PSY 302 Chapter Notes - Chapter 6: Language Production, Phonological Development, Auditory Cortex

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PSY 302 Week 7 Readings
Ch. 6 - Development of Language and Symbol Use
Language development
Symbols: systems for representing our thoughts, feelings, and knowledge and for communicating
them to other people
Language comprehension: understanding what others say (or sign or write)
Language production: speaking (or writing or signing) to others
Language comprehension precedes language production - children understand words and
linguistic structures that other people use before they include them in their own speech
The components of language
o Generativity: the idea that through the use of the finite set of words in our vocabulary, we
can put together an infinite number of sentences and express an infinite number of ideas
o Phonemes: the elementary units of meaningful sound used to produce languages
o Morphemes: the smallest units of meaning in a language, composed of one or more
phonemes
o Phonological development: the acquisition of knowledge about the sound system of a
language
o Semantic development: the learning of the system for expressing meaning in a language,
including word learning
o Syntactic development: the learning of the syntax of a language
Syntax: rules in a language that specify how words from different categories can be
combined
o Pragmatic development: the acquisition of knowledge about how language is used
o Metalinguistic knowledge: an understanding of the properties and function of language; an
understanding of language as a language
What is required for language?
o A human brain
Language is a species-specific behavior
Language is species-universal; virtually all young humans learn language
Brain-language relations
Language processing involves a substantial degree of functional localization
Evidence for left hemisphere language specialization:
EEG studies
Aphasia results from damage to some but not other parts of the left
hemisphere
Broca's area - front part of the left hemisphere - language
production
Wernicke's area - area next to auditory cortex of the left
hemisphere - language comprehension
Critical period for language development
Critical period for language: the time during which language develops readily
and after which (sometime between age 5 and puberty) language acquisition is
much more difficult and ultimately less stressful
E.g. Wild Child and Genie were not exposed to language children and therefore
did not acquire language abilities
Evidence for critical period for language development:
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Adults (who are well beyond the critical period) are more likely to suffer
permanent language impairment from brain damage than are children,
presumably because other areas of the young brain are able to take over
language function
There are different patterns of cerebral organization in late learners of a
second language and in those who learned it early
o A human environment
Possession of a human brain is not enough for language to develop--children must
also be exposed to other people using language
Infant-directed talk (IDT): the distinctive mode of speech that adults adopt when
talking to babies and very young children
Characteristics:
Emotional tone - speech suffused with affection
Parents of older infants vary emotional tone to impart information
Higher voice
Extreme changes in intonation patterns - swooping abruptly from very
high-pitched sounds to very low ones
Slower and elongated pauses between utterances
Infants prefer IDT, even when it is spoken to an infant other than themselves or
a language other than their own
IDT is not universal
The process of language acquisition
o Speech perception
Fetuses develop a preference for their mother's voice and the language they hear her
speak
Prosody: the characteristic rhythm, tempo, cadence, melody, intonational patterns,
and so forth with which a language is spoken
Reason why languages sound so different from each other
Categorical perception of speech sounds
Both adults and infants perceive speech sounds as belonging to discrete
categories
Categorical perception: the perception of speech sounds as belonging to
discrete categories
Voice onset time (VOT): the length of time between when air passes through
the lips and when the vocal cords start vibrating
Young babies make sharp distinctions between speech sounds, more than adults
do
Can distinguish between phonemic contrasts made in all the languages of
the world--about 600 consonants and 200 vowels
Developmental changes in speech perception
By the end of their first year, infants' speech perception is similar to that of their
parents
Infants are born with the ability to discriminate between speech sounds in any
language, but they gradually begin to specialize, retaining their sensitivity to
sounds in the language they hear every day (their native language)
Change begins as early as 7 months
Sensitivity to regularities in speech
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