1_Language Acquisition

1_Language Acquisition

1. EARLY LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

   • DeCasper and Spence (1986) - Found that babies sucked on their dummies more when their mothers read them the same story that they'd also read aloud during the last 6 months of the pregnancy
   • IT DEVELOPS IN THE WOMB
     • All this suggests that even in the womb, babies become familiar with the sounds, rhythms and intonations of language.
   • Mehler et al (1988) - Found that four day old French babies increased their sucking rate on a dummy, showing interest or recognition, when they heard French as opposed to Italian or English
     • Fitzpatrick (2002) - Found that the heart rate of an unborn baby slowed when it heard its mother's voice.
   • Babies use vocal chords straight away: Pre-verbal/pre-language stage (Before first word is spoken)
     • Crying is the first main vocal expression a baby makes. It makes the caregiver (e.g. parents, sibling etc.) aware that the baby needs something - Indicates hunger, discomfort and or pain - Instinctive response.
   • Babies then start to form sounds - Cooing stage (6-8 weeks) a small range of sounds (get used to moving lips and tongues) Starts with Vowels like /U/ and /A/. Then they start linking these to produce extended vowel combination. Like Ooo and Aaah.
     • Velar Consonants (ones made using the back part of the tongue) like /K/ and /G/ to form sounds like Coo and Ga.
       • BABBLING: (6 months old) at this stage they start producing repeated consonant/vowel combinations like ma-ma-ma, ba-ba-ba - common - known as reduplicated babbling.
         • If they're not repeated like goo-gi-goo-ga this is called Variegated babbling
           • The consonants you get in these babblings are - A,W,J,P,B,M,T,D,N,K,G
           • Deaf babies tend to babble in sign language - shows an innate activity, pre-programmed to happen in the process of language development
         • It's argued that babbling is the continuation of the baby's experimentation with sound creation (cooing) rather than production of sounds that carry meaning. i.e. they may be babbling da-da-da but not referring to their father.
         • It's also argued that babbling is the beginning of speech
           • Petitto and Holowka (2002) - Filmed infants - noted that most babbling came more from the right side - which is controlled by the left side of the brain. (Responsible for speech production) it's a form of preliminary speech.
   • Babbling stage can be divided into two parts - when they start to babble the no. of diff. phonemes (sound) they produce increases. (Phonemic expansion) However later on in this stage they reduce no. of phonemes they use (Phonemic contraction) This is due to the baby starting to only reproduce the phonemes it hears in its native language (stops using sounds it doesn't hear anymore) At about 10 months is when children from diff. nationalities become more obvious.
     • A study from Bristol Uni in 2008 found that babies exposed to diff. lang's in the first 9 months of their life are more able to pick out these sounds in the lang's when they're older - due to phonemic contraction occurring less than normal.
     • Infants start to show Intonation patterns at the babbling stage - as early as 6 months babies will use rhythms that resemble speech patterns of adults - recognisable intonation in the strings of phonemes they put together. i.e. at the end of a babbling sequence the intonation may rise which reflects a question.
     • BABBLING - leads to the production of a Child's First Words: eventually certain combinations of consonants+vowels start to carry meaning E.g. a child may say Mmm to show they want some more food - not a word but it functions as one. These are called PROTO-WORDS + sometimes accompanied with gestures/hand movements. At 9 months they start to make up their own lang. called baby Jargon. Later in this stage sound and meaning start to come together - Ma-ma means mum and Ka-ka means car typically happens around 10 months old.