Deck 9: Language Development in Infancy

Question 1

What are the advantages and disadvantages of using naturalistic observations in developmental psycholinguistics?

Answer 1

The easiest and potentially most valid method is to observe and record infants' linguistic abilities with others and alone. But production and comprehension may differ based on social and physical context. It is also unclear how long and frequent the observations should be.

Question 2

What are possible benefits of child-directed speech?

Answer 2

It elicits attention, modulates arousal, communicates affect, and facilitates language comprehension.

Question 3

What should parents do to increase their infant's ability to distinguish phonemes in other languages? What activities are beneficial, which ones are not?

Answer 3

Expose infants to native speakers on a regular basis, especially during the second half of the first year. Social interaction is key; merely listening to or watching a DVD of a native speaker is not sufficient.

Question 4

What is the purpose of babbling?

Question 5

What are the three constraints on word learning according to Markman? Explain each one of them. What are the limitations of these constraints?

Question 6

Where does the English word "infant" come from?

A) The Middle English word "in+fare" meaning "stationary".
B) The Greek word "infantos" meaning "nursing".
C) The Latin word "in+fans" meaning "non-speaker".
D) The Germanic word "infants" meaning "to carry".

Question 7

Which is the subfield of linguistics that examines the rules by which everyday language is used?

A) Phonology.
B) Syntax.
C) Semantics.
D) Pragmatics.

Question 8

When do many infants experience a vocabulary burst?

A) Around 6 months.
B) Around their first birthday.
C) During the latter half of the second year.
D) After their second birthday.

Question 9

What is considered to be the nominal insight?

A) Infants' realization that things have names.
B) Infants' understanding of their own name.
C) Parents' understanding of their child's speech.
D) Parents' realization to use child-directed speech with their infants.

Question 10

20-month-old Sarah's vocabulary consists mostly of words like "ball", "car", "milk", "shoe", and "dog". She would be considered to be

A) A late talker.
B) An early talker.
C) A referential talker.
D) An expressive talker.

Question 11

What is one of the main disadvantages of using preference methods for studying language development?

A) They are poor at identifying individual differences.
B) They often underestimate infants' true abilities.
C) They often overestimate infants' true abilities.
D) They are poor at identifying cross-cultural differences.

Question 12

When is an elicited production method useful for studying infants' language development?

A) It is useful when the language constructions tested might be rare or absent in diary data.
B) It can use words invented by the experimenter to be certain that the child is not simply imitating something he or she heard before.
C) It can be used to study the rules that children understand about grammatical forms in their language.
D) All of the above.

Question 13

Which of the following is not a prosodic feature of child-directed speech?

A) Higher pitch.
B) Slower tempo.
C) Greater range of frequencies.
D) More varied and exaggerated intonation.

Question 14

Which of the following is not a feature of child-directed speech?

A) Simplicity.
B) Redundancy.
C) Content.
D) Loudness.

Question 15

When do mothers use rising pitch in child-directed speech?

A) When trying to engage their child's attention.
B) When trying to soothe their child.
C) When trying to maintain their child's attention.
D) When trying to discourage their child from listening.

Question 16

What do parents often do to increase the chance of having a proper "conversation" with their infant in which they each take their turns and do not interrupt one another?

A) They talk very slowly because their infant cannot talk yet.
B) They talk very little and let their infant talk.
C) They leave prolonged gaps after their own utterances to let their infant respond.
D) They talk very rapidly to get the infant used to the speed of adult speech.

Question 17

What is the prototypical gesture of an infant during the first year of life?

A) Pointing.
B) Giving.
C) Showing.
D) Nodding.

Question 18

Which of the following refers to the constraints on combinations of speech sounds in a word?

A) Pragmatics.
B) Phonetics.
C) Phonemics.
D) Phonotactics.

Question 19

What question best describes the segmentation problem?

A) Which elements of a continuous speech stream are words?
B) Which words form a sentence?
C) Which sounds are meaningful?
D) Which words refer to objects in the external world?

Question 20

Which of the following statements is true about babbling?

A) Infants start to babble during their first month of life.
B) Infants' babbling is universal.
C) Infants' babbling depends on the language they hear.
D) Infants babble to communicate distress.

Question 21

How are alveolars produced?

A) By the tongue against the ridge behind the teeth.
B) By the tongue against the roof of the mouth.
C) By the tongue against the teeth.
D) By the lips.

Question 22

What general developmental progression does infants' sound production follow?

A) Among consonants from labials and dentals to velars.
B) Among vowels from back vowels like /u/ to front vowels like /o/.
C) Among consonants from velars to dentals.
D) Among vowels from front vowels like /i/ to back vowels like /a/.

Question 23

What type of pre-speech vocalization are 7-10-month-old infants most likely to engage in?

A) Crying.
B) Cooing.
C) Canonical babbling.
D) Intonated babbling.

Question 24

What types of words constitute most of the infant's early lexicon?

A) Pronouns such as "I" and "you".
B) Nouns.
C) Verbs.
D) Adjectives.

Question 25

What question best captures the immediate reference problem?

A) Who should I talk to?
B) What object does this word refer to?
C) What action should I take first?
D) Should I respond right away or later?

Question 26

What does structure dependence refer to?

A) Grammatical rules are defined not only over words, but also over syntactic phrases.
B) Grammatical rules are only defined over words, not over syntactic phrases.
C) Pragmatic rules are defined over phrases and questions.
D) Syntactic rules depend on a given language.

Question 27

Which of the following statements is true according to Chomsky's notion of a universal grammar?

A) A Chinese infant adopted by a French family will speak French with a Chinese grammar.
B) A Chinese infant adopted by a French family will speak Chinese with a French grammar.
C) A Chinese infant adopted by a French family will speak French with a French grammar.
D) A Chinese infant adopted by a French family will speak Chinese with a Chinese grammar.

Question 28

In adults, which part of the brain is typically associated with speech production?

A) Broca's area, a region in the left frontal lobe.
B) Wernicke's area, a region in the right temporal lobe.
C) Broca's area, a region in the right temporal lobe.
D) Wernicke's area, a region in the left temporal lobe.

Question 29

What is the principles and parameters approach?

A) All languages share a set of basic rules and grammars vary in only a restricted number of ways.
B) The development of language acquisition is governed by the same principles and parameters around the world.
C) Infants apply a fixed set of principles and parameters to learn language.
D) Parents use certain implicit principles and parameters to teach their children their native language.

Question 30

Which of the following statements is true about deaf infants' language acquisition?

A) Deaf infants use unstructured sign language that does not resemble spoken language.
B) Deaf infants are not driven to produce language.
C) Deaf infants produce their first signed words much later than hearing infants produce their first spoken word.
D) Deaf infants who are not taught any sign language develop signs that refer to objects, people, and actions.

Question 31

Imagine you were a developmental psycholinguist and wanted to study the differences in language production between Chinese and American children. You are particularly interested in whether there is a common set of words that children learn first. What method could you use to study this question? What would the advantages of your chosen method be? And what would the disadvantages be?

Question 32

In a study by Fernald (1993), 5-month-old children of English-speaking parents were presented with approval and prohibition vocalizations in infant-directed (ID) and adult-directed (AD) English, and in ID speech in nonsense English and unfamiliar languages. Infants showed small but significant differences in facial affect in response to ID vocalizations in every language. Infants smiled more to approvals, and when they showed negative affect, it was more likely to occur in response to prohibitions. Infants did not show differential affect in response to approvals and prohibitions in AD speech. Discuss the implications of these results for our understanding of language processing in infancy.