HUMAN DEVELOPMENT 1 PSYCHOLOGY 3050: Language Development Ch 11

1
HUMAN DEVELOPMENT 1PSYCHOLOGY 3050Language
Development (Ch 11)

• Dr. Jamie Drover
• SN-3094, 737-8383
• e-mail jrdrover_at_mun.ca
• Winter Semester 2009

2
Child-Directed Speech

• Prosody the ups and downs of the tones and
  rhythms of the sounds we make.
• Infant-Directed Speech (I-D speech) involves
  higher tones of voice, more high and low tones in
  general, and more tones that move from low to
  high.
• This appears somewhat universal.
• Latvian, Comanche, Chinese, Japanese, etc.
• Infants appear to prefer being spoken to this
  way.
• They will selectively turn their heads towards
  I-D speech as opposed to A-D (Adult-directed)
  speech (Cooper Aslin, 1990 p 325).

3
Child-Directed Speech

• I-D speech also allows infants to discriminate
  between words.
• Child-directed speech appears to play a role in
  the development of language and in forming an
  emotional relationship between caregiver and
  child.
• They use repetition and questions that aid in
  syntactic development.
• I-D speech regulates infants emotions.
• Child directed speech is tailored to infants
  limited cognitive abilities.

4
Lockes Theory of Neurolinguistic Development

• Emphasizes the interplay of biologically paced
  and experiential factors.
• There are 4 neurologically based phases of
  language acquisition.
• Vocal Learning Begins in utero. Infants are
  aware and react to prosody of the mothers voice.
• Theyre learning about language and are
  predisposed to orient and respond to others
  talking.

5
Lockes Theory of Neurolinguistic Development

• Utterance Acquisition Begins at 5-7 months.
  Will say their first words and might say short
  phrases based on rote memorization.
• They acquire words and phrases that are stored.
• Analysis and Computation Begins at 20 months.
  Can conduct grammatical analysis on phrases that
  are stored.
• A grammatical analysis mechanism analyzes stored
  phrases and utterance looking for patterns to
  learn the rules of grammar.
• This might explain overregulation.

6
Lockes Theory of Neurolinguistic Development

• Integration and Elaboration Begins at age 3.
• Children have acquired rules for classifying
  language terms and forms, and new information can
  now be acquired, leading to larger vocabularies.
• Older children and adults are poorer at learning
  second languages because they are exposed to the
  language later in life when the grammatical
  analysis system is no longer functioning at peak
  efficiency.
• Its difficult for them to discern the
  grammatical rules of the second language.

7
Lockes Theory of Neurolinguistic Development

• According to Locke, a sufficient amount of
  utterance acquisition is necessary for grammar
  analysis to begin.
• This is supported by evidence that suggests
  children with larger vocabularies show a better
  understanding of grammatical complexity (Bates et
  al., 1999).