Psychology 2134A/B Chapter Notes - Chapter 11: Homophone, Bark (Sound), Joint Attention

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2134A/B
• Professor: Sarah Smits- Bandstra

Document Summary

Developmental cascade: the observation that early developmental processes (like walking) in one area have an impact on later developmental processes in other areas (like vocab). Less-is-more hypothesis: infants have very little working memory (short term), and this constraint helps infants focus on the relevant cues to segmenting the speech stream. Object substitutions: between 18-30 months children can use objects to symbolize other objects. Proto-conversation: a social exchange in which an infant and a caregiver convey emotions through facial expressions and mutual gaze while taking turns gesturing and vocalizing. Infants look at the caregivers face, and shift their gaze between the eyes (emotional state) and mouth (speech production). Benefits of infant-directed speech: exaggerated prosody captures attention and also provides distinct word boundaries, limited vocabulary. Makes words more salient (easy to notice): frequently used word forms become more recognizable, helpful but not essential. Trochaic bias: babies often produce their first words with a trochaic pattern (stressed-unstressed).