Ch. 2

...

prelinguistic abilities

serve as the foundation for later stages in the acquisition of language.

Can be divided into 2 primary domains:
1. infants' perceptual ability to recognize patterns in the language input they hear around them
2. & their early attempts to communicate preverbally (through nonword vocalizations and gestures)

infants begin learning their language before they are born

- by the 3rd trimester, the fetus can hear sounds produced by mom
- the speech sounds produced by mom travel via bone conduction throughout her body, including into the womb
- as a result, infants come into the world having several months of exposure to their native language, and newborns already prefer listening to both their mothers' voices and to the sounds of their native language more generally

high-amplitude sucking paradigm (HASP)

most of the sounds used in speech, including those in languages that the infant has never heard, are perceived well by young infants.

-- in this method (HASP), a machine measure how often infants suck on a pacifier in response to different sounds. Infants begin hearing a sing sound - if they are interested, they will increase their sucking rate.

-- as the same sound continues to play, they become less interested in it, and their sucking rate drops.

-- this decreased response as HABITUATION

habituation

once infants are habituated to the original stimulus, the experimenter changes the sound.

- if the infants start sucking harder on the pacifier, we can take this to mean that they could tell the difference b/w the prior (boring) sound and the new sound

infants can discriminate phonemes similar to adults

they can distinguish speech sounds that do not occur in their native language:
for example:
- infants learning English and infants learning Japanese can both distinguish b/w /r/ and /l/, even though these sounds are very difficult for Japanese-speaking adults to distinguish

the ability to hear the differences among many of the sounds that are not used in an infants native language:

is lost by about 1 year of age

-- this suggests that during their first year of life, infants' perception becomes attuned to the language they hear around them

Examples of the typical order of emergence of prelinguistic skills in the first year, with approximate ages

Newborn:
- turns head to look in the direction of sound
- prefers listening to native language
- prefers mother's voice to stranger's
- discriminates many of the sounds used in speech

1-2 mos.:
- smiles when spoken to

4-6 mos.:
- shows recognition of own name and first words in a laboratory setting

6-8 mos.:
- is able to segment words from fluent speech

8-10 mos.:
- begins to lose the ability to discriminate non-native speech sounds
- starts responding to own name and familiar routines (e.g., waves to "bye-bye")
- shows clear recognition of first words

one of the first steps in learning words:

to recognize where each word starts and stops.

in order to learn the words from a sentence such as "lookatthekitty"

the infant first needs to learn how to SEGMENT, or break up, the fluent speech

- laboratory studies suggest that infants begin learning to segment speech into individual words durign the second half of their first year of life, but that this skill takes time to develop fully

these studies have used a technique known as the Headturn-Preference Procedure (HPP)

a method intended for testing slightly older infants (4 mos. +) than the High-Amplitude Sucking Paradigm described earlier

- in HPP, the infant sits on his or her caregiver's lap in the center of a three-sided testing booth. Sounds are played on either the right or left side of the booth, along with a flashing light; infants typically turn their heads to face the "source" of a sound they are attending to

infants who are better at segmentation tasks:

have been shown to develop a larger vocabulary and greater language skills later in life

statistical learning

an ability to identify types of statistical patterns and use them to learn both grammatical and lexical aspects of their native language. (regularities)

- a critical component of many aspects of children's language development

-- this sensitivity to statistical patterns may be the first step in many aspects of infants' early language development

although infants may seem helpless and dependent in many ways, they are not simply passive recipients of stimulation.

instead, infants are active interactional partners and their actions affect the subsequent behavior of the caregivers.

- For example:
caregivers expect infants to make eye contact with them, and most adults find interacting with a baby who will not look at them frustrating. In fact, the parents of an autistic infant often will notice eye aversion as the very first sign of abnormality.

the pleasant cooing sounds like "ooh" or "aah" that infants make draw caregivers into "conversations" with them

if an adult then responds vocally to a baby's sounds, even a 3-month-old baby will begin to produce more speechlike sounds in turn.

- furthermore, babies learn to wait for the adult's response after they have vocalized

- thus, both the adult and the infant are constantly influencing one another in establishing conversation-like vocal interactions during a period well before the child uses words

by 8 months

merely the approach, smile, or touch of an adult will increase the quality of vocalizations

from the beginning, the crying, cooing, and babbling of young infants are communicative only in the sense that the infant is a member of a social species and caregivers are alert to those signals

however, in the latter part of the first year of life, the normally developing infant makes a very important discovery that provides transition to language:
- that one can intentionally make a signal (a vocalization or a gesture) and expect that it will have a specific effect on the caregiver

- thus, signals begin to have meanings arising out of the shared experiences of the child and the caregiver

intentional communication

the behaviors of infants and their caregivers are always mutually affecting one another

many parents

view all infants' vocalizations as communicative and meaningful.

- Goldman interviewed mothers and found that many of them thought their babies were saying "mama" as early as 2 mos. of age and they interpreted "mama" as meaning "wanting something."

- However, there is no indication at that age that the child is doing anything "intentionally" to obtain the caregiver's attention and help

in contrast,

at 11 months, an infant might point to an object out of reach, make eye contact with the caregiver, look at the object again, and make a sound.

intentional communication criteria:

1. the child makes eye contact with the partner while gesturing or vocalizing, often alternating his or her gaze b/w an object and the partner.

2. some gestures have become consistent and ritualized. For example, one baby gesture of opening and closing her hand whenever she wanted something, rather than attempting to reach the object herself.

3. Some vocalizations have become consistent and ritualized. An infant might make the sound "eh eh" whenever she wants something. Another child would probably use a different sound in the same situation, because this sound was not copied from adult speech but was a signal developed by the infant.

4. After a gesture of vocalization, the child pauses to wait for a response from the partner.

* 5. The child persists in attempting to communicate if he or she is not understood and sometimes even modifies behavior to communication more clearly. * (hallmark of intentional communication)

there is not a distinct boundary b/w behavior without communicative intent and intentional communication, nor an exact age at which we classify the infant as intentionally communicative. RATHER,

the child moves gradually toward an understanding of goals and the potential role of others in achieving them.

for the average baby,

we expect that that first signs of intentional communication will emerge b/w 8-10 mos. of age.

-- maybe as young as 6 mos.

early communication

takes place using both gestures and sounds

most infants begin pointing at objects or pictures b/w

6-10 mos. of age

- they also learn to interpret the pointing gestures of others; infants learn that the appropriate response to a caregiver's point is to look in the direction indicated by the finger, not at the end of the finger itself

babies usually begin responding appropriately to points by others b/w

9-12 mos. of age

- pointing is predictive of future language skills

while pointing continues to be a part of nonverbal communication throughout life,

most infants develop unique gestures that are used before first words are learned.

- Acredolo and Goodwyn observed that babies attempted to convey a whole range of communicative functions through "invented gestures."

-- since the babies' caregivers were not typically watching for gestural communication, many times they did not even realize that consistent gestures were bing used.

-- as babies begin to pick up words from the language spoken to them, they come to depend increasingly on vocal communication, and the invented gestures fade away

a group of parents used gestures of their own choosing while speaking to their infants starting about 11 mos. of age.

for example, while saying "See the birdie," the parent might "flap arms."

- the babies began using these gestures slightly before they began using words, perhaps because the motor movements required to produce the gestures are easier for infants than are the motor movements required to produce intelligible words

-- more interestingly, the children taught the gestures had better scores on tests of language development at various ages up to 36 months.

the vocalizations used by children shortly before they begin learning conventional words have received much attention,

because they form an interesting link b.w pre-linguistic communication and speech

protowords

vocalizations that contain consistent sound patterns and are used in consistent situations, but are unique to the child rather than based on the adult language, are referred to as this

(the bridge b/w pre-linguistic behaviors and talking)

often these preverbal vocalizations

are initially linked with a particular gesture; over time, the vocalizations become more consistent and less tied to a particular action.

The assessment of communicative intent

...

low-structured observation

sometimes used in research, the caregiver is instructed to play with the child in a natural way, and a trained observer scores the child's behavior either during the session or from a videotape.

- for example:
the observer would look for instances of commenting, as indicated by the child's pointing at, showing, or giving objects, sometimes accompanied by consistent vocalizations

structured observation

one manipulates the situation somewhat to increase the likelihood of observing the behavior of interest.

communicative temptation task

could be used to entice the child to produce requests. The child might be presented with an attractive toy inside a tightly covered plastic container. An infant who is not yet communicating intentionally might bang the container and fuss or cry in frustration, while another preverbal infant might hand the container to an adult, make eye contact, point to the toy and/or vocalize, and persist in such behaviors that seem to be directed toward the adult.

- similarly, one could see how the child expresses rejection by presenting the child with a less desirable toy while more desirable toys are in view but out of reach

MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDI)

the questions used in the study are available as two scales called this.

- one used for infants 8-16mos. of age
- and the other for toddlers 16-30 mos. of age

-- typically, the child's caregiver is asked to report on words comprehended or said and is asked specific questions about his or her child's communicative behavior.

(parents are able to identify their children's communicative acts consistently)

Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales

another assessment device, used in a study of almost 2,000 infants, including those with risk factors (prematurity, multiple birth, family history of speech-language difficulties, low SES, and others).

- there was little variation in the pattern of development of communicative behaviors, even when there were differences in the age of acquisition of a particular behavior.

-- a continuing goal in research is to find reliable early clues that would predict whether a child is having difficulty acquiring language.

biological capacity

an infant has this for certain sorts of behaviors and abilities to develop

- however, that biological capacity will not be fully realized without certain kinds of social supports.
- an important goal of research concerning the social context of communicative development is to find out what kinds of experiences are sufficient to allow normal development and how variations in experiences ultimately affect the language abilities of the child

Kuhl has suggested,

that language learning requires social interaction.

baby talk

speech directed to babies unlike speech directed to adults

infant-directed speech (IDS), child-directed speech (CDS), and motherese (or parentese)

adult imitations of childlike speech ("Is ooo my tweetie-pie?") and special vocabulary words like choo-choo and pottie, along with strong denials that "you" would ever "use baby talk."

prosodic features

higher pitch, more variable pitch, and exaggerated stress

- one of the most dramatic characteristics of talk to babies in English
- more important than what you say
- may be a universal characteristic of baby talk

a number of studies have shown

that babies prefer IDS patterns, even when they are only 2 days old

babies ultimately prefer

"happy talk" rather than solely baby talk

some differences in IDS across cultures

- the prosodic changes found in American English are more extreme than those found even in other dialects of English (such as British English), let alone in other languages

- higher pitch and exaggerated intonation to infants were not found to be characteristic of rural African American families in North Carolina, Kaluli families in New Guinea and Quiche-Mayan families in Guatemala.

when babies naturally respond to speech that has certain features, adults may use these characteristics because they discover that infants pay more attention to them when they do.

increased affective development

children can learn language

even if they are not in loving interactions. given their resilient language abilities, but adult-infant attachment may be involved int heir optimal development

depressed mothers

used less of the exaggerated prosody that characterizes baby talk when the spoke to their 4-month old infants.

- this result is not surprising, since flat affect is a common symptom of depression

-- interestingly, the infants of depressed mothers also showed poorer learning of a response from that speech, although they readily learned when spoken to by unfamiliar non-depressed mothers.

-- however, note that this study, published the same year as the one by Singh and colleagues (2002), described above, could also be interpreted as showing that babies learn best from "happy talk."

the emotional component of IDS

thus, encourages infant attention, and this provides infants with opportunities to learn other aspects of their native language.

in addition to providing them with information on the sounds of the language, discussed earlier, word learning and sentence grammar acquisition might also be facilitated.

labels are spoken with exaggerated stress and higher, more variable pitch, perhaps encouraging infants' attention to these words.

some studies suggest that there may be a tendency to pronounce labels for objects more distinctly in IDS, although other studies have found contradictory results.

these studies suggest

the possibility that aspects of the input may enhance children's language development

caregivers talk to infants

in a way that is not only engaging but also encourages the baby to participate

mothers' primary goal in talking with their infants was to have a "conversation" with them

even when the adult knows that the infant does not yet understand language, the adult behaves as if the child's response is a turn in the conversation

mothers

respond to whatever her infant does, commenting on various nonverbal and vocal behaviors that occur and incorporate them into conversation

it is as if she allowed the infant's behaviors to stand for a turn in the interaction and treated the behavior, whether a vocalization or a burp, as if it were intentional communication on the part of the infant

although the mothers had accepted almost any behavior on the part of their 3-month-olds as if ti were an attempt to communicate,

as the infants grew older, the mothers changed in what they accepted as a turn in conversation

- by 7 months, when babies had begun to be more active partners in the interactions, the mothers responded only to higher-quality vocalizations, such as a babbled sound, and not to sounds such as burps.

-- the adult's interpretation of the infant's vocalizations may help the child get the idea that communication is possible

caregivers' language usage does at least affect the rate of language learning

between 9 and 18 mos. of age, the amount of talking that mothers do directly with her child (but not the amount of speech to others) is highly correlated with measures of the child's later linguistic competence.

- this result suggests that the overall quantity of speech that the child overhears is not so important for the rate of language development, but the QUANTITY of direct adult-to-child speech is.

- Furthermore, infants whose mothers talked to them frequently using short utterances at 9 months of age performed better on tests of receptive language abilities at 18 months than did infants of less vocally responsive mothers.

High SES mothers

tend to use longer sentences and a greater variety of vocabulary than do low-SES mothers.

- such changes in the input that children hear has a marked effect on their vocabulary development

-- children from high-SES homes show a faster growth in vocabulary than do children from low-SES homes

at about 6 months of age

infants begin to show a great interest in objects, perhaps reflecting both advances int heir visual ability to scan their environment and their motor ability to grasp and manipulate objects.

- at this point, the caregivers usually begin to change the strategy of interacting with their infants, encouraging their interest in objects while they continue interpersonal interactions by jointly exploring objects and their potential.

at around 9 months of age

an important change occurs in infants' SOCIAL COGNITION

- they begin to understand that other people are intentional beings, have thoughts and goals, and that there can be a sharing of minds. (theory of mind)

-- they look in the direction of a point, and at around 10 months, they even look in the direction that their caregiver looks

joint attention

children whose mothers encourage joint attention to objects and supply labels for them increase their vocabularies faster in the early language-acquisition period.

- joint attention is based on a positive and affectionate relationship b/w infant and caregiver, in which one can say that the pair are truly sharing an experience (child-centric)

- infants learn best in social context, and it is not productive to go around simply naming objects

- thus, gimmicks like flashcards or any other kind of "drills" for infant vocabulary learning are highly suspect and may even be coutnerproductive

contingent comments

when the caregiver uses contingent comments, follows the child's interest, and bases the next utterances on what the child is focusing on, the caregiver is employing verbally SENSITIVE and RESPONSIVE INTERACTION STYLE, as contrasted with a style that is constantly redirecting the child's attention (a verbally INTRUSIVE or CONTROLLING INTERACTIONAL STYLE)

verbal sensitivity in mothers of preverbal infants

predicts better language skills, particularly among low-birth-weight infants at risk for developmental delays

- of course, as in other areas we have considered, there can be cultural differences in the pattern of joint attention involving objects.

for most children, the first evidence for word understanding that is observable by parents occurs

b/w 8 and 10 months

by 11 months,

a child typically responded to about fifty words, including many names for common objects.

early communication with infants

- often takes place in highly structured situations, such as games or routines, which can provide FORMATS for the devleopment of early communication signals (pat-a-cake, peekaboo, as well as frequent interactions)

- for example:
there may be certain things that are typically said when the infant is fed, dressed, or put down for a nap. In these routine interactions, the child learns what is said in particular communicative situations and such setting may provide another way for the infant to begin noticing correspondences b/w sounds and meaning, leading to comprehension of words or phrases in the period just before th child will begin to say words

another highly structured situation is picture-book reading

book reading, especially with the kind of sturdy books that encourage activities (touching something soft or smelling something), brings parent and child together, encourages an appreciation of reading, and provides an excellent opportunity for language growth.

- reading the same book over and over is helpful, bc, as in games described earlier, the child learns from routines

a complete explanation of the emergence of intentional communication will have to consider many factors:

- the biological basis for language
- the changes that take place bc of maturation
- the social cognitive development of the child
- the types of experiences the child has had with caregivers

-- it is likely that there is both an inborn predisposition toward symbolic communication in the human infant and particular environmental experiences that normally interact with this predisposition to help bring about this important milestone in language development

Ch. 4

Semantic Development

very young children

understand the pragmatic intent of adults' utterances before they can understand the words themselves.

only very slowly

do children come to understand and use words in adult fashion, to break them free of context and use them flexibly in a variety of situations.

- the acquisition of words and their meanings does not happen all at once

semantic development

the process of developing words and their meanings

- children's strategies for learning word meanings and relating them to one another change as their internal representation of language constantly grows and becomes *reorganized*

referent

not the meaning of the word.

- if, for example, you say to a child, "Look at the doggie," the dog is the referent, but not the meaning of "doggie" - if the dog ran away or were run over by a truck, the word would still have meaning because meaning is a cognitive construct

the relationship b/w the name and the thing is

"arbitrary," and it is by social convention in a particular language that speakers agree to call the animal by a particular word.

- this arbitrary relationship b/w the referent (the dog) and the sign for it (the word dog) is "symbolic"

for a few words, the relation b/w the word and referent is not arbitrary

if one says, for example, "The book fell with a THUD," the relationship b/w the word THUD and the actual sound referred to is not arbitrary, since the word is an attempt to resemble the real sound.

use of words that resemble real sounds is called:

onomatopoeia

-- though less arbitrary, onomatopoeia's still need to be learned (they vary across languages)

it is probably easier for children to learn a word that is

more directly related to its referent than one that is totally arbitrary and symbolic, and as some research has shown, young children believe that the name and the referent are intrinsically related.

-- they think that one cannot change the name of something without changing its nature as well (if we called a dog a cow they would expect the dog to begin to moo)

Plato, writing in the fourth century BCE,

discussed the question of whether there is a natural relation b/w names and referents in his Cratylus dialogue.

- The Anomalists of Plato's day believed that the relation was inexplicable, but the Analogists believed that through careful etymology the essential nature of words could be revealed

although meaning is a mental representation, or concept,

that is not to say that meaning is a mental picture.

- even though it is true that many people are bale to visualize words, many words, such as "happy" or "jealousy," do not have picturable referents, and still we know their meanings

- people's images for words are likely to be quite individualized

- furthermore, images tend to be quite idiosyncratic (different); speakers who share meaning may hold very different internal images.

- meaning is a social construct

concepts

one of the child's primary tasks in semantic development is to acquire categorical concepts (e.g., to learn that the word "dog" refers to a whole class of animals) and to be able to extend the word to appropriate new instances of the category.

the semantic feature view

is that children learn a set of distinguishing features for each categorical concept.

- at first the word "dog" may be understood to apply only to the child's own dog, but the child soon comes to understand that other creatures may also be called "dog" as long as they share a small set of critical features: dogs are animate, warm-blooded, have four legs, and bark.

- children acquire conceptual categories made up of members that share a discrete set of essential features

according to prototype theory

children acquire prototypes, or very good examples of concepts, when they acquire meaning and only later come to recognize category members that are distant from the prototypes

- apples, collies, roses, are examples of prototypical fruits, dogs, and flowers

- for adults, prototypical members of a category are more accessible in memory.
-- a robin has more typical "bird" characteristics than does a penguin; therefore, people see robins as better examples of birds, and they also can classify them faster when asked if robin is a bird

classical concepts

all members of a group share this

- such as, triangle, which can be unambiguously defined: all triangles have three angles, or they are simply not triangles.

probabilistic concept

such as, "bird." Most, but not all, birds have many features in common, but there is not a single set of essential features.

- furthermore, some concepts have fairly sharp boundaries and are hierarchically organized, while others are not; for instance, most adults can agree on what is and is not a dog and know that dogs belong to the superordinate category of animals. By contrast, color concepts have fuzzy boundaries

Learning theory

one of the simplest explanations of how children acquire the meanings of their first words is that they do so through associative learning

- repeated exposure paired with a particular experience will result in the child associating the sound of the word with the word family

- learning theory may explain the earliest and simplest kinds of linking b/w words and objects.

young children's word learing

is rapid, predictable, and remarkably accurate

developmental theories

consider semantic development within the wider context of the child's unfolding social, cognitive, and linguistic skills

ontological categories

Clark theorizes that by the time they start learning language, all children have developed a set of ontological categories; these are concepts about how the world is organized.

- ontological categories include objects, actions, events, relations, states, and properties,
- these are the basic categories in all languages that speakers refer to when they use language

one way children avoid mapping nightmare

is to rely on their rudimentary understanding of other people's attentional and intentional states and how those states relate to what is likely to be communicated.

- in order to become efficient word learners, young children must come to understand, for example, that a novel word they hear probably relates to an object or event that the speaker is paying attention to

lexical principles

constrain the number of possible word-referent mappings.

for example:

1. young children may tend to assume that a new word they hear refers to an object
2. that the word refers to the "whole" object rather than to its parts
(these two tendencies may predispose the child to eliminate the family dog's floppy ears or the way he runs around the living room as likely referents for the label "dog"
3. other lexical principles suggest that children tend to avoid two labels for one referent

principle of mutual exclusivity

the child, in our example will be inclined to eliminate Rufus as a possible referent for "bone," because Rufus already has a name

principle of contrast

the child will not completely eliminate Rufus as a possible referent for a new label, "bone," but will assume that the meaning of the word "bone" does not overlap perfectly with the meaning of the word "Rufus."

Although children may rely in part on lexical principles,

such default assumptions can be overridden by their linguistic and world knowledge

at the beginning of word learning,

children may give more weight to perceptual information, such as the concreteness of an action, or the visible shape of an object, and only later draw more heavily on social and linguistic cues

fast mapping

children as young as 18 mos. can make an initial word-referent mapping after only a few exposures to a new word, often also without explicit instruction by an adult.

childrens memory for nonlinguistic facts

is inferior to adults, but children actually remember fast-mapped (multiple exposures over a couple of days) words over several weeks' time as well as adults

there is evidence, that children ages 2 and older

may learn nouns as effectively through incidental learning as through ostension

ostension

when objects are labeled explicitly

- one theory, in the absence of labeling or pointing by adults, children may attend more closely to semantic and grammatical information in the input

early words

by early in their second year, most children have begun to produce some words themselves.

- they begin with words related to what is intellectually and socially most meaningful to them, such as names for important people and objects in their lives

the study of vocabulary

examination of children's vocabulary is probably the oldest approach to the study of language acquisition

children's earliest words

usually appear in the context of labeling objects, participating in routine game formats, and imitations.

- many children's early words tend to fulfill a social purpose

during the second year of life

children start learning approximately one word per week, and then one word per day.

- after this initial outset and throughout the first five years of life, this rate accelerates intensely, so that children learn an average of one new word every two waking hours.

vocabulary spurt

what some researchers have identified as a rapid increase in the number of words learned that occurs around age 18 months.

- however other studies suggest that vocabulary acquisition is best characterized as a gradual process during which children become more skillful as word learners

words children acquire in their early productive vocabularies are influenced by many factors

- they tend to share phonetic features
- occur frequently in speech
- and be shorter in length than later-acquired words

-- words that are easier for children to pronounce are more likely to be included in their early productive vocabularies and that favored sound patterns vary greatly across children

T/F question: From the beginning, children's vocabularies appear to include words from a variety of grammatical classes;

their first fifty words represent all of the major grammatical classes found in adult language.

- nonetheless, common nouns account for nearly 40 percent of the average English-speaking child's first fifty words, whereas verbs, adjectives, and function words each account for less than 10 percent.

- by the time children's productive vocabularies exceed 600 words, about 40 percent are nouns, 25 percent verbs and adjectives, and about 15 percent are function words

among nouns,

those that are the easiest to distinguish from the surroundings, such as animate beings or things that move, are the earliest learned

- nouns are more concrete and readily identifiable referents

- the number of nouns reported using checklists is somewhat inflated relative to children's actual use, perhaps because mothers are more likely to notice nouns in their children's speech.

an alternative explanation is

is that nouns are favored over verbs in acquisition because nouns tend to refer to clearer, more concrete, and more readily identifiable referents than verbs

during a study, adults were shown video clips where a noun or verb was replaced with a beep and the adults were instructed to guess the word

when the word was a noun, adults guessed the word correctly 45% of the time

- when the beep was a verb adults guess correctly 15% of the time

-- these results suggest that identifying the proper referent for verbs may be generally more challenging than it is for nouns.
-- grammatical categories may not offer the best explanation to understand early word learning

SICI continuum

Shape
Individuality
Concreteness
Imageability

- a more comprehensive explanation; children's early words tend to refer to concepts with a reliable and consistent shape that can be more easily distinguished from others (individuality), that are more perceptually salient and concrete (concreteness) and that can easily yield a mental image (imaginability)

overextension

occurs when a child uses a word in a context or manner that is inconsistent with, but in some way related to, the adult meaning of the word, as when a dog is called a kitty or a cotton ball "snow", or when a visitor is greeted with a "bye-bye"

- thus, the term overextension derives from the fact that the child is extending the term beyond the adult word concept

underextension

occurs when a child uses a particular word for only a limited subset of the contexts allowed by the adult concept.

- a child who uses "duck" for birds that swim, "bird" for those that fly, and "chicken" for those that do not fly appears to be using the term "bird" for a reduced set of referents

both overextensions and underextensions are

common in 1- and 2-year old children's speech, accounting for up to 1/3 of their production vocabulary

- beyond age 2 1/4, however, such unconventional mappings become less frequently observable, unless elicited experimentally.

what do children's extension words tell us?

at most, they reveal how children categorize the world and what aspects of their experiences they find relevant to certain words

- children's categories may not initially match those of adults (their meanings dont always match adult meanings)

some of children's overextensions

may reflect retrieval problems, such that an older, better-known label (e.g., dog) may be inappropriately used in place of a more recently acquired but more appropriate one such as "moose"

children may use their single words analogically to comment on similarities they have noticed

thus, the child who points to a Saint Bernard and says "cow" may mean only that the dog is like a cow.

- they are seldom observed using words in this fashion after they acquire syntax and can explain what they mean

children seem to overextend words as a humorous gesture

when a 2 year old who routinely uses the word "hat" puts an overturned bowl on his head, giggles, and says "hat," we can be fairly certain that he is making a joke

invented words

Berko found that preschoolers and first graders were often able to invent words to refer to meanings that were specified by an experimenter

derived words

what adults would use to answer the question "What would you call a man whose job is to 'zib'?" by adding suffixes

- a "zibber" zibs for a living."

compound words

how a child would answer the same question

- "zib-man"

children also often invent coin words spontaneously in their own speech

Clark found that these gaps occurred when the child had forgotten or did not know the usual word

- "pourer" for cup
- "plant-man" for gardener
- "i'm crackering my soup"

Clark found that children's lexical innovations follow fairly regular principles

1. Simplicity - is reflected in children's use of a conventional word in an unconventional, but totally obvious, role (for example, to "pillow", meaning to "throw pillow at.")

2. Semantic Transparency - is evident in innovations such as "plant-man" for gardener; the meaning of the invented word is more apparent and more easily remembered than the conventional one

3. Productivity - is shown in children's use of forms that are frequently used by adults as the basis of new words. Many English words meaning "people who do something," for instance, end in -er (teacher, player). Thus, children create agentival nouns such as "cooker" and "bicycler"

production of a word

requires that the child speak the word at an appropriate time and place

- productive vocabularies typically lag behind receptive vocabularies

preferential looking paradigm

used to test infants' and toddlers' vocabulary comprehension

- in this paradigm, the infant is seated on his blindfolded mothers lap facing two video monitors. Words or sentences are played over a centrally located speaker. At the same time, brief segments of videotape are shown on the two monitors. The object or action sequence shown on one monitor matches the word or sentence the child hears, while that shown on the other screen does not. Because children prefer to gaze at video segments matching what they hear, they will look longer at the matching screen if they understand the word or sentence.

the labels adults provide for children are not always the ones they would use with adults or older children

adults sometimes mislabel objects when speaking to very young children, teaching them in some cases to use labels that are incorrect by adult standards.

- for example, a toy leopard was commonly referred to as a "kitty-cat" and a toy tow truck was referred to as a "car"

- children's differential treatment of objects indicates on a fundamental level how they are categorizing objects, and mothers naturally adhere to that when labeling

by labeling objects for children according to the children's own categories

parents are probably showing how words are used

basic-level categories

the names that mothers choose that tend to be based on children's own ways of categorizing the world

for basic-level words

mothers use ostension; they may point and say, "That's a tractor." When asked to teach superordinates, however, they employ a strategy of inclusion, mentioning both basic-level terms and the superordinate term.

- for instance, they say things such as, "A car and a bus and a train. All of them are kinds of vehicles."

- when teaching terms such as, "passenger," whicha re more specific than basic-level, mothers provide an explanation that includes a basic-level term as well as the new word

-- For example, they may say, "The pig is a passenger because he's riding in a car," or "A passenger is a person when he is riding in a car."

----- parents provide particular help with rare words by explaining them explicitly or embedding them in a context that calls on the child's prior knowledge or real-world experience.

mothers speech has also been shown to have an effect on the ways that children come to understand the vocabulary relating to their own inner states (feelings)

mothers routinely label a variety of inner states, including quality of consciousness (e.g., bored), physiological states (dizzy), and emotional states (happy).

by the age of 2

the culdren used many of these inner state words themselves, particularly those realting to sleep, distress, temperature, pain and pleasure.

- mothers used more of these labels with daugheters, and by the age of 2, girls themselves referred to feeling state significantly more than boys did.

- infants' own communication skills tend to impact the frequency with which mothers will use mental state words

in addition to the special vocab directed to young children,

adults and even older children in many cultures seem to tailor other aspects of their language tot he child's ability level; some of the characteristics of input language may facilitate semantic development

input language,

especially when young children begin to understand and use words, is more clearly and slowly enunciated and is characterized by exaggerated intonation and clear pauses b/w utterances

- in addition, single-word utterances are common, and words that are being taught or focused on tend to be placed in sentence-final position with especially marked pitch and stress

speech directed to young children

tends to be better formed and more intelligible than speech to other adults, which tends to be fraught with sloppily pronounced words, false starts, and ill-formed or incomplete sentences with unclear boundaries b/w words

the clearer, more precise, and simpler input language,

could assist children in separating words from the flow of speech and in perceiving correct pronunciation

- similarly, the consistent pronunciation could aid them in becoming familiar with new words and in picking out those words that map onto meanings they wish to express

in depth learning of words

requires multiple exposures to the word in many different contexts

children exposed to larger amounts of adult input

develop larger, richer vocabularies than children exposed to more limited input

joint attention

mutual engagement b/w parent and child

joint focus

focus on the same object or event

in many cultures one-to-one interactions are not dominant

some cultures adults do not address young children as conversational partners, but instead children learn mostly as observers or listeners

- the Kaluli children for Papua new Guinea

some studies suggest

that joint focus alone might be sufficient for effective language learning

vocabulary breadth

refers to the number of words known

vocabulary depth

encompasses the degree of various kinds of word knowledge

1. the sound and spelling of a word
2. its morphological structure
3. the types of sentences in which it can occur
4. its multiple meanings and word associations
5. the situations in which its use is appropriate
6. the origin of its form and meaning(s)

word family

the most reliable estimates of vocabulary breadth

it includes a base word, its inflections, and some regular derived forms

- for example, "drive, drives, driving, driver"

not only do children learn new words and new concepts

they also enrich and solidify their knowledge of known words by establishing multiple links among words and concepts

- for example, children learn that the words "walk, walks, walking, and walked" refer to similar actions that differ in tense or duration, while "eat" and "devour" refer to actions that differ in manner

- "compete, win and lose" share some semantic components, but they differ in the outcome each conveys

semantic networks

connections among words and concepts

- although the formation of semantic networks continues throughout the life span, there is evidence that children begin rudimentary semantic networks very early in development

-- children seek links, relationships, and conceptual wholes in everything they experience, including language

word associations

Nelson gave children the name of a category, such as animals or furniture and asked them to supply names of as many category members as possible

with this set task, Nelson found that 8-year-olds were able to supply nearly twice as many category members as 5-year-olds

free-word association task found evidence of a syntagmatic-paradigmatic shift

given a particular word and instructed to give the next word that comes to mind, young children tend to respond with words that are related in syntax to the stimulus word; that is, they give words that would typically follow the stimulus word in a normal sentence (a syntagmatic response)

- for example, in response to the stimulus word "eat" a child might say "lunch"

- at around 7, children begin to respond instead with words that are of the same grammatical category as the stimulus word (e.g., eat - drink)

-- greatest change b/w first and second grade

vocab is a language domain that is characterized by extreme

individual variability

however these individual characteristics are in turn

highly influenced by contextual factors

research on home language environments

has identified the quantity, variety, and contextual richness of the words heard as key predictors of children's vocabulary acquisition

- research, however, also suggests that there is considerable within-group variation and considerable overlap in the distribution of vocabulary skills across monolingual and bilingual children from different SES levels

children's vocabulary growth was negatively associated with maternal depression

in other words, low SES mothers who used a higher diversity of words, had more advanced literacy skills, and were not depressed had children with higher rates of vocab growth

by 3 years of age

children's vocab could be predicted by the frequency of their participation in literacy activities, the quality of maternal engagement, and the availability in the home of age-appropriate learning materials

frequency of fathers reading books

at 24 months, predicted children's receptive vocab scores a year later