PSY 213 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Feral Child, Critical Period, Psy
Chapter 6 – Devel’ of Language + Symbol Use PSY 213
FEB 7/18
Language devel’
Nonlinguistic symbols & devel’
Themes
- Nature + nurture
- Sociocultural context
- Individual differences
Language Devel: Symbols
Symbols
- Systems for representing thoughts, feelings, + knowledge, and communicating them to
others
Symbol use
- Creative + flexible capacity that most sets of humans apart from other species
Language Devel’: Comprehension + Production
In utero: learning native language rhythm + word meaning
5 yrs: children master basic structure of their native language (verbal or manual)
- By the age of 5, children are capable of generating totally novel sentences that are correct
in terms of the phonology, semantics, and syntax of their native language. They are also
able to make appropriate pragmatic inferences regarding the content of their partner's
utterances.
Language requires comprehension + production
Language Devel’: Components of Language
All human languages share similarities
Sounds are combined
to form words
Words are combined
to form sentences
Sentences are formed
to compose stories,
conversations, +
other narratives
GENERATIVITY
Required competencies
- Phonological, semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic development and metalinguistic
knowledge are entailed in language learning.
Language Devel’: Required Competencies for Learning Language
Phonological devel’
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Chapter 6 – Devel’ of Language + Symbol Use PSY 213
FEB 7/18
- Acquisition of knowledge about phonemes, the elementary units of sound that distinguish
meaning
Semantic devel’
- Learning the system for expressing meaning in a language, beginning with morphemes,
the smallest unit of meaning in a language
Syntactic devel’
- Learning the syntax or rules for combining words
Pragmatic devel’
- Acquiring knowledge of how language is used, which includes understanding a variety of
conversational conventions
Metalinguistic devel’
- Understanding the properties and functions of language
Language Devel’: What is Required for Language?
- You must have experience with a language to develop it.
The key to full-fledged language development is a human brain and a human environment.
- Language is a species-specific behaviour.
- Only humans acquire a communication system with the complexity, structure, and
generativity of language.
- Language is also species-universal: Virtually all humans develop language.
Brain-Language Relations
- Language processing involves a substantial degree of functional localization in the brain.
- Left hemisphere; increased hemispheric specialization for language
- Studies of individuals with brain damage resulting in aphasia provide evidence of
specialization for language within the left hemisphere.
- Damage to Broca's area and to Wernicke's area
Critical period for language development
- Children must be exposed to other people using signed/spoken language.
- Sometime between 5 years - puberty, language acquisition becomes much more difficult
and ultimately less successful.
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Chapter 6 – Devel’ of Language + Symbol Use PSY 213
FEB 7/18
Evidence of Critical Period
- Difficulties feral children (such as Genie) have in acquiring language in adolescence
- Comparisons of the effects of brain damage suffered at different ages on language
- Language capabilities of bilingual adults who acquired their second language at different
ages
Bilingual children
- More than half of the world's children are exposed to more than one language.
- Children who are acquiring two languages do not seem to confuse them.
- Bilingual children perform better on a variety of cognitive tests than do monolingual
children.
- Longer attention spans
- Able to switch tasks quickly
A Human Environment
Infant-directed talk (IDT)
- Distinctive mode of speech that adults adopt when talking to babies and very young
children
- Common throughout the world, but not universal
- Preferred by infants
Language Acquisition: Speech Perception
Prosody
- Sensitivity to spoken language in characteristic: rhythm, tempo, cadence, melody,
intonation
- Accounts for much variation in sounds of language w/in + between cultures
Categorical perception of speech sounds
- Involves perception of speech sounds as belonging to discrete categories
Studying the perception of voice onset time (VOT)
- Recordings of two phonemes (/b/ + /p/) occurring along VOT continuum presented
- Adult + infant categorizations of new + old speech sounds measured
Developmental Changes in Speech Perception
- Infants' ability to discriminate between speech sounds not in their native language
declines between 6 and 12 mos.
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Document Summary
Systems for representing thoughts, feelings, + knowledge, and communicating them to others. Creative + flexible capacity that most sets of humans apart from other species. In utero: learning native language rhythm + word meaning. 5 yrs: children master basic structure of their native language (verbal or manual) By the age of 5, children are capable of generating totally novel sentences that are correct in terms of the phonology, semantics, and syntax of their native language. They are also able to make appropriate pragmatic inferences regarding the content of their partner"s utterances. Sentences are formed to compose stories, conversations, + other narratives. Phonological, semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic development and metalinguistic knowledge are entailed in language learning. Acquisition of knowledge about phonemes, the elementary units of sound that distinguish meaning. Learning the system for expressing meaning in a language, beginning with morphemes, the smallest unit of meaning in a language. Learning the syntax or rules for combining words.
