HDFS 3312: CHILD DEVELOPMENT- CHAPTER 9: LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION

b. Early sentences are called telegraphic because they include only words essential to meaning.

11. Which of the following statements about children's early sentences is correct? a. The sentences are based on rules that differ from language to language. b. Early sentences are called telegraphic because they include only words essential to meaning. c. As children speak in longer sentences, they no longer need grammatical morphemes.

c. Infant-directed speech is used frequently by adults who care for children.

3. Which of the following statements about infant- directed speech is correct? a. It is useful because infants ignore it. b. Infant-directed speech contains few changes in pitch or volume and is unexpressive emotionally. c. Infant-directed speech is used frequently by adults who care for children.

a. babbling shifts from single syllable utterances to combinations of different sounds

4. As infants develop, ______________. a. babbling shifts from single syllable utterances to combinations of different sounds b. babbling is replaced by cooing c. babbling no longer resembles the sound patterns of their native language

Different approaches to explaining children's acquisition of grammar

Behaviorist- by imitating speech they hear. Linguistic- with inborn mechanisms that allow children to infer the grammatical rules of their native language. Cognitive- using powerful cognitive mechanisms that allow children to find recurring patterns in the speech they hear. Social Interaction- In the context of social interactions with adults in which both parties want improved communication.

b. can discriminate sounds found in their native language as well as sounds not present in their native language

1. Infants who are younger than five months of age ______________. a. must experience speech sounds in their environment to be able to discriminate them b. can discriminate sounds found in their native language as well as sounds not present in their native language c. cannot discriminate any speech sounds, which explains why they cannot talk

a. are more skilled at switching between tasks

10. Compared with monolingual children, bilingual children ______________. a. are more skilled at switching between tasks b. pass most language milestones sooner c. are more confused about the symbolic nature of language

b. there is a critical period for language learning

12. The idea that children are born with a mechanism that helps them master grammar is supported by the finding that ______________. a. most regions of the brain are involved in processing language b. there is a critical period for language learning c. chimpanzees easily learn rudimentary grammar

a. cognitive

13. Which approach argues that children master grammar by using powerful skills to detect regularities in the speech they hear? a. cognitive b. behaviorist c. social-interaction

c. by taking the speaker and listener roles before infants says their first words

14. Parents encourage turn taking ______________. a. soon after babies say their first words b. but not until their children have entered school c. by taking the speaker and listener roles before infants says their first words

a. Based on their listener's age and knowledge, preschoolers change what they say.

15. Which statement accurately describes young children's communicative skills? a. Based on their listener's age and knowledge, preschoolers change what they say. b. When preschool children hear an ambiguous message, they typically ask the speaker to clarify what he or she meant. c. Preschool children readily interpret messages that include complex metaphors and sarcasm.

b. notice syllables that go together frequently

2. To pick out individual words from a steady stream of speech, infants ______________. a. pay more attention to unstressed syllables than stressed syllables b. notice syllables that go together frequently c. ignore function words and concentrate on words that have meaning

a. symbols

5. A child's first word probably reflects the child's mastery of ______________. a. symbols b. vowels c. intonation

a. learn the referents of words with surprisingly few presentations

6. As young children learn new words, they ______________. a. learn the referents of words with surprisingly few presentations b. systematically consider all possible hypotheses about the connection between the word and the correct referent c. learn equally well from credible and uncredible sources

a. A name refers to the whole object, not to its parts.

7. Which of the following accurately describes the rules children use to learn new words? a. A name refers to the whole object, not to its parts. b. A name refers to one particular object not to all objects of the same type. c. If an object already has a name and another name is presented, children replace the old name with the new one.

b. reflect differences in children's ability to remember speech sounds

8. Individual differences in the size of children's vocabulary ______________. a. are unrelated to heredity b. reflect differences in children's ability to remember speech sounds c. have been linked to parents' speech: children learn fewer words when their parents' speech is grammatically sophisticated

a. encourage their children to read

9. If parents want to help their children learn more words, then parents should ______________. a. encourage their children to read b. avoid asking their children too many questions c. urge their children to watch a variety of TV programs, particularly cartoons

Promoting Language Development

Adults eager to promote children's language development can follow a few guidelines: 1. Talk with children frequently and treat them as partners in conversation. That is, try talking with children interactively, not directively. 2. Use a child's speech to show new language forms. Expand a child's remark to introduce new vocabulary or new grammatical form 3. Encourage children to go beyond minimal use of language. Have them answer questions in phrases and sentences, not single words. Have them replace vague words such as stuff or somebody with more descriptive ones. 4. Listen. This guideline has two parts. First, because children often talk slowly, it's tempting for adults to complete their sentences for them. Don't. Let children express themselves. Second, pay attention to what children are saying and respond appropriately. Let children learn that language works. 5. Make language fun. Use books, rhymes, songs, jokes, and foreign words to increase a child's interest in learning language.

fast mapping

Children's ability to connect new words to their meanings so rapidly that they cannot be considering all possible meanings for the new word is termed fast mapping. joint attention Parents encourage word learning by carefully watching what interests their children. When toddlers touch or look at an object, parents often label it for them. Seeing their toddler pointing to a banana, a parent says, "Banana, that's a banana." Such labeling in the context of joint attention promotes word learning, particularly when infants and toddlers participate actively, direct- ing their parents' attention (Beuker et al., 2013). Constraints on Word names Joint attention simplifies word learning for children, but the problem still remains: How does a toddler know that banana refers to the object that she's touching, as opposed to her activity (touching) or to the object's color? Young children follow several simple rules that constrain their inferences about a word's meaning. These rules have been revealed with methods illustrated in a study by Au and Glusman (1990). Preschoolers were shown a monkey-like stuffed animal with pink horns and the researcher called it a mido. Mido was then repeated several times, always referring to the stuffed animal with pink horns. Later, these youngsters were asked to find a theri in a set of stuffed animals that included several mido. Never having heard of a theri, what did the children do? They never picked a mido; instead, they selected other stuffed animals. Knowing that mido referred to monkey-like animals with pink horns, they decided that theri had to refer to another stuffed animal. • If an unfamiliar word is heard in the presence of objects that already have names and objects that don't, the word refers to one of the objects that doesn't have a name. Researchers have discovered several other simple rules that help children match words with the correct referent (Hoff, 2009; Woodward & Markman, 1998): • A name refers to a whole object, not its parts or its relation to other objects, and refers not just to this particular object but to all objects of the same type (Hollich, Golinkoff, & Hirsh-Pasek, 2007). "Dinosaur" • If an object already has a name and another name is presented, the new name denotes a subcategory of the original name. "T-rex" • Given many similar category members, a word applied consistently to only one of them is a proper noun. "Dino" Sentence Cues Children hear many unfamiliar words embedded in sentences containing words they already know. The other words and the overall sentence structure can be helpful clues to a word's meaning Cognitive Factors The naming explosion coincides with a time of rapid cognitive growth, and children's increased cognitive skills help them to learn new words. As children's thinking becomes more sophisticated and, in particular, as they start to have goals and intentions, language becomes a means to express those goals and to achieve them Developmental Change in Word Learning Before 18 months, infants learn words relatively slowly—often just one new word each day. At this age, children rely heavily on simple attentional processes (e.g., the shape bias) to learn new words. But by 24 months, most children are learning many new words daily. This faster learning reflects children's greater use of language cues (e.g., constraints on names) and a speaker's social cues. At any age, infants and toddlers rely on a mixture of word-learning tools, but with age they gradually move away from attentional cues and toward language and social cues. Naming Errors These many ways of learning new words are not perfect; initial mappings of words onto meanings are often only partially correct (Hoff & Naigles, 2002). A common mistake is underextension, defining a word too narrowly. Using car to refer only to the family car and ball to a favorite toy ball represent underextension. Between 1 and 3 years, children sometimes make the opposite error, overextension, defining a word too broadly. Children may use car to also refer to buses and trucks or use doggie to refer to all four-legged animals. The overextension error occurs more frequently when children are producing words than when they are comprehending words. Two-year-old Jason may say "doggie" to refer to a goat but nevertheless correctly point to a picture of a goat when asked. Because overextension is more common in word production, it may reflect another fast-mapping rule that children follow: "If you can't remember the name for an object, say the name of a related object" (Naigles & Gelman, 1995). Both underextension and overextension disappear gradually as youngsters refine meanings for words with more exposure to language.

cochlear implant

cochlear implant is a device that picks up speech sounds and converts them to electrical impulses that stimulate nerve cells in the ear. Cochlear implants are a tremendous benefit for people who lose their hearing after they master language. Cochlear implants also promote language acquisition in deaf children. When children deaf from birth receive cochlear implants, their spoken language skills end up substantially better than those of children who do not have cochlear implants. In fact, after receiving cochlear implants, some deaf children acquire lan- guage at roughly the same rate as children with normal hearing (Svirsky et al., 2000; Wie et al., 2007). Age of implantation matters as does the extent to the child's hearing loss. Cochlear implants are more successful with children who are younger and who have some residual hearing. The quality of the child's language environment also contributes: Children with cochlear implants learn language more rapidly when their parents provide a stimulating language environment, particularly when they frequently talk about what the child is looking at or doing (Cruz et al., 2013). a cochlear implant is an effective tool that can enhance language in children who are deaf, particularly when children receive implants when they are young. not a cure: following implantation, parents need to provide a particularly rich language experience for their children to master language.