2. Language Acquisition

2. Language Acquisition

1. Developmental Impairments

   • Down Syndrome = mild mental retardation, with impaired language due to poor memory. Suggests cognition determines language
   • Considers the relationship between cognitive and linguistic abilities
   • Autism
   • Williams Syndrome = mental retardation, low IQ, but memory, language intact. Suggests language and cognitive abilities are independent
   • Specific Language impairment (SLI) = highly heritable disease, language impaired, but IQ and hearing intact, genetic impairment language doesn't affect cognition
   • Evidence for partial separation of cognitive and language abilites

2. Phonological Development

   • Acquisition of sounds of words
   • Phoneme = smallest unit of sound
   • Children cant apply implicit knowledge to learn phonemes, so must rely on exposure
   • Voice onset time (VOT) = When we hear a continuum of sounds, we tend to categorise it into 1 sound or another = we use implicit knowledge
   • Evidence of some pre-natal exposure of phonemes, as foetus can distinguish between their mothers and anothers voice
   • Conditioned head turn (6-10 months) = children learn to turn their head in anticipation for the stimulus to change
   • High amplitude sucking (0-4months) suggests child can distinguish between their mothers voice and another, but not difference between 2 languages
   • Context plays a role = we perceive different phonemes depending on what follows, e.g. Warren (1970)

3. Acquisition

   • Genes, environment and social interaction
   • Learning language is hard due to: Segmentation, lack of invariance and speaker variability
   • Process by which humans acquire the ability to speak and comprehend
   • Studied with high amplitude sucking, conditioned head turn and preferential looking

4. Morphological Development

   • Acquisition of sounds to words
   • Morpheme = smallest unit of sound with meaning
   • E.g. 'Un-treat-ed
   • Morphological knowledge = knowledge of how to combine morphemes to modify a word
   • Children learn morphemes through rules and repeated pairing, depending on regular or irregular words
   • Regular words (RULES) = learn by generalisation, child hears word being used an creates a rule that similar words must also be similar. E.g. Kick > Kicked
   • Regular & irregular (REPEATED PAIRING) = children come into contact with a word, implicit rule doesn't work, keep hearing word and store it in their mental lexicon
   • WUG Test (1958) = tests tacit knowledge of implicit rules by giving children nonsense words and asking them to apply knowledge.

5. Critical Exposure Period

   • Ability to acquire language deteriorates with age
   • Critical period hypothesis (Lenneberg, 1967)
   • Feral children and Genie show that a lack of linguistic input can lead to issues with language
   • studies show children are better at developing language or a second language
   • but, children and adults can acquire language abilities outside of this critical period = plasticity
   • Weaker version of the hypothesis is the sensitive period hypothesis (Locke, 1997)

6. Theoretical Perspectives

   • Behaviourism (Piaget, 1957) = mind at birth is empty, we require exposure to the environment to learn language. Conditioning = reinforcement of abilities from negative and positive outcomes. Imitation of adults
   • Nativism/Rationalism (Chomsky) = ideas are innate and fundamental. Language acquisition device suggests genes determine constraints which guide language acquisition and the impact environment can have. Later, universal grammer = everyone has language rules which allow us to learn
   • Cognitive Maturation (Piaget, 1954) = language is driven by cognition (non-linguisitc abilities)
   • Language we hear is too impoverished and imperfect to be the only determiner of language abilities

7. What drives acquisition

   • Environment = exposure to language. Genies never learnt how to to speak fully after she was not exposed to language for years of her child life
   • Cognition = non-linguisitc skills scaffold development of language abilities. E.g. Joint attention memory
   • Genes = humans are the only species to acquire language, our genes determine the ability for this. E.g. tacit knowledge of language and examples of animals

8. Lexical Development

   • Meaning of words
   • Meaning errors
     • under extension = word is given a narrower meaning that it has in adult language, e.g. using round to refer to balls
     • over extension = word is given broader meaning than is has in adult language, e.g. fluffy for rabbits
   • Quine (1960) suggested the gavagai problem = an issue children face, how do i know what you mean?. Children must chunk word sounds
   • Solving the gavagai problem
     • Joint attention = looking at what the adult is looking at when they say a word
     • Whole word constraint = child assumes the adult is talking about a whole object
     • Mutual exclusivity constraint = if the child already has a word for one object, they assume the object they dont have a word for is it
     • Taxonomic constraint = assumption that if a word relates to one thing, it related to others simialr to it

9. Syntax Development

   • Syntax = grammar
   • Chomsky = suggests their is some innate knowledge of syntax, genes
   • Syntactic bootstrapping = syntax guides learning, meanings of words are inferred from how they are used in sentences
   • distributional learning = repeated exposure to words leads concrete words to be formed

10. What children know

    • Parental reports = parent or carer tick off words the child knows of a given list, tends to be reliable but is limited to the words on the list
    • Preferential looking = mother holds child and she is blindfolded/headphones, child looks at images when verbal speaking played. If child looks at correct image (tracking) we infer they know the word
    • Conditioned head turn = children learn to turn their head in anticipation for a change in stimulus
    • Naturalistic observation = longitudinal diary and play sessions. Learn about child babbling (6-10months)

11. Pidgins & creoles

    • Creole = native tongue of children of pidgin speakers. Children have an innate drive to create grammar in the absence of environmental input
    • Pidgin = a simplified communication system for universal speaking
    • Johnson & Newport (1989) compared immigrant to the USA as different ages, younger immigrants learnt English easier
    • Newport (1990) = deaf children exposure to sign language native, early or late. Exposure didnt have an effect on sign
    • Birdsong & Molis (2001) didn't replicate the findings suggested by Johnson & Newport
    • Seghas et al (2004) found children go beyond pidgin speaking and deaf signers learn signing when they have hearing parents
    • Strong evidence for biological drive for syntax