging words so that these words fit with their pronunciation capacities yet resemble adult utterances.
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At first, children produce minimal words, focusing on the stressed syllable and trying to pronounce its consonant-vowel combination ("du" or "ju" for "juice")
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Soon they add ending. consonants ("jus"), adjust vowel length ("beee" for "please"), and add unstressed syllables ("mae- do" for "tomato"). Finally, they produce the full word with a correct stress pattern, although they may still need to refine its sounds ("timemba" for "remember," "pagetti" for "spaghetti")
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Children's errors are similar across a range of languages,
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But rate of pho- nological progress depends on the complexity of a language's sound system and the importance of certain sounds for conveying meaning
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Although phonological development is largely complete by age 5, a few syllable stress pat- terns signaling subtle differences in meaning are not acquired until middle childhood or adolescence.
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These late attainments are probably affected by the semantic complexity of the words, in that hard-to-understand words are also more difficult to pronounce. Even at later ages, working simultaneously on the sounds and meaning of a new word may overload the cogni- tive system, causing children to sacrifice pronunciation temporarily until they better grasp the word's meaning.
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And tod- dlers who are faster and more accurate in comprehension tend to show more rapid growth in words understood and pro- duced as they approach age 2
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Quick comprehension frees space in working memory for picking up new words and for the more demanding task of using them to communicate.
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because rate of word learning between 18 and 24 months is so impressive (one or two words per day), many research- ers concluded that toddlers undergo a spurt in vocabulary—a transition between a slow and a faster learning phase once the number of words produced reaches 50 to 100
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But recent evidence indicates that most children do not experience a vocabulary spurt (Ganger & Brent, 2004). Rather, they show a steady, continuous increase in rate of word learning that persists through the preschool years, when children add as many as nine new words per day.
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How do young children build their vocabularies so quickly? An improved ability to categorize experience (see Chapter 6), recall words, and pronounce new words is involved
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In addition, a better grasp of others' intentions, evident in toddlers' imita- tion around 18 months (see page 233), supports rapid vocabulary growth because it helps toddlers figure out what others are talking about. Furthermore, as toddlers' experiences broaden, they have a wider range of interesting objects and events to label.
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Researchers have discovered that children can connect a new word with an underlying concept after only a brief encounter, a process called fast-mapping
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Toddlers' understanding of a fast-mapped word is incomplete at first, deepening with repeated exposure (Swingley, 2010). They start to form networks of related concepts and words, which help them fast-map new words, contributing to the age-related increase in rate of word learning
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Although children typically produce their first word around their first birthday, the range is large, from 8 to 18 months—variation due to a complex blend of genetic and environmental influences. Many studies show that girls are slightly ahead of boys in early vocabulary growth
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The most common biological explanation is girls' faster rate of physi- cal maturation, which is believed to promote earlier development of the left cerebral hemisphere.
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Temperament matters, too.
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-Shy toddlers often wait until they understand a great deal before trying to speak. Once they do speak, their vocabularies increase rapidly, although they remain slightly behind their agemates in language skills during the preschool years. Temperamentally negative toddlers also acquire language more slowly. Their high emo- tional reactivity diverts them from processing linguistic information, and their relationships with caregivers are often conflict-ridden and, therefore, poorly suited to promoting language progress.
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Young language learners in many cultures have more object than action words in their beginning vocabularies. If actions are an especially important means through which infants learn about their world, why this early emphasis on naming objects?
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One reason is that nouns refer to concepts (such as table, bird, or dog) that are easy to perceive. In contrast, verbs require more complex understandings—of relationships between objects and actions.
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Nevertheless, young children learning Chinese, Japanese, and Korean— languages in which nouns are often omitted from adults' sentences, while verbs are stressed—acquire verbs more readily than their English-speaking agemates
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Besides increased exposure to verbs, Chinese-speaking children hear a greater variety of verbs denoting physical actions, which are easiest to master
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underextension.
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When young children first learn words, they often do not use them just as adults do. They may apply words too narrowly, an error called underextension.
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. A more common error between 1 and 21?2 years is overextension—applying a word to a wider collection of objects and events than is appropriate.
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Toddlers' overextensions reflect their remarkable sensitivity to categor- ical relations. They apply a new word to a group of similar experiences, such as "dog" for any furry, four-legged animal or "open" to mean opening a door, peeling fruit, and untying shoe laces
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hildren as young as age 2 fill in for words they have not yet learned by coining new words based on ones they know—for example, "plant-man" for a gardener, or "crayoner" for a child using crayons. These early expressions reveal a remarkable, rule- governed approach to language.
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Metaphors permit children to communicate in especially vivid and memorable ways.
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As their knowledge expands and becomes better organized (see Chapter 7), older school-age children think about and use words more precisely: In addition to the verb fall, for example, they also use topple, tumble, and plummet
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By the end of elementary school, synonyms and explanations of categorical relationships appear
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Early in development, phonological memory is linked to advanced vocabulary development.
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Being able to identify a word rap- idly on the basis of initial sounds has clear advantages: It frees working memory for other language tasks, such as comprehending longer and more complex strings of words.
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How do children discover which concept each word picks out?
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One speculation is that early in vocabulary growth, children adopt a *mutual exclusivity bias*—the assumption that words refer to entirely separate (nonoverlap- ping) categories
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Once toddlers have acquired about 75 words, a shape bias is clearly evident: Previous learning of nouns based on shape heightens attention to the shape properties of additional objects.
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Because shape is a perceptual property relevant to most object categories for which young preschool- ers have already learned names, the shape bias helps them master additional names of objects, and vocabulary accelerates.
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These two-word utterances are called telegraphic speech because, like a telegram, they focus on high-content words and omit smaller, less important ones
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ex: more cookie
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Negatives
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1) nonexistence, in which the child remarks on the absence of something ("No cookie," "All gone crackers") (2) rejection, in which the child expresses opposition to some- thing ("No take bath") (3) denial, in which the child denies the truthfulness of something ("That not my kitty")
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Questions
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Like negatives, questions first appear during the early preschool years and develop in an orderly sequence.
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According to one view, young children rely on other properties of language to detect basic grammatical regularities. In semantic bootstrapping, for example, they use word meanings to figure out sentence structure. Children might begin by grouping together words with "agent qualities" (things that cause actions) as subjects and words with "action qualities" as verbs. Then they merge these categories with observations of how words are used in sen- tences
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In this way, children lay down a basic grammatical framework, which they modify over time to account for exceptions.
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their narrative forms vary widely across cultures.
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African-American children often use a topic- associating style, blending several similar anecdotes. As a result, their narratives are usually longer and more complex than those of American white children Japa- nese children also connect events with a common theme, using a structure that resembles haiku, a culturally valued poetic form
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As early as the preschool years, children are sensitive to language adaptations to social expectations, known as speech registers.
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In one study, 4- to 7-year-olds were asked to act out roles with hand puppets. Even the youngest children showed that they understood the stereotypic features of different social positions. They used more commands when playing socially dominant and male roles, such as teacher, doctor, and father. When playing less dominant and feminine roles, such as student, patient, and mother, they spoke more politely and used more indirect requests
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Like many bilingual adults, bilingual children sometimes engage in code switching—producing an utterance in one language that contains one or more "guest" words from the other—without vio- lating the grammar of either language
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Children may engage in code switching because they lack the vocabulary to convey a particular thought in one language, so they use the other. But children who code-switch the most are those whose parents often do so.
