PSY 230 Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: Joint Attention, Chief Operating Officer, Pragmatics
Document Summary
Perceiving speech: phonemes are the basic units of sound that make up words. Infants prefer infant-direct speech (adults speech to infants that is slower and has greater variation in pitch) because it provides them with additional language cues. First steps to speech: at about three months babies start to coo, babbling soon follows, consisting of single syllable over several months, infants babbling includes longer syllables and intonation. Understanding words as symbols: children"s first words represent a cognitive accomplishment that is not specific to language. Instead, the onset of speech is due to the child"s ability to interpret and use symbols: consistent with this view, there are parallel developments in the use of gestures. Fast mapping meanings to words: most children learn the meanings of words too rapidly for them to consider all plausible meanings systematically. Instead, children use a number of fast-mapping rules to determine probable meanings of new words.
