Language%20Development

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Language Development
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Some definitions

• Language - a socially shared code or conventional
  system for representing concepts through use of
  arbitrary symbols and the rule governed
  combinations of those symbols
• Speech - a verbal means of communicating or
  conveying meaning
• Gestural precursors to speech and gestural
  forms of speech

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Questions 1

• List and describe the two functions of crying?
• List and describe the major stages of pre-speech
  vocalizationsphonation, cooing, expansion,
  canonical babbling, and integrativeusing the
  audio samples from class as examples.
• What types of vocalizations are produced in the
  expansion stage, why might infants produce them,
  and what are infants doing in producing them that
  (most) other animals cannot do?
• What are characteristics of first words and what
  is the timetable for their emergence?

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Topics

• Crying
• Pre-linguistic speech
• First word acquisition
• The vocabulary spurt

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Crying

• Earliest vocalization Curvilinear development
• at birth cry 1-1 1/2 hrs/day
• 6 wks cry 2-4 hrs/day
• 12 wks crying decreases
• Individual differences in quantity
• Naturally occurring behavior
• Then recruited for communication
• Continuum of intentionality
• Both directed and undirected crying still present
  at 12 months

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Two crying functions

• Naturally occurring cry in 26 infants
• (aged 2.8-13.2 mo) and their mothers at home.
• By 12 mo, most infants sometimes directed their
  crying toward the caregiver and elaborated the
  sounds by the use of gestures.
• But most continued to exhibit simple, undirected
  crying.
• Crying is both intentional and not intentional
• Shows increasing variability and sophistication
  in form and function.
• Gustafson, G E. Green, J A. Developmental
  coordination of cry sounds with visual regard and
  gestures. Infant Behavior Development. 1991
  Jan-Mar Vol 14(1) 51-57

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Different acoustic patterns

• Basic hunger cry
• rhythmic pattern of loud crying, silence,
  inhalation
• Pain cry
• loud, long shrill cry, then breath-holding
  silence
• Fake cry
• low pitch and intensity, poorly articulated moans

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Crying judgments

• Adults have some capacity to distinguish
• Judgment depends on care giving context as well
  as acoustics
• Perceived aversiveness is important dimension of
  judgments about meaning of cries

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Cries sound bad

• There appears to be an underlying continuum of
  perceived aversiveness in young infants cries
• That can be predicted by their duration,
  dysphonation, and proportion of energy in various
  frequencies
• Parents and undergraduate non-parents perceive
  the cries as equally aversive.
• Gustafson, G. E. Green, J. A. Acoustic features
  of cry perception Infant development. Child
  Development. 1989 Aug Vol 60(4) 772-780

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Prelinguistic speech

• Use of sounds in a communicative manner before
  speech (no words or grammar)
• Progress through stages culminating in
  speech-like vocalizations
• Phonation, Gooing, Expansion, Canonical
• Some overlap in vocalizations characteristic of
  stages
• Kim Oller

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Phonation Stage, 0-2/3 months

• Vowel-like (quasi-resonant)
• Produced with normal speech like phonation
  involving vibration of the larynx but with the
  vocal tract at rest
• comfort or pleasure sounds - can sound like
  grunts
• The infants tongue almost completely fills the
  mouth limiting the sounds newborns can make

• the infants mouth is almost closed sounds are
  flat and nasal sounding

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Cooing/Gooing Stage, 1 - 4 months

• Still vowel-like
• /e/ /u/
• but last longer
• more guttural throaty
• produced in the back of the vocal cavity
• thought to be precursors to consonants
• /k/ /g/

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Expansion Stage, 3 - 8 months

• Isolated vowel-like sounds
• Usually produced with the mouth open
• Full vowels (fully resonant nuclei)
• Vocal repertoire expands dramatically
• Infant experiments with sound production, varying
  pitch, volume, rate
• Intentional communicative play
• Already beyond pre-set animal calls
• Which have set form and set causes
• Infant vocalizes for pleasure (just to have fun)
  or displeasure

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Checking out the new sound system

• Yells/whispers playing with amplitude/intensity
• yells high intensity, whispers low intensity
• Squeals Growls playing with pitch
• squeals high pitch, growls low pitch
• Raspberries
• labial trill vibrants
• Cannot transcribe as adult syllables
• Marginal babbles
• consonant-vowel (CV) sequences
• the transition between C V is slow and drawn
  out
• immature syllables

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May mirror develop of language in our species
Oller, K.
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Functional flexibility of infant vocalization.
Oller, et al. 2013. PNAS

• Three types of infant vocalizations (squeals,
  vowel-like sounds, and growls) express a full
  range of emotional contentpositive, neutral, and
  negative by 34 mos.
• Contrast cry and laughter are species-specific
  signals apparently homologous to vocal calls in
  other primates, show functional stability, with
  cry overwhelmingly expressing negative and
  laughter positive emotional states.

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Functional flexibility is a sine qua non in
spoken language

• Appears before syntax, word learning, and even
  joint attention, syllable imitation, and
  canonical babbling. The appearance of functional
  flexibility early in the first year of human life
  is a critical step in the development of vocal
  language and may have been a critical step in the
  evolution of human language, preceding
  protosyntax and even primitive single words.

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Canonical Babbling Stage, 6-10 mos

• CV sequences
• /ma/ /da/ /ada/
• Transition between CV are crisp
• Sounds like natural syllables in parents
  language
• Parents good at identifying this stage
• Reduplicated babbling
• /baba/ /dadada/ /mama/

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Importance of Babbling

• Involves increasing control over the articulatory
  mechanism
• Important pre-speech developmental milestone
• Should be present by 10 months!
• Occurs in Down Syndrome, premature, low SES kids
  and in all cultures
• But its delayed in hearing impaired infants and
  deaf children

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Limitations of Babbling

• At end of stage, infants begin to use patterns or
  rising intonation that resemble adult speech
• also known as gibberish, jargon, or
  conversational babbling
• It has intonation contours of language being
  learned
• Infants learn the music before the words
• Does not refer (to objects, people, etc.)
• Is not language

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Integrative stage (9-18 months)

• Beginning of meaningful speech
• Some mixing of babbled utterances and words
• Gibberish (jargon) use of adult intonation
  patterns but what they say makes no sense
• sounds like the child is having a conversation
  but you cant understand what they are saying

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First word definitions

• Function
• They are first words because they refer
• Arbitrary sound is paired with an object
• Often but not always nouns in the environment

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First Word Characteristics

• Form
• Conventional
• Typically brief
• 1 syllable, e.g., no
• or a reduplicated syllable, e.g., ma-ma
• Most linguistically common words
• May be developed by babies
• And may be the easiest to articulate

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First Word Timetable

• Appear
• Typically 11 to 13 months
• Normal range 10 to 14 months
• Normal variation
• 13 month vocabularies 0 - 45 words
• Should have first word by 15 months
• Screen for delay

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First 50 words

• Represent all of the major grammatical classes
  found in adult language - nouns dog, cookie -
  verbs down, up, eat - adjectives hot,
  dirty - social words yes, no, please - sound
  effects meow, ouch, uh-oh

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Cross-cultural differences in first words
acquired
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How words are learned

• Reference Pairing of object names with objects
• Child must visually attend while label is
  provided
• So receptive joint attention helps
• Helps if parent labels what child is already
  looking at
• May be facilitated by routines
• Metalinguistic insights
• Things have names I can make things happen
  with words
• Corresponds to vocabulary spurt
• Rapid, accelerating growth

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Nouns

• Most common throughout language development
• Why do infants learn nouns most rapidly?
• Adults tend to label objects more than they label
  actions (fly, run) or describe objects (yellow
  crayon)
• Verbs are conceptually more complex
• nouns are concrete where verbs tend to be more
  abstract

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Vocabulary Growth

• Slow at first
• can take 3 or 4 months after first words to
  achieve a vocabulary or 10 to 30 words
• 18 month infant
• typically has a vocabulary of 50 words
• 18 - 22 months
• Vocabulary spurt
• From 50 to 300 words in few months

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Meta-linguistic insights

• Things have names Corresponds to vocabulary
  spurt
• Rapid, accelerating growth
• I can make things happen with words
• Effort to express/understand participate
• Intentionality model (Bloom)
• Language learning is effortful

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Receptive and Expressive

• 2 types of vocabulary development
• Receptive - understands others words
• Say bye-bye. Wheres Daddy?
• 13 months - 50 words
• Expressive - total words used (productive)
• Receptive typically outpaces expressive
• Child understands more words than they use

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Individual Differences

• 2 styles of language
• Referential style - use language primarily to
  label objects in their environment
• E.g., dada, doggy, baba
• Expressive style - use language as a means for
  engaging in social interaction
• Hi, bye, ut-oh
• More kids have an expressive style although most
  have a combination

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Syntax grammar

• Evidence of syntax
• Nonrandom combinations
• Development of syntax
• Takes place with no explicit instruction.
• Parents may teach new words but dont teach
  syntax.
• The emphasis is on what the child is saying
  rather than how the child says it.
• Innate or modeled?

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Syntax of one word speech

• Holophrase - a single word used to express
  complex meanings
• Cookie Give me the cookie
• Early utterances are telegraphic
• The essential words are used to convey whole ideas

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Syntax of 2 word sentences

• Emerge
• 15 24 months, mean is 18
• Usually have 50 words in vocabulary before
  combining words
• 7 months after their first words
• First sentences typically consist of nouns, verbs
  adjectives
• Uses name, locate, negate, question, etc.
• Pivot word
• frequently occurring word attached to a variety
  of other words
• More Mommy, milk, hug

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Common Errors

• Underextension
• Word refers to particular exemplar
• Car familys car
• Overextension
• Word refers to inappropriately large class
• Car refers to all big things with wheels
• Interplay between two yields correct word usage

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Measuring grammatical development

• Mean length of utterance (MLU) is a measure of
  syntactic development.
• Average length of the childs utterances is
  calculated in morphemes - NOT WORDS
• a morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning in a
  word
• free morpheme can stand as a word by itself
  (e.g., kind)
• bound morpheme exists only within a word (e.g.,
  -ly, -ness, -s, -ed, s)
• Each new morpheme reflects new linguistic
  knowledge.
• I running 3 morphemes (not 2 words)

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MLU length

• Children who have similar MLUs are at the same
  level of linguistic maturity, and their language
  is at the same level of complexity.
• Children have MLUs of
• 1.0 to 2.0 1-2 years
• 2.0 to 3.0 2-3 years
• 3.0 to 4.0 3-4 years

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Comprehension Gogate
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Comprehension Gogate
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Motherese/child directed speech

• Most adults can do it, infants prefer it
• Parents speak for children
• Parents stay a step ahead of child (scaffolding)
• Aids in teaching the child the norms of their
  culture rules of their language
• cultural differences stem from mothers styles of
  interactions and child rearing beliefs
• Has positive affect on early language development

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Infant directed speech

• Slower rate, higher pitch, longer pauses
• Repetitive reduplicated
• Brief, grammatically correct sentences
• Use of simple syntax
• Key words at end are spoken in a higher
  louder voice
• Diminutive used
• Vocabulary is concrete
• Objects may be over described

https//www.youtube.com/watch?vcSCXMfeo74Q
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Childrens early comprehension of syntax

• Assessment methods involving action such as
• diary studies (parents document conditions under
  which the child can or cannot understand)
• act-out tasks (in which the experimenter asks the
  child to act out a sentence using toys)
• direction tasks (in which the child is asked to
  carry out a direction, such as tickle the duck)
• picture-choice tasks (in which the child must
  select the picture that best represents the
  linguistic form being tested)
• Have limitations leading to confusion about
  childrens comprehension abilities.

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The preferential looking paradigm

• Has helped clear things up.
• Used to assess language comprehension in infants
  as young as 12 months.
• Child watches two simultaneously presented
  videos.
• Child hears a statement describing one of the
  videos
• Record the amount of time the child spends
  watching each video
• Repeat

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Child hears

• Cookie Monster is tickling Big Bird
• one screen showed Cookie Monster tickling Big
  Bird
• One screen showed Big Bird tickling Cookie
  Monster.
• Children at 17 months of age spent more time
  looking at the screen that matched the statement.
• Children can comprehend word order before they
  even begin using two-word sentences.
• Suggests that comprehension is indeed in advance
  of production, as parents have always known.

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Statistical learning
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Statistical rules ? Learning
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How Is Language Learned?

• Theories of language development

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Learning Theory

• Language is learned through experience. Emphasis
  on role of childs environment
• Reinforcement Parents reinforce or reward
  infants babbles that are approximations of real
  words (B.F. Skinner).
• shaping children acquire early vocabularies
  through shaping or when parents require
  childrens utterances to be progressively closer
  to real words before reinforcement
• role of imitation parents serve as models
  children learn language in part through
  observation imitation (Bandura)

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Learning theory cannot explain

• why children spontaneously utter words or phrases
  they have never heard
• why there are invariant sequences of language
  development
• why there are spurts in language acquisition

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Nativist Theory

• Innate factors cause children to attend to
  acquire language
• Chomskys psycholinguistic theory
• Environmental regularities cannot account for the
  consistency of language acquisition.
• A neurally based language acquisition device is
  at work, enabling innate understanding of deep
  structure of language.

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Evidence for an inborn tendency

• Verbal function is localized in speech centers
• Typically in left cerebral hemisphere
• There is plasticity
• But it diminishes with age
• Sensitive period proposed by Lennenberg
  beginning at 18-24 months lasting until puberty
• neural development facilitates language learning
• Genie
• Universality of human languages
• invariant sequences in development
• newborns respond to language
• regularity of early production of sounds

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Nativist theory does not explain

• variance in language skill fluencey
• how children understand the meanings of words
• why language develops best when there is another
  person to communicate with

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Pragmatics

1. the study and use of language in social contexts.
   Pragmatics refers to how speakers use language
   to achieve goals and to communicate with speakers
   of the same language. Humans usually
   communicate for a purpose. We use speech
   intentionally to accomplish goals such as to
   inform, to persuade, to flatter, to manipulate,
   to request, to complain, to argue,
   etc. Children often used words to ask, demand,
   or label

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conversational repair.

1.  Conversational repair if when you say
   something to a listener and you believe that the
   listener has not understood, you revise or
   repair your message to increase the chance of
   successful communication revising something
   which was said because it is believed that the
   listener did not understand the original
   statement 

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Development

1. Children attempt conversational repair as early
   as 1-2 years. However, while 1-3 year old
   children commonly attempt repair when an adult
   indicates that they didnt understand by saying
   what, only about 1/3 of these repaired attempts
   were successful (meaning the adult understood
   what the child was trying to say). So even very
   young children are attempting conversational
   repair, but the manner and the effectiveness of
   these repair attempts changes with age.

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Development

• A young child (less than 2 years old) will tend
  to repair by changing a speech sound if a
  child says more cookie and the adult does not
  understand, he/she may change to more
  tookie A child around 2 years of age tends to
  revise by deleting a word from the original
  statement if that little doggie is not
  understood, it becomes that doggie or little
  doggie By the end of Stage II and early in
  Stage III children are more likely to repair by
  changing words. she drink milk may be
  revised to she drink it or mommy drink milk

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Issues

• A repair is not necessarily more accurate or more
  correct than the original statement. One good
  example is saying more tookie when more
  cookie was not understood. The idea of
  conversational repair, for adults as well as
  children, is to try something different in order
  to make a communicative connection, and different
  is not always better. Interestingly, children
  consistently respond to requests for
  clarification from their listeners, however, they
  dont often request repairs when they listen to
  adult speakers. Why? children may be very
  used to understanding only portions of the
  utterances of adults and therefore dont feel a
  need to request clarification children may be
  reluctant to imply that adult speakers have not
  produced a clear and effective message

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Review Syllabus