Aantekeningen hoorcollege 10 - Development, Learning & Behavior - Universiteit Utrecht (2022/2023)
H C 10 - J U N I 2 0 2 3
Language development
What is language?
- A human system, used for communication. We use it to convey meaning, to express our thoughts and to transmit these thoughts and meanings to other people
- Language is more then communication, it’s the primary method by which we do things together
- Language is the accumulation of shared meaning – of common ground
- Symbolic and arbitrary » he form of the word doesn’t tell anything about the meaning
- Symbolic: the word is a symbol for the meaning
- Arbitrary: there’s no relationship between form and meaning
Languages across the world
- +/- 7000 languages in the world
- Around 230 languages spoken in Europe
- Vast differences
- Number of consonants (6-122)
- Word construction
- Free or fixed word order
Components of language
- Phonology: rules of speech sounds
- Each individual speed sound is a phoneme (unit of sound) » often can be represented by one letter
- Different pronunciation of a single phoneme are not different phonemes
- Morphology: rules of word structure
- Smallest unit of meaning » they represent a single meaning
- Syntax: rules of sentence structure
- Combination of words and morphemes into sentences
- Example: word-order rules
- Semantics: rules of language meaning
- Pragmatics: rules of social language use
Phases in development
- Prelingual period (0-12) months » learning the foundation of language, but not speaking yet
- Phoneme inventories differ across languages
- Until 8-10 months babies can distinguish phonemes, irrespective of which language
- After this period, they can only distinguish phonemes in mother tongue
- Tested with the habituation experiment
- Training: different sounds = visual and verbal praise = learning association sound/praise
- Test: different sounds » does the child predict the praise? If so, they can distinguish between sounds
- First words, telegraphic (12-30 months) » they start to acquire their vocabulary
- Complex sentences (30 months – 5 years) » grammar development, making full sentences
- Completion stage (5 years and older)
Learning words
- Recognize form (thus sounds) but also learn that the combination of sounds form a single word and that it refers to a certain referend in the real world
- Word segmentation: learning to distinguish single sounds in a continuous word stream
- Tested with statistical learning segments
- Training: continuous speech stream of trisyllabic words, while focusing on transitional probabilies (the likelihood that certain syllables follow one another)
- Test: familiar words vs. non-words » can 8 month old babies discriminate between words and non-words?
- Tested with statistical learning segments
- When learn children words:
- 10-15 months » first words
- 15-20 months » 50 words
- 18-24 months » vocabulary spurt
- There is a large individual variation » every child learns at its own pace
- Difference between receptive (understanding) and productive (actually being able to use the words)
- Way in which children might learn words quickly: fast mapping (mechanism to map form onto meaning)
- Learning principles when learning words (with fast-mapping):
- Mutual exclusivity: one label refers to one meaning and visa versa
- Whole object: new labels (probably) refer to a whole object, not parts
- Principle of contrast: if there’re two labels, they probably contrast in meaning
Learning grammar
- Early/telegraphic phase: language without grammatical morphemes (e.g. ‘want ball’ or ‘doggy sleep’)
- Next phase: productive grammatical system, demonstrated by growing sentences
- Errors: Overregularization » applying a regular rule to a word that should change irregular
How do we acquire language?
- It’s an interplay with different factors (inborn mechanisms and contextual factors
- Two opposing theories:
- Children are tabula rasa (‘a blank canvas’), they learn through stimulus-response (Skinner) » the input plays a big role
- Children are born with innate language knowledge » universal grammar (Chomsky) » the input plays a very small role
- Social mechanisms, general mechanisms (not specific to language learning), rich input (Tomasselo, Saffran) » we can apply the general mechanisms to language learning
Interactions with other domains
- Social cognition:
- Prelingual phase: gaze following and joint attention » babies look at gaze direction of interlocutors » supports language development
- Cognitive mechanisms:
- General mechanisms of word learning
- Statistical learning: the extraction of distributional properties from sensory input across time
- It’s a domain-general learning mechanism, which means that it’s also been used to detect regularities in non-language input
- Supports language acquisition
- acquisition of the literacy rules (e.g. ‘c’ can be pronounced as ‘k’ and ‘s’) is facilitated by statistical learning
- Difficulties with statistical learning means often difficulties with learning to read and write
- Mechanisms that facilitate input processing
- Phonological short-term memory = the ability to temporarily maintain speech related information » a smaller phonological short-term memory is associated with a smaller vocabulary size
- Individual differences:
- For some children the acquisition of language is very difficult » developmental language disorder (DLD) » there’s no obvious cause for these problems
- The age of which learning begins differs » critical period (in the first few years of life you can develop language, but after that time language acquisition is much more difficult) » There’s a genetically encoded predetermined time window to learn something
- Explanations for age effects (brain maturation is not the only difference):
- Environmental and input differences (external)
- Having a first language and length of first language entrenchment (internal)
- There are also late learners who acquire native-like mastery (it’s not impossible)
Interaction with contextual factors
- Socioeconomic status
- Thirty million word gap: children with a low SES learn around 30 million words less than children with a normal/high SES
- SES is not only related to language input and vocabulary learning, but also to literacy skills later in life » higher SES = higher literacy skills
- Parents role
- Parents with higher level of education will be more engaged in children’s education.
- Important question: is it possible to change parental behavior and interactions between parent and child, in particular in low-SES families?
- Multilingualism
- The input to a bilingual child is divided over two languages » what are the implications for their language development
- The two languages are both active in the bilingual brain » what are the implications for their cognitive development?
- There’s a huge amount of variation across bilinguals
- Age of acquisition: simultaneous bilingualism (exposure to two languages from birth) vs. sequential bilingualism (exposure to two languages later in life)
- Language exposure
- Language distance, influence » how much support does the second language learner get from already knowing a first language? This support is called ‘positive transfer’
- Relative amount of input in each language predicts development in that language
- Cognitive development: Using multiple languages trains executive functions (regulating actions and thought, used for flexible behavior and adapt to current and changing goals in situations, etc.)
Take home message:
- Language is a multicomponent construct
- There are phases of language development but there is also much individual variation due to internal and external factors
- Bilingualism may affect language and cognitive development
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