PSYC 21021 Lecture 1: Prelinguistic Speech Processing PDF

PSYC 21021 Topics and Issues in Developmental Psychology Lecture 1: Prelinguistic...

PSYC 21021 Topics and Issues in Developmental Psychology Lecture 1: Prelinguistic Speech Processing Dr. Alissa Ferry University of Manchester Image: Ve slunci (Procházka zlatá cesta), Josef Čapek (1935)  PSYC21021: Topics in Developmental Psychology LEARNING HOW TO BE A HUMAN In Year 1, a broad overview of developmental psychology. In 21021, an in-depth focus on the development of skills that are unique or special in humans and how those skills develop. Language (the unique communication system of humans) Social-cognitive skills (the unique way that humans interact with each other) Lectures and Lecturers Part I: How children learn language Early cognitive and social precursors to language development (Weeks 1 & 2, Alissa Ferry) Early word learning (Week 3, Alissa Ferry) Combining words (Weeks 4 & 5, Anna Theakston) Part II: How children learn to interact with others The development of self-awareness (Week 7) The importance of play (Week 8) Moral development (Week 9) Understanding others and theory of mind (Week 10) All taught by Bahar Koymen Early language development: Overview Early pre-linguistic skills (Lecture 1) How do infants process speech? Intention reading/social skills (Lecture 2) How do infants communicate with others before language? Early word learning (Lecture 3) How do infants start to link sounds and meaning (i.e., word learning) Early language development: Aims To document the early stages of language development. To consider the role of early speech processing in the child’s development of language. To evaluate how social skills play a role in language acquisition. To evaluate how children begin to learn word meanings.  Language is generative. Language Language is comprised of small Basics (1) units that are combined (phonology) Language conveys meaning (semantics) Language Basics (2) Languages have rules about how words go together (syntax) A bites the dog man. The dog bites a man. The man bites a dog. Subject-verb-object in English Language is social Languages across the world Outline What sounds are in my language? Prosody Phonemes How do I find the words? Statistics Prosody Frequency How are the words organized? Frequency Pattern finding Infant Designs Preference studies With no training, what do infants want to listen (or look) to. Habituation/familiarisation studies First, we train infants and then measure what they prefer. Change detection studies We train infants to respond to a change (can infants tell the difference between two things)  What sounds are in my language? Prosody The pattern of stress and intonation in a language. Languages have different prosodic patterns Phonemes The perceptually distinct units of sound in a language that distinguish one word from another (e.g., p, b, d, t) Pat, bat, bad, pad Languages differ in the sounds that they use as phonemes to indicate a speaker's intonation : variation in pitch used & emotions. attitude Early Phonological Development: Prosody (1) What sounds are in my language? Prosody The pattern of stress and intonation in a language. Languages have different prosodic patterns Phonemes The perceptually distinct units of sound in a language that distinguish one word from another (e.g., p, b, d, t) Pat, bat, bad, pad Languages differ in the sounds that they use as phonemes  Early Phonological Development: Prosody (2) The foetal auditory system is fully functioning during the last trimester. Newborns : prefer their own mother’s voice (De Caspar & Fifer, 1980). discriminate languages with different prosody (German/Spanish) but not languages of similar prosody (English/Dutch) (Nazzi et al., 1998) prefer their native language compared to a foreign language (Moon et al., 1993). cry with an “accent” (Mampe et al., 2009). Early Phonological Development: Phonemes (1) Phonemes are the sounds that distinguish words (e.g., pat/bat, sip/zip). Other languages have phoneme contrasts that are not in English. Across the world’s, there are about 600 consonants and 200 vowels. But any language uses about 40. Children’s babble – initially wide range of sounds. In first year move towards producing only sounds of target language (Levitt and Wang, 1991).  Early Phonological Development: Phonemes (3) At 1-2months, infants can discriminate between all sounds, even foreign ones. Adults only discriminate those in their language (Eimas et al, 1979; Miyawaki et al., 1975 ). Between 7-11 months, systematic decline in ability to distinguish sounds from non- target language and increase for target language. (Kuhl et al, 2006) Early Phonological Development: Phonemes (2) Outline (2) What sounds are in my language? Prosody Phonemes How do I find the words? Statistics Prosody Frequency How are the words organized? Frequency Pattern finding  Finding the words (1) Figure from Kuhl (2004)  Infants can segment words from Finding the their language at ~ 7.5 months, words (2) but not 6 months (Jusczyk & Aslin, 1995). Finding the words: Statistics(1) Infants are surprisingly Happy baby sophisticated statisticians. Pretty baby Happy doggy Track the co-occurrence of Pretty doggy syllables. Syllables that co-occur often are likely part of the H-A-P is always followed by P-P-Y same word. P-R-E is always followed by T-T-Y B--A is always followed by B-Y D-O is always followed by G-G-Y BUT P-P-Y is followed sometimes by B-- A and sometimes by D-O T-Y is followed sometimes by B--A and sometimes by D-O  Finding the words: Statistics(2) Experiment with 8-month-olds using highly controlled made-up language (Saffran et al., 1996). Infants listen longer to Part-Words, suggesting they found the words in the stream. Finding the words: Prosody (1) Infant directed speech (IDS), Christia, 2013 Higher pitched Slower speaking rate. Important words are generally at the end and are exaggerated more. The boundaries between phrases are enhanced, making it easier to segment speech. Infants prefer to listen to IDS and interact with people who use IDS. More attentive around IDS Infant-directed speech example Finding the Infants segment speech better with IDS than adult-directed words: speech (ADS) (Theissen, Hill & Prosody (2) Saffran, 2005)  Finding the words: Frequency (1) Highly frequent salient words (e.g., Mummy, child’s name) Highly frequent linguistic words (e.g., the, he/she) These words act as an “anchor”. If you can identify a word in the speech stream you can identify one boundary of the adjacent words Finding the Highly familiar words (own name, “Mommy”) help 6-month-olds words: segment words (Bortfeld et al., 2005) Frequency (2) Baby Maggie recognized words next to the name "Maggie" and baby Hanna recognized words next to the name "Hanna" Recall that 6-month-olds fail in the Jusczyk & Aslin (1995) study.  Some linguistic categories of words Finding the (e.g., articles the, a, his, hers, conjunctions and, or) are highly words: frequent. Frequency (3) Infants can use “the” to segment nouns at 8 months (Shi & Lepage, 2008) At test, infants listened longer to an isolated word that was taught with a real function word Outline (3) What sounds are in my language? Prosody Phonemes How do I find the words? Statistics Prosody Frequency How are the words organized? Frequency Pattern finding  How are words organised? The dog chased the squirrel in the park. The squirrel chased the dog in the park. Chased in squirrel the park in dog the. Order matters! Finding the patterns: Frequency (1) Many highly frequent words are function words. Grammatical function How would you describe this stream to someone else? Su is beginning Su is in the middle Su is at the end Finding the patterns: Frequency (2) In English, function words tend to go to before (articles, pronouns, prepositions): An apple The dog You ran They swam On the table Under the chair But not in all languages In order to learn syntax, infants need to learn the word order. Finding the In Japanese, the order is switched patterns: Articles are after the noun, postposition rather than prepositions. Frequency (3) Infants are sensitive to this by 8 months (Gervain et al., 2008) Italian is a frequent-first language; Japanese is a frequent-final language. Finding the patterns: Frequency (4) Italian 8-month-olds listen longer to frequent-first Japanese 8-month-olds listen longer to frequent-final By 8 months, infants have started to learn some of the ordering rules for their language. Finding the patterns: Rule-learning (1) Syntax requires learning the abstract rules of a language. But can infants learn abstract rules? The red car (grammatically correct) *The car red (grammatically incorrect) The boy is jumping (grammatically correct) *The boy is jump (grammatically incorrect) The girl eating cake is happy (grammatically correct) The girls eating cake are happy (grammatically correct) *The girls eating cake is happy (grammatically incorrect) *The girl eating cake are happy(grammatically incorrect) Finding the patterns: Rule-learning (2) Syntax requires learning the abstract rules of a language. But can infants learn abstract rules? 6-month-olds could learn an abstract rule with linguistic stimuli (Marcus et al., 1999) Those familiarized to ABA pattern listened longer to ABB Those familiarized to ABB pattern listened longer to ABA Conclusions and Issues Infants make rapid strides in language acquisition over the first year. Identifying sounds, statistics, patterns, word boundaries Early preferences and skills for starting to crack language complexities. Infants tune the specifics of their language (sounds, order) well before they begin to speak. Conclusions and Issues To learn language infants must be able to: Identify the sounds the make up their language Segment speech into smaller units (words) Figure out how those smaller units are organized to convey specific meanings Conclusions and Issues (critical analyses!) How much of language acquisition can these skills explain? What else might be needed to learn language? Hint: other lectures! Infants show impressive skills with highly controlled experiments (e.g., Saffran et al., 1999). But the real world is messier. Why do we do these highly controlled experiments? Do you think these studies tell us anything about how infants acquire language? What additional studies would convince you? Hint: The paper authors will often talk about these issues in their discussions!  Reference List (1) Bortfeld , H., Morgan, J. L., Golinkoff , R. M., & Rathbun , K. (2005). Mommy and me: Familiar names help launch babies into speech-stream segmentation. Psychological Science , 16 (4), 298-304. Cristia , A. (2013). Input to language: The phonetics and perception of infant‐directed speech. Language and Linguistics Compass , 7 (3), 157-170. DeCasper , A. J., & Fifer, W. P. (1980). Of human bonding: Newborns prefer their mothers' voices. Science , 208 (4448), 1174-1176. Eimas , P. D., & Tartter , V. C. (1979). On the development of speech perception: Mechanisms and analogies. In Advances in Child Development and Behavior (Vol. 13, pp. 155-193). JAI. Gervain , J., Nespor , M., Mazuka , R., Horie , R., & Mehler , J. (2008). Bootstrapping word order in prelexical infants: A Japanese–Italian cross-linguistic study. Cognitive Psychology , 57 (1), 56-74. Jusczyk , P. W., & Aslin , R. N. (1995). Infants′ detection of the sound patterns of words in fluent speech. Cognitive Psychology , 29 (1), 1-23. Kirkham, N. Z., Slemmer, J. A., & Johnson, S. P. (2002). Visual statistical learning in infancy: Evidence for a domain general learning mechanism. Cognition, 83(2), B35-B42. Kuhl , P. K., Stevens, E., Hayashi, A., Deguchi , T., Kiritani , S., & Iverson, P. (2006). Infants show a facilitation effect for native language phonetic perception between 6 and 12  Reference List (2) Kuhl, Patricia K. "Early language acquisition: cracking the speech code." Nature reviews neuroscience 5.11 (2004): 831-843. Levitt, A. G., & Wang, Q. (1991). Evidence for language-specific rhythmic influences in the reduplicative babbling of French-and English-learning infants. Language and Speech , 34 (3), 235-249. Mampe , B., Friederici , A. D., Christophe, A., & Wermke , K. (2009). Newborns' cry melody is shaped by their native language. Current Biology , 19 (23), 1994-1997. Marcus, G. F., Vijayan , S., Rao , S. B., & Vishton , P. M. (1999). Rule learning by seven-month-old infants. Science , 283 (5398), 77-80. Miyawaki , K., Jenkins, J. J., Strange, W., Liberman , A. M., Verbrugge , R., & Fujimura, O. (1975). An effect of linguistic experience: The discrimination of [r] and [l] by native speakers of Japanese and English. Perception & Psychophysics , 18 (5), 331-340. Moon, C., Cooper, R. P., & Fifer, W. P. (1993). Two-day-olds prefer their native language. Infant Behavior and Development , 16 (4), 495-500. Nazzi , T., Bertoncini , J., & Mehler , J. (1998). Language discrimination by newborns: toward an understanding of the role of rhythm. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance , 24 (3), 756. Saffran , J. R., Aslin , R. N., & Newport, E. L. (1996). Statistical learning by 8-month-old infants. Science , 274 (5294), 1926-1928. Saffran, J. R., Johnson, E. K., Aslin, R. N., & Newport, E. L. (1999). Statistical learning of tone sequences by human infants and adults. Cognition, 70(1), 27-52. Shi, R., & Lepage , M. (2008). The effect of functional morphemes on word segmentation in preverbal infants. Developmental Science , 11 (3), 407-413. Thiessen , E. D., Hill, E. A., & Saffran , J. R. (2005). Infant-directed speech facilitates word segmentation. Infancy , 7 (1), 53-71.  Supplementary Reading (1) There are some suggested readings for this lecture. Some provide a comprehensive overview of some of the topics, and some are specific research papers that we will go over in the lecture. You are not required to read all of them but should focus on the papers that will most help you understand the material (e.g., topics that you understand less well, topics that you would like to understand in more depth). Overview material: Kuhl, P. K. (2004). Early language acquisition: cracking the speech code. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 5(11), 831-843. (this is an excellent and very in-depth review of the topics we cover here and expends upon them to help you build a clear understanding). Ambridge, B., & Lieven, E. V. M. (n.d.). Child Language Acquisition, doi:10.1017/cbo9780511975073.001 (Chapter 2) (this book is available through the library and provides an in-depth look at speech perception and processing in infants). Research papers: Kuhl, P. K., Stevens, E., Hayashi, A., Deguchi, T., Kiritani, S., & Iverson, P. (2006). Infants show a facilitation effect for native language phonetic perception between 6 and 12 months. Developmental science, 9(2), F13-F21. (this is a nice example of the change detection paradigm and what happens with perceptual narrowing). Bortfeld, H., Morgan, J. L., Golinkoff, R. M., & Rathbun, K. (2005). Mommy and me: Familiar names help launch babies into speech-stream segmentation. Psychological science, 16(4), 298-304. (this is a study we talk about in the lecture with how infants use highly salient words to help segment speech). Jusczyk, P. W., & Aslin, R. N. (1995). Infants′ Detection of the Sound Patterns of Words in Fluent Speech. Cognitive Psychology, 29(1), 1–23. doi:10.1006/cogp.1995.1010 (this is a study we talk about in-depth in the lecture with how infants recognize words in fluent speech in their language).  Supplementary Reading (2) Research papers: Saffran, J. R., Aslin, R. N., & Newport, E. L. (1996). Statistical Learning by 8-Month-Old Infants. Science, 274(5294), 1926–1928. doi:10.1126/science.274.5294.1926 (this is a study we talk about in-depth in the lecture with how infants use statistical cues to segment words using simple nonsense "languages"). Thiessen, E. D., Hill, E. A., & Saffran, J. R. (2005). Infant-directed speech facilitates word segmentation. Infancy, 7(1), 53-71. (this is a study we talk about in-depth in the lecture with how infants use the exaggerated prosodic contours of infant-directed speech top help segment words from simple nonsense "language"). Fló, A., Brusini, P., Macagno, F., Nespor, M., Mehler, J., & Ferry, A. L. (2019). Newborns are sensitive to multiple cues for word segmentation in continuous speech. Developmental science, e12802. (this is a research paper by Alissa looking at speech segmentation in newborns using statistical cues and prosody. The intro provides an excellent look at the topics that we discuss here, but don't worry too much about the neuroimaging methods). Shi, R., & Lepage, M. (2008). The effect of functional morphemes on word segmentation in preverbal infants. Developmental Science, 11(3), 407-413. (this is a study we talk about in the lecture with how infants use frequent cues in language to help segment speech). Gervain, J., Nespor, M., Mazuka, R., Horie, R., & Mehler, J. (2008). Bootstrapping word order in prelexical infants: A Japanese–Italian cross-linguistic study. Cognitive psychology, 57(1), 56-74. (this is a study we talk about in the lecture with how infants use frequent cues in language to identify patterns). Marcus, G. F., Vijayan, S., Rao, S. B., & Vishton, P. M. (1999). Rule learning by seven-month-old infants. Science, 283(5398), 77-80. DOI: 10.1126/science.283.5398.77 (this is a study we talk about in- depth in the lecture with how infants identify patterns, specifically repetition based patterns in language ).  Supplementary Videos A TED talk by Patricia Kuhl about how infants tune to their language  Supplementary Videos Some information about speech segmentation and infant- directed speech (note that infant-directed speech is often also called child-directed speech, or parentese).  Supplementary Videos A video looking at the Saffran et al., 1996 paper.  Supplementary Videos A video from a BBC Documentary about infant-directed speech