Development of Language and Symbol Use PDF

11/5/2024 Copyright © 2024 by Macmillan Learning. All rights reserved Development of Language and Symbol Use...

11/5/2024 Copyright © 2024 by Macmillan Learning. All rights reserved Development of Language and Symbol Use Development of Language and Symbol Use Chapter 6 How Children Develop SIEGLER | DELOACHE | EISENBERG | SAFFRAN | Seventh Canadian Edition 1 Chapter Outline Copyright © 2024 by Macmillan Learning. All rights reserved ▪ Language Development ▪ The Process of Language Acquisition ▪ Theoretical Issues in Language Development ▪ Nonlinguistic Symbols and Development How Children Develop SIEGLER | DELOACHE | EISENBERG | SAFFRAN | Seventh Canadian Edition 2 Language Development Copyright © 2024 by Macmillan Learning. All rights reserved ▪ Symbols ▪ Involve systems of representing our thoughts, feelings, and knowledge, and for communicating them to other people ▪ Language comprehension ▪ Required to develop language skills; refers to understanding what others say (or sign or write) ▪ Language production ▪ Refers to speaking (or signing or writing) How Children Develop SIEGLER | DELOACHE | EISENBERG | SAFFRAN | Seventh Canadian Edition 3 1  11/5/2024 The Components of Language (part 1) Copyright © 2024 by Macmillan Learning. All rights reserved ▪ Generative ▪ System in which a finite set of words can be combined to generate an infinite number of sentences ▪ Phonemes ▪ Smallest units of meaningful sound ▪ Morphemes ▪ Smallest units of meaning in a language, composed of one or more phonemes How Children Develop SIEGLER | DELOACHE | EISENBERG | SAFFRAN | Seventh Canadian Edition 4 The Components of Language (part 2) Copyright © 2024 by Macmillan Learning. All rights reserved ▪ Syntax ▪ Rules specifying how words from different categories (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.) can be combined ▪ Pragmatics ▪ Knowledge about how language is used ▪ Dialect ▪ A particular form of a language, often based in a specific region or social group ▪ American Sign Language (ASL) ▪ All of these same factors are involved in learning a sign language. How Children Develop SIEGLER | DELOACHE | EISENBERG | SAFFRAN | Seventh Canadian Edition 5 What Is Required for Language? (part 1) Copyright © 2024 by Macmillan Learning. All rights reserved ▪ A human brain is required! ▪ Language is species-specific and species-universal. ▪ Nonhuman primate communicative systems ▪ Washoe and Koko ▪ Kanzi ▪ Non-primate response to spoken language ▪ Rico (dog) ▪ Alex (parrot) How Children Develop SIEGLER | DELOACHE | EISENBERG | SAFFRAN | Seventh Canadian Edition 6 2  11/5/2024 What Is Required for Language? (part 2) Copyright © 2024 by Macmillan Learning. All rights reserved ▪ Brain-language lateralization ▪ Hemispheric language learning differences ▪ Left-hemisphere for 90 percent of right handers and life-long signers ▪ Sensitive period ▪ Early years until around age 5 is sensitive for language learning. ▪ Research ▪ Genie ▪ Adult-language learners ▪ Deaf community learners How Children Develop SIEGLER | DELOACHE | EISENBERG | SAFFRAN | Seventh Canadian Edition 7 What Is Required for Language? (part 3) Copyright © 2024 by Macmillan Learning. All rights reserved ▪ A human environment is required! ▪ Infants’ auditory preferences are fine-tuned through experience with human language. ▪ Infant-directed speech (IDS) ▪ Distinctive mode of speech that adults adopt when talking to babies and very young children; preferred by infants and used by virtually all cultures ▪ Greater pitch variability; slower speech; shorter utterances; more word repetition; more questions ▪ Cultural context matters. How Children Develop SIEGLER | DELOACHE | EISENBERG | SAFFRAN | Seventh Canadian Edition 8 Two Languages Are Better Than One Copyright © 2024 by Macmillan Learning. All rights reserved ▪ Bilingual infants ▪ Learn in the womb; equal language preference if exposed prenatally ▪ Discriminate speech sounds of two language at same pace of infants learning one ▪ Are better at using silent talking face to discriminate unfamiliar languages ▪ Build two linguistic systems; code switching ▪ Have vocabularies distributed across two languages ▪ Perform better on cognitive control measures ▪ What system is best for optimizing these advantages? How Children Develop SIEGLER | DELOACHE | EISENBERG | SAFFRAN | Seventh Canadian Edition 9 3  11/5/2024 The Process of Language Acquisition Copyright © 2024 by Macmillan Learning. All rights reserved ▪ Language is acquired by listening and speaking (or watching and signing). ▪ Comprehending what other people communicate ▪ Producing intelligible speech (or signs) ▪ Paying attention to what other people say or sign. How Children Develop SIEGLER | DELOACHE | EISENBERG | SAFFRAN | Seventh Canadian Edition 10 Speech Perception Copyright © 2024 by Macmillan Learning. All rights reserved Term Definition Prosody The characteristic rhythm, tempo, cadence, melody, intonational patterns, etc., with which a language is spoken Categorical perception The perception of speech sounds as belonging to discrete categories Voice onset time The length of time between when air passes through the lips and when the (VOT) vocal cords start vibrating Word segmentation The process of discovering where words begin and end in fluent speech Distributional The phenomenon that, in any language, certain sounds are more likely to properties appear together than are others How Children Develop SIEGLER | DELOACHE | EISENBERG | SAFFRAN | Seventh Canadian Edition 11 Categorical Perception of Speech Sounds Copyright © 2024 by Macmillan Learning. All rights reserved ▪ This research reveals an early-emerging ability that is experience-independent. Infants can discriminate between speech sounds they have never heard before. How Children Develop SIEGLER | DELOACHE | EISENBERG | SAFFRAN | Seventh Canadian Edition 12 4  11/5/2024 Word Segmentation Copyright © 2024 by Macmillan Learning. All rights reserved ▪ Word segmentation: Process of discovering where words begin and end in fluent speech; begins during the second half of the first year. ▪ Distributional properties: In any language, certain sounds are more likely to appear together than others. ▪ Infants can identify patterns in the speech surrounding them. ▪ They then focus to sound patterns that make a difference in their native language and groundwork for becoming native listeners and native speakers. ▪ Just after birth, infants can use predictable sound patterns to identify words from speech streams. How Children Develop SIEGLER | DELOACHE | EISENBERG | SAFFRAN | Seventh Canadian Edition 13 Preparation for Production (part 1) Copyright © 2024 by Macmillan Learning. All rights reserved ▪ Babbling ▪ Producing syllables made up of a consonant followed by a vowel (“pa,” “ba,” “ma”) that are repeated in strings (“mamama”). ▪ Produced as sounds (or hand movements (for learners of sign language). ▪ Produced during early phases of language development. How Children Develop SIEGLER | DELOACHE | EISENBERG | SAFFRAN | Seventh Canadian Edition 14 Preparation for Production (part 2) Copyright © 2024 by Macmillan Learning. All rights reserved ▪ Early interactions and babbling ▪ Social interactions learned from parent-infant games. ▪ Infant response evokes range of parental response. ▪ Signal that infant is attentive is provided. ▪ Successful communication required ▪ Intersubjectivity ▪ Joint attention How Children Develop SIEGLER | DELOACHE | EISENBERG | SAFFRAN | Seventh Canadian Edition 15 5  11/5/2024 First Words (part 1) Copyright © 2024 by Macmillan Learning. All rights reserved ▪ Early word recognition ▪ Linguistic experience support skilled rapid word comprehension. ▪ Infant word understanding exceeds word production; same understanding occurs in toddlers with autism. ▪ Parents underestimate this comprehension competence. ▪ Older children use context to aid word recognition. How Children Develop SIEGLER | DELOACHE | EISENBERG | SAFFRAN | Seventh Canadian Edition 16 First Words (part 2) Copyright © 2024 by Macmillan Learning. All rights reserved ▪ Early word production ▪ Overextension: an overly broad interpretation of the meaning of a word ▪ Underextension: an overly narrow interpretation of the meaning of a word ▪ First words produced between 10 and 15 months of age ▪ References to family members, pets, important objects How Children Develop SIEGLER | DELOACHE | EISENBERG | SAFFRAN | Seventh Canadian Edition 17 Copyright © 2024 by Macmillan Learning. All rights reserved English Putonghua (Mandarin) Cantonese Daddy Daddy Mommy Mommy Aah Daddy Baabaa Mommy Grandma (paternal) Bye Yum-yum Grandpa (paternal) Hi Sister (older) Hello?/Wei? The Earliest Uh-oh Uh-oh (Aiyou) Hit Words Grr Hit Uncle (paternal) Bottle Hello/Wei Grab/Grasp Yum-yum Milk Auntie (maternal) Dog Naughty Bye No Brother (older) Uh-oh (Aiyou) Woof woof Grandma (maternal) Ya/Wow How Children Develop SIEGLER | DELOACHE | EISENBERG | SAFFRAN | Seventh Canadian Edition 18 6  11/5/2024 Language Development and Socioeconomic Status Copyright © 2024 by Macmillan Learning. All rights reserved ▪ Number of words children know →related to number of words they hear→ linked to their caregivers’ vocabularies ▪ SES related to language children hear ▪ Seminal research: Less words spoken in families on welfare; more in professional families ▪ Recent research: Estimates exaggerated ▪ SES-related differences ▪ Averages vary in amount of parental input, quality of input, and physical environment, including school context. How Children Develop SIEGLER | DELOACHE | EISENBERG | SAFFRAN | Seventh Canadian Edition 19 First Words (part 3) Copyright © 2024 by Macmillan Learning. All rights reserved ▪ Word learning ▪ Adult influences ▪ Talking to children, naming, playing ▪ Maintaining spatial consistency ▪ Contextual influences ▪ Words used How Children Develop SIEGLER | DELOACHE | EISENBERG | SAFFRAN | Seventh Canadian Edition 20 First Words (part 4) Copyright © 2024 by Macmillan Learning. All rights reserved ▪ Word learning ▪ Child contributions ▪ Employing mutual exclusivity; less for bilingual and trilingual infants ▪ Making whole-object assumption ▪ Exploiting pragmatic cues from social contexts ▪ Labelling objects and using object shapes How Children Develop SIEGLER | DELOACHE | EISENBERG | SAFFRAN | Seventh Canadian Edition 21 7  11/5/2024 Pragmatic Cues and Mutual Exclusivity Copyright © 2024 by Macmillan Learning. All rights reserved How Children Develop SIEGLER | DELOACHE | EISENBERG | SAFFRAN | Seventh Canadian Edition 22 First Words (part 5) Copyright © 2024 by Macmillan Learning. All rights reserved ▪ Other potential useful cue to word meaning ▪ Cross-situational word learning ▪ Determining word meanings by tracking correlations between labels and meanings across scenes and contexts ▪ Syntactic bootstrapping ▪ Strategy of using the grammatical structure of whole sentence How Children Develop SIEGLER | DELOACHE | EISENBERG | SAFFRAN | Seventh Canadian Edition 23 Technology and Language Learning Copyright © 2024 by Macmillan Learning. All rights reserved ▪ Passive viewing does not appear to support learning, infants do seem able to learn when they can actively engage with another human, even via screens. ▪ Live video chat is the only acceptable use of technology for infants younger than 2 years of age. ▪ Adult device usage can detract from adults’ responsiveness to children’s needs and from opportunities provide learning opportunities. How Children Develop SIEGLER | DELOACHE | EISENBERG | SAFFRAN | Seventh Canadian Edition 24 8  11/5/2024 Putting Words Together (part 1) Copyright © 2024 by Macmillan Learning. All rights reserved ▪ First sentences ▪ Most children combine words into simple sentences by end of second year. ▪ Telegraphic speech: Short utterances that leave out non-essential words; generally two-word utterances How Children Develop SIEGLER | DELOACHE | EISENBERG | SAFFRAN | Seventh Canadian Edition 25 Putting Words Together (part 2) Copyright © 2024 by Macmillan Learning. All rights reserved ▪ Grammar ▪ Mastery of regularities of language ▪ Increasing ability to recognize patterns and generalize to novel words ▪ Overregularization ▪ Speech errors in which children treat irregular forms of words as if they were regular How Children Develop SIEGLER | DELOACHE | EISENBERG | SAFFRAN | Seventh Canadian Edition 26 Conversational Skills (part 1) Copyright © 2024 by Macmillan Learning. All rights reserved ▪ Private speech ▪ Speech directed to self, rather than another person (Vygotsky) ▪ Collective monologues ▪ Conversation between children involving series of non sequiturs; content of each child’s turn has little or nothing to do with what other child has just said ▪ Narratives ▪ Descriptions of past events that have the basic structure of a story that can be produced by 5 years of age How Children Develop SIEGLER | DELOACHE | EISENBERG | SAFFRAN | Seventh Canadian Edition 27 9  11/5/2024 Conversational Skills (part 2) Copyright © 2024 by Macmillan Learning. All rights reserved ▪ Pragmatic development ▪ Learning how language is used to communicate ▪ Developing conversational perspective-taking and responding appropriately ▪ Using information other than words to further assess conversational meaning How Children Develop SIEGLER | DELOACHE | EISENBERG | SAFFRAN | Seventh Canadian Edition 28 Later Development Copyright © 2024 by Macmillan Learning. All rights reserved ▪ Development of language skills beyond ages 5 or 6 years ▪ Accomplishments in sustaining a conversation ▪ Complex grammar mastered by school-age children ▪ Appreciation of multiple meanings of words ▪ Better comprehension of words ▪ Approximate vocabulary achieved by age: ▪ 6-year-olds – 10,000 words ▪ 5th-graders – 40,000 words ▪ College students – 150,000 words How Children Develop SIEGLER | DELOACHE | EISENBERG | SAFFRAN | Seventh Canadian Edition 29 Chomsky and the Nativist View Copyright © 2024 by Macmillan Learning. All rights reserved ▪ Noam Chomsky countered Skinner’s behaviourism and proposed humans are born with universal grammar. ▪ Proposed set of highly abstract, unconscious rules that are common to all languages ▪ Hard-wired set of rules governing grammar in all languages (nativist) ▪ Many surface differences in languages ▪ Similar underlying structures in all languages How Children Develop SIEGLER | DELOACHE | EISENBERG | SAFFRAN | Seventh Canadian Edition 30 10  11/5/2024 Ongoing Debates in Language Development (part 1) Copyright © 2024 by Macmillan Learning. All rights reserved ▪ To what degree does the explanations lie within the child (nature) versus within the environment (nurture)? ▪ Overlap is found in earliest parent-child communication and words acquired across diverse cultures. ▪ Children learn by paying attention to many cues in language heard, social context in which language used, and speaker intentions. How Children Develop SIEGLER | DELOACHE | EISENBERG | SAFFRAN | Seventh Canadian Edition 31 Ongoing Debates in Language Development (part 2) Copyright © 2024 by Macmillan Learning. All rights reserved ▪ Did the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying language learning evolve solely to support language learning (domain specific) or are they used for learning many different kinds of things (domain general)? ▪ Cognitive abilities that support language development are highly specific to language (Chomsky; Pinker). ▪ Distributional learning mechanisms help infants track sequences. ▪ Mechanisms that support rapid word learning are also used by toddlers to learn facts about objects. ▪ Recent theories concerning developmental language disorders invoke aspects of general cognitive function, not just language. How Children Develop SIEGLER | DELOACHE | EISENBERG | SAFFRAN | Seventh Canadian Edition 32 What Gestures Tell Us About Language Copyright © 2024 by Macmillan Learning. All rights reserved Infants often produce recognizable, meaningful gestures before they speak recognizable words. There is a relationship between infants’ use of gestures and later vocabulary size: infants who gesture more have larger vocabularies when measured months or even years later. Research Gesture-based language of congenitally deaf children Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL) Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (ABSL) How Children Develop SIEGLER | DELOACHE | EISENBERG | SAFFRAN | Seventh Canadian Edition 33 11  11/5/2024 Individual Differences Copyright © 2024 by Macmillan Learning. All rights reserved Developmental Language Disorders ▪ Most significant individual differences are found in developmental language disorders. ▪ Early challenges include speech perception, word segmentation, and sentence comprehension. ▪ More general challenges related to working memory, sequence learning, and processing speed. ▪ Children diagnosed with genetically transmitted disorders (Down syndrome, fragile-X syndrome, and ASD) often experience delays across all aspects of language development. ▪ About 90 percent of deaf children are born to hearing parents and do not have access to sign language. ▪ Cochlear implants How Children Develop SIEGLER | DELOACHE | EISENBERG | SAFFRAN | Seventh Canadian Edition 34 Nonlinguistic Symbols and Development Copyright © 2024 by Macmillan Learning. All rights reserved ▪ Using symbols as information ▪ Primary symbol function is provision of useful information. ▪ Dual representation ▪ Symbolic artifact must be represented mentally as a real object and as a symbol for something other than itself. ▪ Young children have substantial difficulty with dual representation; ability to exploit symbolic artifacts ▪ Young children also have difficulty with self-symbols (child forensics data; cross-culture picture perception data) How Children Develop SIEGLER | DELOACHE | EISENBERG | SAFFRAN | Seventh Canadian Edition 35 Scale-Model Task Copyright © 2024 by Macmillan Learning. All rights reserved ▪ In a test of young children’s ability to use a symbol as a source of information, a 3-year-old child watches as the experimenter hides a miniature troll doll under a pillow in a scale model of an adjacent room. ▪ The child searches successfully for a larger troll doll hidden in the corresponding place in the actual room, indicating that she appreciates the relation between the model and room. How Children Develop SIEGLER | DELOACHE | EISENBERG | SAFFRAN | Seventh Canadian Edition 36 12  11/5/2024 Drawing and Writing (part 1) Copyright © 2024 by Macmillan Learning. All rights reserved ▪ Creating pictures and letters is a symbolic activity that is enhances when pictorial images are in environment. ▪ About 2 ½ year of age: Artistic impulses outstrips motor and planning capabilities in simplified scribbles ▪ Around age 4: Understanding difference between writing and drawing How Children Develop SIEGLER | DELOACHE | EISENBERG | SAFFRAN | Seventh Canadian Edition 37 Drawing and Writing (part 2) Copyright © 2024 by Macmillan Learning. All rights reserved ▪ Creating pictures is a common symbolic activity encouraged by parents and is often accompanied by narratives regarding the drawing. ▪ Children’s early drawings of people typically take a “tadpole” form How Children Develop SIEGLER | DELOACHE | EISENBERG | SAFFRAN | Seventh Canadian Edition 38 13