Deck 10: Early Language Acquisition

Question 1

A child's use of idiomorphs is important because it indicates that:

A) objects can be named consistently
B) objects can have personal names
C) objects have permanence
D) objects can be categorized

Answer 1

objects can be named consistently

Question 2

Children babble more often:

A) when adults are nearby
B) when other children are nearby
C) when they are alone
D) when spoken to

Answer 2

when they are alone

Question 3

Werker and Tees (1984) examined how infants from English-speaking families perceived phonemic contrasts from other languages (Hindi and (Salish/Thompson). The study showed that:

A) infant girls were better at perceiving non-native contrasts than infant boys were
B) infants perceived Hindi contrasts better than the Salish/Thompson contrasts
C) the youngest infants studied could distinguish both contrasts, but the older infants could not
D) none of the infants could distinguish any of the contrasts

Answer 3

the youngest infants studied could distinguish both contrasts, but the older infants could not

Question 4

A child's communicative act that involves the use of adults as a means to obtain objects is a(n):

A) declarative
B) performative
C) request
D) assertion

Question 5

According to the text, true communication rests on an understanding of the concept of:

A) communicative intent
B) sensorimotor functioning
C) secondary circular reactions
D) given and new information

Question 6

According to the text, knowing how to use gestures and words to show off objects, make assertions, and make requests are aspects of:

A) fis phenomena
B) early phonology
C) communicative competence
D) discrimination performance

Question 7

The Werker and Tees (1984) study suggested that our ability to perceive phonemic distinctions:

A) is set at infancy and does not decline with age.
B) is only complete if, as infants, we are exposed to speech sounds that do not occur within our native language
C) is fully-developed at infancy and declines rapidly over the first year of life
D) depends entirely on the number and type of phonemes within our native language

Question 8

The study by DeCasper and Spence (1986), in which mothers-to-be read a Dr. Seuss book aloud during the last few weeks of their pregnancies, found evidence for:

A) prenatal learning and retention
B) the role of attachment in language acquisition
C) the soothing effect of adult reading on children
D) all of the above

Question 9

In Eimas et al's (1971) study, 1- and 4-month-old infants responded to syllables whose initial consonant varied in its VOT value. The results of the study showed that:

A) neither group of infants was able to perceive the differences in the speech sounds
B) both groups of infants heard differences in speech sounds, but nether was able to organize them into speech categories
C) only the 4-month-olds were able to perceive differences in speech sounds and organize them into categories
D) both groups were able to perceive differences in speech sounds and organize them into categories

Question 10

The (intonation) pitch used in child-directed speech:

A) mirrors the pitch contour of the child's voice
B) is purposefully more monotonous than in speech directed to an adult
C) does not differ from speech directed to an adult
D) is intentionally more exaggerated than speech directed to an adult

Question 11

Mehler et al (1988) showed that infants can distinguish intonational contours in their maternal language and those in another language by:

A) one year
B) six months
C) two months
D) four days

Question 12

The fis phenomenon refers to the observation that:

A) children simplify adult words in their pronunciation
B) children imitate adult intonational patterns very early in life
C) children can perceive phonological distinctions that they are unable to produce
D) children cannot discriminate words any better than they can identify them

Question 13

Which of the following reflects the sequence of children's early vocalizations?

A) crying, babbling, assimilation, cooing
B) babbling, cooing, coalescence, ideomorphs
C) cooing, babbling, idiomorphs, holophrases
D) cooing, babbling, holophrases, assimilation

Question 14

Lasky, Syrdal-Lasky, and Klein (1975) presented Guatemalan infants from 4 to 6.5 months with VOT contrasts corresponding to English, Thai, and Spanish phonemes. They found that the infants distinguished:

A) the English and Thai phonemes, but not the Spanish phonemes
B) the Spanish phonemes, but not the English or Thai phonemes
C) the Spanish and Thai phonemes, but not the English phonemes
D) the Spanish, English, and Thai phonemes

Question 15

According to Piaget, infants' behavior becomes purposeful (i.e., goal-directed) at around:

A) 12 months of age
B) 8 months of age
C) 4 months of age
D) 2 months of age

Question 16

Bates, Camaioni, and Volterra (1975) observed that 9-month-old Carlotta began looking into her mother's face when taking an object from her. Bates et al interpreted this to mean that Carlotta had:

A) learned that looking at an adult can be part of a request
B) learned how to be defiant
C) discovered that she didn't have to say please
D) understood that her mother would be upset at having an object taken from her

Question 17

A young child is thought to be displaying communicative intent if, after waiting unsuccessfully for an adult's attention, she:

A) crawls away crying
B) crawls away without crying
C) rapidly switches focus from one object to another
D) persists in demonstrating attention-getting behaviors such as tugging or pointing

Question 18

Personalized words that children invent and use in highly idiosyncratic ways are called:

A) overextensions
B) idiomorphs
C) variegated babbling
D) reduplicated babbling

Question 19

A child who says fweet instead of sweet would be illustrating the phonological process called:

A) reduction
B) coalescence
C) assimilation
D) reduplication

Question 20

Shatz (1978) examined how young children responded to complex questions (e.g., Do you want to put the dog in the car?) and simple imperatives (e.g., Put the dog in the car). Shatz found that children:

A) made more correct responses to simple imperatives than to complex questions
B) did not comprehend either questions or imperatives
C) comprehended questions and imperatives equally well
D) tended to make action responses to both questions and imperatives

Question 21

Overextensions can be based on _____ similarity.

A) functional, phonological, or random
B) functional, perceptual, or affective
C) syntactic, semantic, and phonological
D) syntactic, semantic, and affective,

Question 22

MLU is an index of language progress that

A) captures a child's ability to produce grammatical sentences
B) captures a child's ability to produce the phonemes of their language sentences
C) captures a child's ability to combine idiomorphs in a productive manner
D) captures a child's ability to combine morphemes in a productive manner.

Question 23

According to Carey (1978) by age six, children typically have acquired approximately:

A) 1,400 words
B) 4,000 words
C) 14,000 words
D) 40,000 words

Question 24

Which relation is the earliest to occur in one-word speech?

A) object
B) possessor
C) location
D) naming

Question 25

According to the text, the most likely reason why children make phonological errors is that:

A) they simply cannot produce the sounds correctly
B) they cannot discriminate perceptually between the various sounds
C) the demands of spontaneous speech overload their information processing capacity
D) they prefer gesturing to speech

Question 26

If a child said dada when she heard her father come in, what semantic relation is involved?

A) naming
B) agent
C) action
D) object

Question 27

Nelson (1973) found that ________ and ________ were two distinct strategies children tended to use for learning language:

A) syntactic, positional
B) ostensive, pragmatic
C) original, basic
D) referential, expressive

Question 28

The one-word stage starts at approximately:

A) 2 years old
B) 1 year old
C) 6 months old
D) 3 months old

Question 29

Slobin (1985)'s term __________ refers to his observation that children raised anywhere in the world undergo the same early stages of grammatical development.

A) semantic bootstrapping
B) basic child grammar
C) fast-mapping
D) expressive strategy

Question 30

The best example of the agent and action semantic relation in two-word speech is:

A) that box
B) Adam fall
C) allgone truck
D) sit bed

Question 31

Most of children's early words:

A) refer to objects in the environment that do not move
B) refer to objects that the child cannot manipulate
C) refer to nominals and action words
D) refer to modifiers and function words

Question 32

Children who acquire language using a referential strategy tend to:

A) use "dummy terms" in their sentences
B) have poor articulation of individual sounds but clear sentence intonation patterns
C) learn sentences as complete, unanalyzed units
D) use mainly nouns

Question 33

The developmental process of assigning words to word classes is called:

A) fast mapping
B) categorical perception
C) ostensive definition
D) referential learning

Question 34

A child who says baba for basket is illustrating:

A) reduction
B) coalescence
C) assimilation
D) reduplication

Question 35

The "positional" interpretation of children's multi-word utterances is that children:

A) prefer putting certain words in specific positions in a sentence
B) use knowledge of semantic knowledge to learn syntactic relations
C) intuitively grasp that either agents and objects can be the subjects of sentences
D) intuitively grasp that subjects are typically followed by predicates

Question 36

A single-word utterance that is used by children to express more than the meaning attributed to that single word by adults is called a(n):

A) holophrase
B) overextension
C) semantic relation
D) deictic utterance

Question 37

Semantic bootstrapping refers to children's

A) preference for putting certain words in specific positions in a sentence
B) use of their knowledge of semantic relations to learn syntactic relations
C) understanding that either agents and objects can be the subjects of sentences
D) understanding that subjects are typically followed by predicates

Question 38

Children who acquire language using an expressive strategy tend to:

A) use "dummy terms" in their sentences
B) have poor articulation of individual sounds but clear sentence intonation patterns
C) learn sentences as complete, unanalyzed units
D) use mainly nouns

Question 39

Roger Brown's (1958) Original Word game can go wrong because:

A) more than one word can apply to a referent, and one word can apply to several referents
B) caregivers typically name superordinate or subordinate terms, rather than basic-level terms, when speaking to children
C) some objects do not have obvious basic-level terms
D) caregivers tend to refer to a part of an object rather than the whole.

Question 40

Ninio's (1980) study of ostensive definitions in vocabulary learning found that the overwhelming percentage referred to:

A) the most salient part of the object
B) an action
C) a whole object, rather than a part of the object
D) all of the above

Question 41

Comparisons of children acquiring sign language and speech suggest that:

A) manual babbling was far more common in deaf than in hearing infants
B) early multisign utterances use semantic relations not found in English
C) hearing children acquire their first words slightly earlier than deaf children acquired their first sign
D) deaf infants gestures could not be characterized as babbling

Question 42

The majority of profoundly deaf children learn ASL from:

A) their parents
B) their peers
C) their siblings
D) poorly-funded school enrichment programs

Question 43

Meier and Newport (1990) estimate that ______ of deaf children are born to deaf parents.

A) 5-10%
B) 20-25%
C) 30-50%
D) 60-90%