Chapter 6

On average, children speak their first words between _____ months of age.

10 and 15

The average child knows about 50 words at the age of:

18 months.

How many morphemes are in the English word "unbelievable"?

3

Research indicates that infants are able to pick out their own name from a stream of speech sounds at _____ months.

4 ½-5

Which statement BEST exemplifies the process of semantic development?

A child sees and touches a horse with his mother, who says to her child, "This is a horse."

Which statement BEST exemplifies the process of syntactic development?

A child tries to order words correctly to convey that he wants more juice.

Research has shown that which of the following statements about learning two languages simultaneously is FALSE?

Acquiring two languages simultaneously delays children's language development.

Suja has a 3-year-old daughter with a vast vocabulary and the ability to converse in elaborate sentences. The view of language development proposed by _____ would suggest that Suja taught her daughter language throughout her infancy.

B. F. Skinner

Whose book, entitled Verbal Behavior, posited the idea that children learn to speak by means of reinforcement techniques in the same way that other animals can be taught nonverbal behaviors?

B. F. Skinner

_____ is repetitive consonant-vowel sequences ("bababa . . .") or hand movements (for learners of sign languages) produced during the early phases of language development.

Babbling

What is the main finding of Hart and Risley's (1995) study on the effect of socioeconomic status on children's linguistic experiences?

Children from professional families hear approximately three times as many words as do children whose parents are on welfare and two times as many as do children whose parents are working class.

Drew, a 3-year-old, is given an imaginary verb "wug," and is asked to tell someone a story using the imaginary verb. Drew readily tells his listener that Ernie "wugged" the ball, even though he has never heard the word "wug." Drew's automatic use of the past tense provides evidence for the theory of development associated with _____.

Chomsky

Christopher is a 5-month-old American exposed solely to English. According to the research, which statement would we expect to be TRUE regarding his speech perception?

Christopher can differentiate speech sounds of any language.

_____ refers to an information-processing approach that emphasizes the simultaneous activity of numerous interconnected processing units for language development.

Connectionism

_____ refers to the idea that a symbolic artifact must be represented mentally in two ways at the same time—both as a real object and as a symbol for something other than itself.

Dual representation

Which statement is NOT true of infant-directed speech (IDS)?

IDS is a North American phenomenon.

Which of the following is FALSE about infant-directed speech (IDS)?

Infant-directed speech is present in all of the world's cultures.

Jordan is a 2-day-old newborn baby whose mother speaks both French and English. Which of the following statements best describes Jordan's language perception?

Jordan prefers French and English over Spanish.

_____ is another term for infant-directed speech (IDS).

Motherese

_____ primarily refer to descriptions of past events that have the form of a story.

Narratives

_____ development refers to the acquisition of knowledge about the sound system of a language.

Phonological

_____ refers to the characteristic rhythm, tempo, intonational patterns, and so on, with which a language is spoken.

Prosody

Tristan's 17-month-old daughter has an extensive vocabulary and can create both two- and three-word combinations. B. F. Skinner would say that:

Tristan repeated words and positively reinforced his daughter's attempts at language.

A hard-wired set of principles and rules that govern grammar in all languages is referred to as:

Universal Grammar.

Which statement is TRUE regarding what eye-tracking studies have demonstrated about infants' word learning?

When shown a picture of common foods and body parts, 6-month-olds looked to the correct picture significantly more often than would be expected by chance.

_____ is the process of discovering where words begin and end in fluent speech.

Word segmentation

Only humans acquire language in the normal course of development. This is evidence that language acquisition is:

a species-specific behavior.

The text described the case of Genie, a feral child who was the victim of extraordinarily severe abuse, neglect, and social isolation. This case demonstrates that:

active participation in a language-using community in the early years is crucial to language development.

Toddlers who are developing typically in other domains but whose vocabulary development is lagging at or below the 10th percentile:

are considered "late talkers."

Ian is 7 months old. If he is a typical baby, his parents can expect him to be able to:

babble

Matias is 7 months old. If he is a typical baby, his parents can expect him to have reached the stage of language development where he can _____.

babble

Congenitally deaf babies who are regularly exposed to sign language do "babble" right on schedule—these infants exposed to ASL:

babble manually.

Four-year-old Cecily is just like the other children in her preschool. She exhibits the same interests as her classmates, enjoys playing on the playground with them, and comprehends and abides by her teachers' instructions. Her only difference is that she does not speak. She is MOST likely to:

be labeled a "late talker."

A person who is fluent in two languages is called _____.

bilingual

Research suggests that there are cognitive benefits, not deficits, for those who are _____.

bilingual

The two key prerequisites for language acquisition are a(n) _____ and experience with a human language.

brain

Janet Werker and her colleagues studied infants ranging in age from 6 to 12 months. The infants, all from English-speaking homes, were tested on their ability to discriminate speech contrasts that are not used in English but that are important in two other languages—Hindi and Nthlakapmx. Werker found that:

by the last months of their first year, infants increasingly home in on the speech sounds of their native language, and by 12 months of age, they have "lost" the ability to perceive the speech sounds that are not part of it.

Infants are capable of _____ perception even for speech sounds they have never heard before. This indicates that the phenomenon is innate and experience independent.

categorical

Young infants perceive speech sounds:

categorically, perceiving more phonemic contrasts than do adults.

Deborah tells her 2-year-old daughter to pick up her stuffed rabbit and she picks it up and hands it to her mother. Deborah's 2-year-old daughter is demonstrating language:

comprehension.

An information-processing approach that emphasizes the simultaneous activity of numerous interconnected processing units is called:

connectionism

The time during which language develops readily and after which (sometime between age 5 and puberty) language acquisition is much more difficult and ultimately less successful is called the _____ for language development.

critical period

The phenomenon that, in any language, certain sounds are more likely to appear together than are others is called:

distributional properties.

In order for Margaret to use a map to find her campground, she must have both an understanding that it is a piece of paper with lines and colors on it, and an understanding that the lines and colors on it depict roads, water, mountains, and so on. Margaret must grasp _____ in order to read the map.

dual representation

To eliminate the need for _____, Judy DeLoache used a "shrinking machine" with 2 1/2-year-olds.

dual representation

Susan Carey and Elsa Bartlett's experiment on the color "chromium" was a demonstration of _____.

fast mapping

The process of rapidly learning a new word simply from hearing the contrastive use of a familiar and the unfamiliar word is called _____.

fast mapping

The process of rapidly learning a new word simply from hearing the contrastive use of a familiar and the unfamiliar word is called:

fast mapping.

Because human language has _____, a person can form a sentence that no other person has ever said before.

generativity

A child who uses the word "night-night" to indicate that she wants to take a nap is probably in the _____ period.

holophrastic

The phase in which infants say the words in their small productive vocabulary one word at a time is called the _____ period.

holophrastic

Zach tells his older brother, "Down!" when he wants to be helped down from the swing set. This is an example of _____ speech.

holophrastic

Many deaf children who were raised without exposure to formal sign language develop a form of gestural communication known as _____ signs.

home

Learning _____ is considered a part of phonological development.

how to produce the "f" sound

"Motherese" is another term for:

infant-directed speech.

The exaggerated, emotion-laden way in which adults speak to infants is called:

infant-directed speech.

Janna points out a dog to her 18 month-old daughter Caroline, Caroline looks and as the mother points. Janna then asks Caroline, "Where is the doggy?" and Caroline points at the dog. The two are interacting with a mutual understanding called:

intersubjectivity.

Humans learn language in the normal course of development, but no other nonhuman animals learn human language fully. This is evidence that language acquisition:

is a species-specific behavior.

One example of a symbolic system is:

language

The _____ hypothesis proposes that the human brain contains an innate, self-contained language component separate from other aspects of cognitive functioning.

modularity

In English, the word "chair" contains only one _____.

morpheme

"Houses" contains two _____, or basic units of meaning.

morphemes

Charlie, a 3-year-old, is given the imaginary verb "wug," and is asked to tell someone a story using the imaginary verb. Charlie readily tells his listener that Ernie "wugged" the ball, even though he has never heard the word "wug." Charlie's automatic use of the past tense provides evidence for the _____ view of language.

nativist

The _____ view supports the existence of Universal Grammar.

nativist

Virtually all children who are exposed to language acquire it. This supports the _____ view of language development.

nativist

Which view of language development supports the existence of Universal Grammar?

nativist

A child's early productive vocabulary consists mostly of _____, perhaps because their meaning is easier to acquire through observation.

nouns

After learning a word, children use it to describe other objects. The term for this process is _____.

overextension

The use of a given word in a broader context than is appropriate is called:

overextension

The process of applying verbal labels too broadly is called:

overextension.

"The mans goed to the store" is an example of _____.

overregularization

Instead of saying "feet," 4-year-old Rosalie says "foots." This error is an example of _____.

overregularization

Instead of saying "feet," 4-year-old Jasper says "foots." This error is an example of:

overregularization.

Young children are MOST likely to draw:

people

The elementary units of sound used to produce languages are called _____, whereas morphemes are the basic units of meaning.

phonemes

The elementary units of sound used to produce languages are called _____, and _____ are the smallest units of meaning in a language.

phonemes; morphemes

Miriam sees a bubble in the air and yells "bubba" excitedly. Miriam in the process of _____ development.

phonological

The FIRST step in children's language learning is _____ development, which refers to developing a mastery of the sound system of their language:

phonological

The acquisition of knowledge about the sound system of a language is known as _____ development.

phonological

Much of human language is processed in the left hemisphere of the brain, but some components, such as _______ are processed in the right hemisphere.

pitch

According to B. F. Skinner, infant communication progresses because of _____.

positive reinforcement

The acquisition of the understanding of how language is typically used to communicate is called _____ development.

pragmatic

A young child who blurts out inappropriate comments to other people in social situations has yet to grasp:

pragmatics

Newborn babies:

prefer the language their mother speaks to an unknown language.

The term "collective monologues" is used to describe the common pattern of conversation among:

preschoolers.

Actually speaking, writing, and reading is referred to as language _____.

production

While taking a walk with his parents, 2-year-old DeMarcus sees a cat and looks at his parents and says "kitty." DeMarcus is demonstration language:

production

Infants with bilingual mothers:

respond to both languages their mother speaks and can differentiate between them.

Fabian is currently learning the meanings of words. He is in the middle of a process known as _____ development.

semantic

Sabine now understands to add (-s) to the word "horse" to indicate that there is more than one horse. Sabine is beginning to grasp the process of _____ development.

semantic

To eliminate the need for dual representation, Judy DeLoache used _____ with 2 1/2-year-olds.

shrinking machine

Language is a _____ behavior, which means that only humans acquire language in the normal course of development.

species-specific

Human beings use _____ to represent and communicate thoughts, feelings, and knowledge.

symbols

The text's example of children learning the new word "kradding" illustrates the process known as:

syntactic bootstrapping.

Jesse understands that he must say, "Push me on the swing," and not, "Swing me on the push." Jesse has attained an understanding of:

syntax

Jonica understands that she must say, "Please pass the peas," and not, "Peas the pass please." Jonica has attained an understanding of:

syntax

Two-year-old Marius tells his babysitter, "Drink juice." This is an example of:

telegraphic speech.

Research on the learning of two languages has shown that:

there is no evidence of a language delay in children when they are learning two languages at the same time.

Janell is 12 months old. If she is a typical baby, her parents can expect her to be able to:

understand and speak some simple words.

The speech sounds /b/ and /p/ differ only in _____.

voice onset time