Deck 4: Learning Words

Question 1

When children begin to learn about word-object relationships, they usually learn this information when their parents

A) speak to them using phrases or sentences about the object.
B) utter one-word labels for objects.
C) try to elicit cued responses as they point to the object.
D) place the objects in the children's hands as they name the object.

Answer 1

A

Question 2

Human natural languages seem to follow a duality of patterning, meaning that

A) there is a direct translation for each idea from one language to another.
B) sounds have the capacity to represent a wide variety of syntactic options and meanings.
C) sounds combine into small meaningful units called morphemes, and those small units can combine into still larger phrases and sentences, conveying even more complex information.
D) we are all capable of learning any language, given the right environment for encoding.

Answer 2

C

Question 3

What occurs when a baby has become habituated to an auditory stimulus?

A) After repeated pairings of a visual and auditory stimulus, a baby spends more time orienting toward a visual stimulus when its auditory complement is heard.
B) After repeated presentations of the same auditory stimulus, the baby spends less time orienting toward that stimulus when it is played again, than it did during past presentations of the same stimulus.
C) After repeated pairings of a visual and auditory stimulus, a baby no longer orients at all toward either stimulus when either is presented again.
D) The baby is captivated by the auditory stimuli whenever it is presented.

Answer 3

B

Question 4

Refer to the figure, in which the blue bars represent "same" trials and the red bars represent "switch" trials.
What is the best interpretation of Stager and Werker's 1997 data, represented by the four bars in the graph?

A) Children have a difficult time realizing that two different auditory stimuli mean different things if the phonetic distinction between them is minimal.
B) Children have a difficult time realizing that two different auditory stimuli mean different things if the phonetic distinction between them is large.
C) Children reliably map different auditory stimuli onto different meanings regardless of whether the stimuli sound very similar or very different.
D) Mean looking times cannot be used to describe how children map meaning onto sound information.

Question 5

Based on the results of Stager and Werker's 1997 study, which two words would a 14-month-old child be most likely to understand as having two different meanings?

A) stone/loan
B) foam/moan
C) lame/blame
D) belt/rump

Question 6

Evidence for similarity between adults' and children's lexical representation for sound and meaning is supported by White et al.'s 2013 study, using an artificial language, where

A) adults had difficulty distinguishing between novel words like blook when they were similar to already learned words, such as klook.
B) adults had no difficulty distinguishing between novel words like blook when they were similar to already learned words, such as klook.
C) children around 14 months of age had no difficulty distinguishing between novel words like blook and similar sounding already learned words, such as klook.
D) children around 14 months of age had difficulty distinguishing between novel words like blook and similar sounding already learned words, such as klook.

Question 7

Based on the research of Kellman and Spelke (1983), which scenario would be most likely?

A) Pascal, a 3-month old, is surprised to see that two legs, protruding from behind a curtain and moving together, belong to two different toy squirrels, when the curtain is removed.
B) Kasie, a 4-month old, is surprised to see that two legs, protruding from behind a curtain and moving together, belong to the same toy squirrel, when the curtain is removed.
C) Denis, a 9-month old, does not recognize that the word rabbit refers to the entire animal; rather he thinks it only refers to the animal's ears.
D) Mari, a 4-month old, does not show surprise when a dog passes through a wall on a computer monitor in front of her.

Question 8

If you were a researcher testing a 12-month-old, which of the following would you expect the child to be able to recognize as a whole object?

A) One of two separate and partially hidden shapes that move together
B) A shape that they have previously seen only in pieces
C) A shape that they have previously seen in two parts as well as together
D) A shape that they have previously seen embedded in a whole object

Question 9

Which training technique would best help Timmy, a 12-month-old, to associate the word puzzle with a collection of puzzle pieces as well as the completed puzzle?

A) Have Timmy watch as another researcher attempts to put the puzzle together as they refer to the pieces using the word puzzle.
B) Show Timmy the puzzle pieces, let him play with them and continue to use the word puzzle throughout the process.
C) Show Timmy the word puzzle as well as a picture of the puzzle and point to both as you say the word puzzle.
D) Show Timmy the completed puzzle as well as the process of completing the puzzle while talking about the object/objects as a puzzle.

Question 10

Which of the following is the best example of a basic-level category?

A) Of the words wingtips, shoes, flip-flops; flip-flops is a basic-level category.
B) Of the words shoes, shirts, wardrobe; wardrobe is a basic-level category.
C) Of the words dog, terrier, and mammal; dog is a basic-level category.
D) Of the words lion, tiger, and mammal; mammal is a basic-level category.

Question 11

In terms of babies' category formation, an example of over-extension would be

A) only referring to a daisy as a flower.
B) calling all round objects a ball.
C) referring to any large-eared animal as a hat.
D) referring to any adult as a grown-up.

Question 12

Due to lack of experience with specific objects or situations, babies may refer to objects using subordinate-level categories such as

A) calling all cars Jeeps.
B) calling all apples fruit.
C) calling all four-legged creatures animals.
D) calling human children and toy dolls babies.

Question 13

Which example indicates that a child has assigned an object to a superordinate level category?

A) George points to a cow and says "horse."
B) Nicola identifies a rose correctly from among a bunch of flowers.
C) Svieta picks up her dog and says "poodle."
D) Carlos calls his action figure a toy.

Question 14

Which situation would be most likely to lead a young child to conclude that the word ball can be interpreted as a new basic-level category? During a study, the researcher uses the word ball to refer to

A) a soccer ball.
B) a group of toys that included a doll, a truck, and a ball.
C) a collection of balls, including a tennis ball, beach ball, and basketball.
D) pictures of a Dalmatian and of a baseball.

Question 15

Refer to the images shown.
This ASL sign for cat illustrates the concept of

A) mutual exclusivity.
B) onomatopoeia.
C) iconicity.
D) superordinate-level categories.

Question 16

Some words, like the Czech word lítost, have extremely abstract and subtle meanings. What is the most likely explanation for how children are able to learn such words?

A) Parents or teachers provide children with a detailed definition of such words.
B) Children are guided by the expectation that, in any language, there is a fixed set of meanings that require a label.
C) Children learn their meanings by being exposed to many contexts in which such words are appropriate.
D) Children learn their meanings because parents make their referential intentions clear.

Question 17

Which example does not support the mutual exclusivity bias?

A) When shown a picture of a hammer and asked what it is, a child responds "hammer," but is unable to generate another name for the object, such as tool or weapon.
B) When shown a picture of a hammer, and asked to provide as many words to name it as possible, a child calls it a hammer and a tool.
C) When asked to provide her mother's name, the child says "Mommy" but does not provide her parent's actual name.
D) When shown an apple and a fruit he has never seen before, a child assumes that the novel word zaf refers to the new fruit.

Question 18

Based on Baldwin and colleagues 1993 and 1996 studies on associative learning in very young children, in which scenario would a child be most likely to learn that a round object is a ball?

A) Jakob is allowed to play with both a toy truck and a ball, as he hears the words truck and ball over a loudspeaker.
B) Jakob watches as an older child plays with a ball and a truck, while occasionally using the word ball.
C) Jakob is given a round object to play with as the word ball is played over a loud speaker.
D) While Jakob is playing with a toy truck, he hears a researcher say, "this is a ball" as the researcher directs his attention to the object in the researcher's hand, which is a round object.

Question 19

Based on a study of speaker intent (Baron-Cohen, Baldwin, & Crowson, 1997), a child with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) would have a difficult time mapping meaning onto an object if

A) a speaker is naming an object they are looking at, instead of one that the child is looking at.
B) a speaker does not emphasize the object's name in a sentence.
C) the speaker does not describe what the object is used for to the child.
D) the speaker is turning away from the child as he names the object.

Question 20

With respect to word mapping, high-functioning children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have

A) a difficult time making sense of spoken language.
B) no difficulty learning to map words onto objects.
C) a difficult time understanding the intentions of others.
D) no difficulty in tracking where others are orienting.

Question 21

If a child hears an adult say "bear" and point at a basketball several times, the child would

A) start to also label the object bear.
B) attach an insignificant amount of evidence that the object is a bear and still learn the object is a ball.
C) attach an significant amount of evidence that the object is a bear and call it a bear until he or she has receives sufficient correction.
D) label the object a ball because of its ball-like features.

Question 22

Research on the linguistic interactions between robots and young children would predict that Sonny, an 18-month-old, would

A) be able to follow the gaze of a robot as it "looked" at a ball with its mechanical eyes.
B) learn that a round object is called a ball if a robot oriented its mechanical gaze at the object while simultaneously playing the pre-recorded word ball.
C) learn that a round object is a ball if his mom was holding the ball for Sonny while the robot played the pre-recorded word ball.
D) not orient toward a robot.

Question 23

Which phrase contains a transitive verb?

A) Beto coughed.
B) Sarah danced on the stage.
C) Jamal waved excitedly.
D) John kissed Sarah.

Question 24

Which phrase contains an intransitive verb?

A) John gave Sarah a ring.
B) John kissed Sarah.
C) Jiao wants an apple.
D) Marina coughed.

Question 25

_______ are sentence frames that help identify the number of objects or participants involved in the event or situation described by a sentence.

A) Information structures
B) Argument structures
C) Verbal structures
D) Linguistic structures

Question 26

Based on the outcome of Hart and Risley's 1995 study, which conclusion is not valid?

A) Children growing up in poor households tend to have smaller vocabularies than children growing up in privileged homes.
B) A child who is exposed to less language in childhood is more likely to have difficulties learning to read, regardless of the parents' education levels.
C) Children of parents with very low levels of education can have large vocabularies if they are exposed to a great deal of language at home.
D) A child growing up in a poor household hearing a great deal of language will likely have a smaller vocabulary than a child from a privileged household who is exposed to less language.

Question 27

A child growing up in a bilingual Spanish/English environment

A) knows more words overall but fewer in each language.
B) knows fewer words overall, leading to lower school performance.
C) learns each language more slowly than a monolingual child.
D) experiences a long-term lag in acquisition of dominant language skills.

Question 28

According to the concept of contingency, you can enhance the quality of input received by a child by

A) simply increasing the number of words you use in the presence of the child.
B) connecting the child's actions and words to a response in real-time.
C) providing many opportunities for the child to overhear conversation taking place between others.
D) increasing the number of people who provide input to the child.

Question 29

Which one of these might be considered a feature of referential transparency?

A) The sound a train makes
B) A parent pointing at a passing train and saying, "Look at how long the train is!"
C) A parent pointing at a passing train and saying, "Oh no, we're going to be late!"
D) The shape and movement of the train

Question 30

Which word contains more than one morpheme?

A) Verve
B) Wench
C) Reface
D) Stash

Question 31

An example of an inflectional affix is

A) -ed in worked.
B) pre- in prevail.
C) a- in apolitical.
D) -ly in strangely.

Question 32

Derivational affixes help us transform categories of words; which addition is an example of such a transformation?

A) Adding -ed to move
B) Adding -ful to joy
C) Adding -ing to run
D) Adding -s to walk

Question 33

Jean Berko Gleason's 1958 study is hailed as a pivotal investigation into children's word-form use. Based on her results, what prediction would you make about how complex word forms are learned by children of the same age as those in the study?

A) Upon hearing the word foot for the first time, a child will incorrectly guess that the plural of foot is foots.
B) Upon hearing the word foot for the first time, a child will correctly guess that the plural of foot is feet.
C) A child will not be able to correctly produce the plural form of a regular noun like figs without hearing the correct plural form at least once.
D) In guessing the plural form of nouns like hand and tooth, a child will be equally likely to make errors with regular forms like hands and irregular forms like teeth unless she has heard these plural forms before.

Question 34

A child who, at an early age, used irregular verb forms correctly (using grow and its past tense grew) suddenly began using growed instead of grew. This child

A) is regressing to a more comfortable state instead of learning to abstract the rules of grammar.
B) is extracting the rules for how to form tenses and applying those generalizations to words that seem similar.
C) has had an inadequate amount of parental input into the language learning process.
D) needs more intense educational programs to learn the rules of grammar.

Question 35

As a neurolinguist, you would predict that a patient with Alzheimer's disease would have more trouble retrieving the past-tense verb _______ than would a patient suffering from Parkinson's disease.

A) kicked
B) baked
C) brought
D) helped

Question 36

Rumelhart and McClelland's 1986 connectionist model would suggest that the best way to teach a young child the proper forms of regular and irregular verbs would be

A) rote memorization, where the child is presented with both regular and irregular verbs and is encouraged to memorize each set.
B) through mere exposure to language containing vast amounts of both types of verbs and their various forms.
C) to practice speaking with a parent, where the parent corrects the child every time the child uses an incorrect verb form.
D) to wait for the child to enter kindergarten where specialized teaching techniques are employed to teach children the correct forms of verbs.

Question 37

_______ describes what happens over time when a specialized word, for example a brand name, becomes a commonplace and universal term for a category of things, such as using Band-Aid to describe a sticky, plastic wound covering.

A) Analogy
B) Marketability
C) Generality
D) Genericide

Question 38

If 2-month-old infants can assign objects to different categories without knowing those objects' names, then you would predict that at this age, an infant would

A) spend more time staring at an image of a horse than an image of dog during a test phase, after having seen a large number of various dog images during a prior habituation phase.
B) spend the same about the amount of time staring at an image of a horse as an image of dog during the test phase, after having seen a large number of only dog images during a habituation phase.
C) not recognize that a favorite stuffed bear toy was replaced by a similar stuffed kitty toy.
D) spend more time looking at a familiar stuffed bear toy than a new, similar kitty toy.

Question 39

After reading the findings of Xu and Carey (1996), you decide to test 9-month-old Charlie, whom you regularly babysit. First you bring a toy horse from behind a screen then hide it again, and then you bring a drum from behind the screen then hide it again. When you remove the screen that hid the toys, Charlie will be surprised if

A) only the drum is revealed.
B) two totally different toys are revealed.
C) you named each toy as it appeared, but only the horse is revealed.
D) you named each toy as it appeared and both toys are revealed.

Question 40

Describe how the switch task is used to evaluate how babies map meaning onto the sounds contained in their language and what it tells us about infants' long-term memory storage.

Question 41

Refer to the figure shown. The blue bar represents the "same" trial and the red bar represents the "switch" trial.
The figure refers to the Stager and Werker's 1997 study, in which researchers used the switch task with children 14 months or older. What does the bar graph suggest about children's ability to associate meaning with auditory stimuli?

Question 42

Based on the research in Chapter 5, how would you go about making sure that a 9-month-old child learns the names of objects that are made up of several parts (e.g., box for a box with a bottom and a lid, flute for a flute whose parts screw together, pen for a pen with a cap). Specifically, how would the child avoid thinking that words like box or pen refer to just the lid or the cap?

Question 43

Defend the argument that babies are able to recognize that components of objects are related to a whole by citing empirical evidence described in the chapter.

Question 44

Refer to the figure.
For each set of images, describe some of the challenges that children are faced with in deciding which features to use to form an understanding of which objects the names apple and present apply to.

Question 45

Baldwin et al. (1996) used auditory paired association to investigate children's word mapping. In their study the researchers played a word through a loudspeaker while the child played with a toy. What do the results of the study tell us about how children learn the names of objects?

Question 46

Defend the statement: "Associative learning does not entirely explain how children map words onto objects." Provide an example of empirical evidence in your argument.

Question 47

Gillette et al. (1999) exposed college students to several silent videos with a beep in the middle. What were their key findings? How does nonlinguistic context interact with spoken verbs? What does this research imply about the information we use to learn verbs?

Question 48

Explain the difference between linguistic input and linguistic intake. How might this difference influence a child's language development?

Question 49

Based on the results of Hart and Risley's 1995 study about the number of words children hear on average per hour, describe the ideal conditions for a child's vocabulary and linguistic development and why that matters.

Question 50

Why do we treat pastry chef as a single word unit, even though it appears to be composed of the two words pastry and chef, separated by a space? Explain your answer by comparing it to the word chef, which is very obviously a single word.

Question 51

How would you describe and explain the relationship between phonemes, morphemes, and affixes, using the word cat as an example?

Question 52

Did Jean Berko Gleason's famous 1958 study, using bluebird-like creatures called wugs, show that young children are able to generalize rules of grammar to novel words? Why or why not? Support your answer.

Question 53

How does Rumelhart and McClelland's 1986 connectionist model attempt to explain how children learn the proper forms of both regular and irregular verbs?