Term
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Definition
Infants learning language must be able to segment the speech they hear into meaningful phrases and words
Speech perception ability, the ability to devote attention to the prosodic and phonetic regularities of speech, develops greatly over the first year
Large patterns (rhythm) to smaller patterns (combinations of specific sounds) |
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Term
| Using Prosodic Regularities |
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Definition
Prosodic characteristics:
Frequency: pitch of sounds
Duration: length of sounds
Intensity: loudness of sounds
Combinations produce distinguishable stress and intonation patterns that infants can detect.
Stress: prominence placed on certain syllables of multi-syllabic words
Intonation: prominence placed on certain syllables; applies to entire phrases and sentences
Infants become familiar with the dominant stress patterns of one’s native language
English: strong/weak stress (trochaic) patterns
Preference for the dominant stress patterns of one’s language can help infants begin to isolate words in continuous speech
Phonetic details of speech:
Phonemes (speech sounds)
Combinations of phonemes
Infants who are not yet learning words devote greater attention to the phonetic details of speech
Older children concentrate their efforts on word learning at the expense of fine phonetic detail (Stager & Werker, 1997) |
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Term
| Detecting Non-native Phonetic Differences |
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Definition
Ability to notice fine phonetic detail not limited to one’s native language
In the first year, infants are able to distinguish among the sounds of the world’s languages
Adults do not possess this ability
As infants develop and become attuned to the sounds they hear on a regular basis, their ability to distinguish non-native phonemic contrasts diminishes |
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Term
| Detecting Phonotactic Regularities |
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Definition
Phonotactic regularities: permissible combinations of phonemes in one’s native language
As infants hear their native language more and more, they also develop the ability to recognize phonotactic regularities
Examples: /ps/ and /h/
Ability to detect phonotactic regularities in one’s language helps infants segment words from continuous speech
Infants’ ability to differentiate between permissible and impermissible sequences of sounds in their native language present by about 9 months |
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Term
| Categorical Perception of Speech |
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Definition
Children’s perception of speech is categorical– children categorize input into different groups
Children categorize incoming sounds into “speech” and “non-speech sounds”
We are able to distinguish between sounds in different categories (/p/ vs. /b/), but without special training, we are not able to distinguish between variations of sounds within the same category (the first and last /p/ sounds in pup)
Allophones: variations of sounds in the same category
Voice onset time: interval between the release of a stop consonant (e.g., p, b, t, d) and the onset of vocal cord vibrations
Used to distinguish between sounds in different categories |
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Term
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Definition
By 4 months, infants can distinguish between purposeful and accidental actions
Appear to focus upon the intentions underlying actions rather than the physical details of the actions
By 12 months, infants understand rational actions as means to a goal, even when they are not able to view the entire context in which an action takes place
Infants’ awareness of movement and their understanding of goals underlying actions is an important precursor for language development |
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Term
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Definition
Ability to form categories, or to group items and events according to the perceptual and conceptual features they share is crucial for language development
One of infants’ earliest developing and most robust predictors of later cognitive and linguistic outcomes
Infants’ ability to form categories between 3 and 9 months of age is predictive of their general cognitive abilities and language abilities at 2 years and of cognitive outcomes at 2 ½ years of age
Category formation is hierarchical:
Superordinate level:
Uppermost level in a category hierarchy
Most general concept in a particular category
Among the later words children acquire
Subordinate level:
Lowermost level in a category hierarchy
Specific concepts in a category
Basic level:
Center of a category hierarchy
General concepts in a category
Infants’ first categories are basic level categories and first words are basic level words
Two basic types of categories that infants utilize at each level of the hierarchy: perceptual categories and conceptual categories |
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Term
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Definition
Based on similar appearing features, to include color, shape, texture, size, etc.
Used to recognize and identify objects around them
Perceptual categorization describes knowing what something looks like, whereas conceptual categorization describes knowing what something is |
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Term
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Definition
Based on what objects do, rather than what they look like
Used to make inductive generalizations about new objects without relying on perceptual similarity at all
Languages differ in how they categorize these concepts and children who are learning different languages ultimately come to perceive the world in different ways because of the way their language categorizes concepts |
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Term
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Definition
English language distinguishes between actions that characterize containment (put in) relationships and support relationships (put on)
Korean language distinguishes between tight-fit (kkita) and loose-fit or contact relationships (various verbs), a relationship that is not represented in English
Sensitivity to language-specific spatial categories by 18-23 months of age
Language as category maker hypothesis: language guides children from a young age as they perceive spatial relations around them |
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Term
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Definition
Infants follow a fairly predictable pattern in their early use of vocalizations
Stage model: describe infants’ vocalizations to follow and observable and sequential pattern
Stark Assessment of Early Vocal Development (SAEVD; Nathani, Ertmer, & Stark, 2000)
6 distinct stages of early vocalization development:
Reflexive (0-8 weeks)
Control of phonation (6-16 weeks)
Expansion (4-6 months)
Control of articulation (5-8 months)
Canonical syllables (6-10 months)
Advanced forms (10-18 months) |
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Term
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Definition
Reflexive sounds: very first kinds of sounds infants produce
Sounds of discomfort and distress (crying, fussing)
Vegetative sounds produced during feeding (burping, coughing)
No control over the reflexive sounds produced
Adults tend to respond as if they are true communication attempts |
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Term
| Control of Phonation (6-16 Weeks) |
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Definition
Cooing and gooing sounds
Vowel sounds and some nasalized sounds (airflow directed through nose)
Infants typically produce consonant sounds far back in the oral cavity (e.g., “gooo”)
Early consonant sounds are easier for infants to produce than those sounds that require more precise manipulation of the tongue, lips, or teeth |
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Term
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Definition
Gain more control over the articulators
Produce series of vowel sounds as well as vowel glides
Experiment with the loudness and pitch of their voices
Yell, growl, squeal, and make raspberries and trills
Early infant vocalizations are one component of a dynamic mother-infant communication system, whereby patterns of mother-infant communication relate to infant vocalizations |
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Term
| Control of Articulation (5-8 months) |
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Definition
Marginal babbling: short strings of consonant-like and vowel-like sounds
Emerge as infants gain control of their articulation |
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Term
| Canonical Syllables (6-10 months) |
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Definition
True babbling appears
Contains pairs of consonants and vowels (called CV sequences when the consonant precedes the vowel)
Reduplicated: repeating consonant and vowel pairs (ma ma ma ma )
Non-reduplicated or variegated: non-repeating consonant and vowel combinations (da ma goo ga)
Infants prefer nasal sounds and stop sounds in their variegated babbling
Whispered vocalizations
Rounded vowels
High front vowels
Resemblance of these syllable combinations to adult speech |
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Term
| Advanced Forms (10-18 Months) |
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Definition
Diphthongs: combinations of two vowel sounds within the same syllable
More complex combinations of consonants and vowels
CVC
CCV
VCV
Jargon: special type of babble that contains the melodic patterns of an infant’s native language
Not true words because not referential and don’t convey meaning |
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Term
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Definition
| In the same way that the vocalizations of infants who hear speech mimic the specific rhythmic patterns that bind syllables, so too do the hand movements of babies born to parents who are deaf |
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Term
| What Are Some of the Early Foundations for Language Development? |
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Definition
Foundations for later language development
Infant-directed speech
Joint reference and attention
Rituals of infancy
Caregiver responsiveness
Importance of the environment in language development
Linguistic input adults provide
Social interactions that infants engage in with others |
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Term
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Definition
Also called motherese, baby talk, and child-directed speech
Speech we use in communicative situations with young language learners
Paralinguistic characteristics: describe the manner of speech outside of the linguistic information
High overall pitch, exaggerated pitch contours, slower tempos (as compared to adult-directed speech)
Syntactic characteristics: smaller mean length of utterance (MLU), few subordinate clauses, more content words, fewer function words
Discourse features: greater use of repetition, more questions than adult-directed speech
Attracts infants’ attention and infants prefer it to adult-directed (AD) speech, even as newborns
Aids in communicating emotion and speakers’ communicative intent
Adults might universally modify the prosody (i.e., stress and rhythm) of their speech to infants
Contains exaggerated vowels
Highlights content words (e.g., nouns, verbs) relative to function words (e.g., prepositions, articles)
Places these words on exaggerated pitch peaks at the ends of utterances where infants are likely to remember them
Exaggerates pauses, creating a salient cue to help infants detect major syntactic units in speech
Rhythm marked by the presence of reliable acoustic correlates of both utterance and phrase boundaries in other languages as well |
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Term
| What Are Some of the Early Foundations for Language Development? |
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Definition
Foundations for later language development
Infant-directed speech
Joint reference and attention
Rituals of infancy
Caregiver responsiveness
Importance of the environment in language development
Linguistic input adults provide
Social interactions that infants engage in with others |
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Term
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Definition
Also called motherese, baby talk, and child-directed speech
Speech we use in communicative situations with young language learners
Paralinguistic characteristics: describe the manner of speech outside of the linguistic information
High overall pitch, exaggerated pitch contours, slower tempos (as compared to adult-directed speech)
Syntactic characteristics: smaller mean length of utterance (MLU), few subordinate clauses, more content words, fewer function words
Discourse features: greater use of repetition, more questions than adult-directed speech
Attracts infants’ attention and infants prefer it to adult-directed (AD) speech, even as newborns
Aids in communicating emotion and speakers’ communicative intent
Adults might universally modify the prosody (i.e., stress and rhythm) of their speech to infants
Contains exaggerated vowels
Highlights content words (e.g., nouns, verbs) relative to function words (e.g., prepositions, articles)
Places these words on exaggerated pitch peaks at the ends of utterances where infants are likely to remember them
Exaggerates pauses, creating a salient cue to help infants detect major syntactic units in speech
Rhythm marked by the presence of reliable acoustic correlates of both utterance and phrase boundaries in other languages as well |
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Term
| Joint Reference and Attention |
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Definition
Vygotsky: language development is a dynamic process that occurs within children’s ZPD as they engage with more advanced peers and adults
Adamson and Chance (1998): 3 major developmental phases with respect to joint reference and attention:
Emergence to social partners
Emergence and coordination of joint attention
Transition to language
Adults view infants’ interactions as meaningful through the lens of their own culture
Adults support infants’ expressions in each of the phases until infants can independently master components of social exchange |
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Term
| Phase One: Birth to Six Months |
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Definition
Infants develop patterns of attending to social partners
Infants value and participate in interpersonal interactions, learning how to maintain attention and be “organized” with sustained periods of engagement
Interested in look at people’s faces, especially the faces of their parents
Caregiver responsiveness is an important feature |
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Term
| Phase Two: Six Months to One Year |
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Definition
Increasing interest in looking at and manipulating the objects around them
Begin to navigate attention between an object of interest and another person
Signals the emergence of joint attention
Joint attention: simultaneous engagement of two or more individuals in mental focus on a single external object of focus.
Symbolizes a critical avenue for early communication development; fosters important communicative exchanges
Supported joint engagement: techniques such as speaking with an animated voice or showing an infant novel objects
maintaining infant’s attention related to an infant’s ability to engage in sustained attention at 18 months (Bono & Stifter, 2003)
redirecting infant’s attention negatively related to infants’ ability to engage in sustained attention (Bono & Stifter, 2003)
In the absence of joint attention, infants may miss out on word learning opportunities
By about 16 to 19 months, infants are adept at using several cues to support inferences about a speakers’ referential intentions
line-of-regard,
gestures (e.g., pointing),
voice direction,
body posture
Intersubjective awareness: the recognition of when one shares a mental focus on some external object or action with another person
Intentional communication: the infants’ attempts to deliberately communicate with others
When infants have intersubjective awareness, they begin to interpret others’ referential actions as intentional and begin to use their own actions referentially
Indicators of intentionality include (Bates, Camaioni, & Volterra, 1975):
Infant alternates eye gaze between an object and a communicative partner
Infant uses ritualized gestures, such as pointing
Infant persists toward goals by repeating or modifying their gestures when communicative attempts fail |
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Term
| Phase 2: 6 Months to 1 Year Cont. |
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Definition
Imperative pointing: requests to adults to retrieve objects; around 10 mos.
Declarative pointing: social process between an infant and an adult
Call adult’s attention to objects, and to comment on objects
Produce and understand declarative pointing later than understand and produce imperative pointing
Production of declarative pointing is linked to infants’ understanding of others’ intentions |
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Term
| Phase Three: One Year and Beyond |
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Definition
Children begin to incorporate language into their communicative interactions with others
Able to engage socially with others and to use language to represent events and objects within these interactions
Active involvement of parents and other adults is still important during this phase |
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Term
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Definition
Theories about language development and the research that these theories propagate are making an increasing impact on our parenting practices and even influence the products we buy for our infants
Example: Fisher Price Laugh and Learn products |
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Term
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Definition
Provide a sense of comfort and predictability and many opportunities for language learning
Provide opportunities to engage in episodes of joint attention with caregivers
By hearing words and phrases repeatedly, infants learn about the sounds and structure of their language
Phonotactics
Where pauses occur |
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Term
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Definition
Describes caregivers’ attention and sensitivity to infants’ vocalizations and communicative attempts
Teaches infants that others value their behaviors and communicative attempts
Consistent, contingent, and appropriate responses to an infant’s communication attempts promotes a child’s ability and desire to sustain long periods of joint attention and increases children’s motivation to communicate.
More responsive language input by mothers is linked to children’s language milestones,
saying first word
producing two-word sentences,
More important than infant’s own behaviors, such as their vocalizations and play
Weitzman & Greenberg (2002) key indicators of caregiver responsiveness:
Waiting and listening
Following the child’s lead
Joining in and playing
Being face to face
Using a variety of questions and labels
Encouraging turn taking
Expanding and extending |
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Term
| What Major Achievements in Language Content, Form, and Use Characterize Infancy? |
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Definition
3 rule-governed domains: content, form, and use
Content: words we use and meanings behind them
Vocabulary system, lexicon
Form: how we arrange words, sentences, and sounds to convey content
Use: language pragmatics, or how we use language in interactions with others in order to express personal and social needs |
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Term
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Definition
Produce first true word at 12 mos, on average
Usually refer to salient people and objects in infants’ everyday lives
3 criteria for a true word:
Clear intention and purpose
Recognizable pronunciation
Used consistently and generalized beyond the original context to all appropriate exemplars
Must be able to generalize words to several appropriate cases for them to meet the criteria for a true word. |
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Term
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Definition
| When infants begin to use true words, they generally utter these words in isolation for several months before they begin to combine words to make short phrases |
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Term
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Definition
Communicate intentionally (usually by 8 months of age) by using a variety of pre-verbal language functions (Kent, 1994):
Attention seeking to self
Attention seeking to events, objects or other people
Requesting objects
Requesting attention
Requesting information
Greeting
Transferring
Protesting/rejecting
Responding/acknowledging
Informing |
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Term
| What Factors Influence Infants’ Individual Achievements in Language? |
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Definition
4 main areas that exhibit substantial variability
Variations in receptive and expressive language development (intra-individual)
Variations in rate of language development (inter-individual)
Variations in infants’ learning styles (inter-individual)
Variations at the extremes of the typical range (inter-individual) |
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Term
| Variation in Receptive and Expressive Language Development |
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Definition
At all stages of life, receptive language development outpaces expressive language development
Language comprehension requires only that we retrieve words from our lexicon, whereas language production requires that we retrieve words and apply proper pronunciation as we utter them
With language comprehension, sentences are pre-organized with lexical items, a syntactic structure, and intonation as we hear them
3. Language that adults use in communicative interactions with infants is usually highly contextualized |
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Term
| Variation in Rate of Language Development |
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Definition
Receptive language: describes the language that infants comprehend
Expressive language: language that infants produce spontaneously, without imitating another’s verbalizations
Norm referenced measures of language
MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory
2 variables of interest are socioeconomic status (SES) and the quantity of talk parents provide to their children.
Amount parents talk to their infants and young children is related to parents’ SES
Regardless of SES, the more parents talk to their children, the more rapidly children’s own vocabulary grown, and the better children perform on measure of verbal and cognitive competence at age 3 |
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Term
| Variation in Infants’ Learning Styles |
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Definition
Expressive language learners: use language primarily for social exchanges
Express their needs and describe their feelings as they interact with others
“Hi” and “bye-bye”
Referential language learners: use language primarily to refer to people and objects
Enjoy labeling things
Early vocabularies contain a large proportion of object labels, “ball,” “doggie,” and “juice” (Nelson, 1973) |
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Term
| Variations at the Extremes of the Typical Range |
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Definition
| Extreme cases in lexical development at both ends of the range: late talkers and early talkers |
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Term
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Definition
Children who exhibit delays in their expressive language development
Many are able to recover to normal language levels by age 3 or 4, but they may still exhibit delays in subtle aspects of language development |
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Term
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Definition
Ahead of their peers in expressive language use
Bates, Dale, and Thal (1995) definition:
Between the ages of 11 and 21 months of age who are in the top ten percent for vocabulary production for their age on the MacArthur CDI
Early talkers maintain an advantage over their age-matched, typically developing peers in measures of vocabulary, MLU, and verbal reasoning throughout early childhood |
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Term
| Habituation-Dishabituation Tasks |
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Definition
Habituating: presenting the same stimulus repeatedly to an infant until his or her attention to the stimulus decreases by a predetermined amount
Dishabituation: infant’s renewed interest in a stimulus according to some predetermined threshold
Used to determine whether infants detect differences in pre-linguistic and linguistic stimuli and to determine how infants organize these stimuli categorically
Example: Pulverman and Golinkoff (2004) |
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Term
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Definition
High-Amplitude Nonnutritive Sucking Procedure
Determine whether infants have a priori preferences for certain sound stimuli over others
Use an infant’s natural sucking reflex as an indirect way to understand their speech processing capabilities
As the audio stimulus reinforces the infant’s sucking behavior he becomes conditioned and will suck with greater frequency when he likes the sound and will suck with less frequency when he does not like the sound or becomes bored with the sound |
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Term
| Intermodal Preferential Looking Paradigm (IPLP) |
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Definition
Infants sit on a blindfolded parent’s lap about 3 feet away from a television screen
Split screen presentation with one stimulus on the left side of the screen and another stimulus on the right side of the screen
The audio that accompanies the presentation matches the visual information on only one side of the screen
Hidden camera records infants’ visual fixation throughout the presentation
Infants will direct a greater amount of visual attention to the matching side of the screen when they understand the language they hear
Find the link between the information presented in the auditory modality and the visual modality
Infants sit on blindfolded parent’s lap facing the experimenter and testing apparatus (Fagan board with two different objects affixed with Velcro)
Flip the board to control when and for how long the infant views the objects on the board
Object exploration: infant manipulates objects for a specified period of time
Salience trial: measure whether the infant has an a priori preference for one of the objects over the other object
Training phase: experimenter attempts to teach the infant the name of a novel object
Test trials: determine whether the infant has mapped the object name to the correct object
Hidden camera records infants’ looking time throughout the experiment
If infants understand the language they hear, they will look longer to the side of the apparatus containing the target object |
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Term
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Definition
Generally take place in the infant’s home
Videotape, audiotape, take notes, or any combination as infants interact naturally with those around them
Semi-structured or structured observation in a laboratory setting:
Targeting specific language forms or pre-linguistic behaviors
Specific props or ask the same questions of all the infants as a point of comparison
Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES) database |
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Term
| How Clinicians Measure Language Development |
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Definition
In general, it is difficult to gauge whether children are lagging behind in their language skills until they reach toddlerhood, when their expressive language truly begins to emerge
2 informal measures of language development that clinicians utilize with infants:
Informal language screenings
Parent-report measures |
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Term
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Definition
| Checklist format, whereby clinicians and parents can check whether or not the infant exhibits each of the behaviors in question |
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Term
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Definition
Parents report directly on their infant’s development
Quick way to gauge their progress
Reliable and valid measure of language ability when compared to other direct assessments
Checklists and questionnaires
Language Development Survey (LDS; Rescorla, 1993)
MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDI; Fenson et al., 1993; Fenson et al., 2000) |
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