Language and Thought What is the course of language development?

What is the course of language development in deaf children?

How do children acquire language? How is the use of language related to social competence?

Crying and What it Means

Are there different types of cries? Can we detect them?
Pain Cry Angry Cry Basic Cry

Lets Give it a Try!

Research on Crying
Kopp is cited as indicating that it is very hard to determine the different types of cries Some research indicates that mothers can distinguish between the different types of cries only for their own children Mothers are more skilled than fathers Do you think that the level of father involvement would matter? Parents are more skilled than nonparents

Importance of Contextual Cues

contextual cues are what really communicate the type of cry that it is -- knowing when your child typically eats, takes his or her nap, or seeing your baby fall over. Gustafson and Harris (1990)

Language Acquisition
Cooing (1-2 months) Babbling (4 months) Cannonical babbling Jargon babbling
Research by Werker and Desjardin (1995)

Language Acquisition
One-word stage (12-18 months) Words are learned very slowly Names of things, names of objects Cultural variation (Tardif, 1996)

What does the Single Word Mean?

Children at this stage over generalize
they use the word "dog" when they see a dog, cow, horse, cat, etc. This is referred to as overextension

What does this mean?

one interpretation is that they do not know what the word "dog" means -- they have the meaning of the word dog wrong. An alternative explanation is that this is the closest word that they know. So they use it.

Research by Thompson and Chapman, 1975

Participants were children at the one word stage the children were asked to choose the dog from a set of pictures of an actual dog, a stuffed dog, other animals, and other objects. Results: the children picked the picture of the dog this suggests that they do know what dog is -- they do know its word meaning.

Language Acquisition
Two-word stage (18-24 months) Telegraphic speech
Do children understand syntax? John hits Jim. Jim hits John.

Golnikoff et al., 1987

Looking-preference procedure 2-year-old telegraphic speech speakers Research Question Do they look at the action which is consistent with the audio more often than the other action? Audios Audio 1: The cookie monster is tickling big bird Audio 2: big bird is tickling the cookie monster Videotaped Actions Visual 1: CM tickles BB Visual 2: BB tickles CM

Results
Audio 1 ---> child looked longer at visual 1 Audio 2 ---> child looked longer at visual 2 This suggests that young children know more than their utterances would suggest.
At this stage we see both a rapid increase in vocabulary, and the development of syntactic knowledge.

Language Acquisition

Sentences (2 years)

Research on verbal Comprehension

Fernald, Pinto, Swingley, Weinberg, and McRoberts (1998)
Subjects 72 infants; 15 month olds (n = 24), 18 month olds (n = 24), 24 month olds (n = 24) Stimuli 4 target words (doggie, baby, ball, shoe) target words similar in duration target words presented in same way Wheres the ? See the ? infant-directed speech used colored pictures were presented in pairs -- ball-shoe; dog-baby Procedure Calculate infants reaction time in seeking out the correct picture

Results
15-month-old infants demonstrated recognition of the 4 target words by reliably looking at the correct object that was named; but do not initiate gaze until the target word has been spoken 24-month-old infants shift their gaze to the correct object before the end of the spoken word -- make decisions based on incomplete acoustic information, like adults Neural reorganization appears to underlie this

Language Acquisition in Deaf Children

Steps are similar Deaf children learn sign language faster and earlier (Bonvillian et al., 1983) After 2 years of age differences disappear Why? Motor centers of brain develop more rapidly than speech centers

Explaining Language Development

Skinner: Operant Learning Chmosky: Inborn Universal Grammar Integrationist Perspective
Bruners Language Acquisition Support System (LASS) Playing non-verbal games Using Simplified speech Expanding childrens utterances Recasting childrens utterances

Pragmatics
Individuals must learn the the words and phrases to use in different social situations. Pragmatics is the study of the systematic relations between language and context.

Three Types of Skills

Using language for different purposes, such as greeting (e.g., hello, goodbye) informing (e.g., I'm going to get a cookie) demanding (e.g., Give me a cookie) promising (e.g., I'm going to get you a cookie) requesting (e.g., I would like a cookie, please) Changing language according to the needs of a listener or situation, such as talking differently to a baby than to an adult giving background information to an unfamiliar listener speaking differently in a classroom than on a playground Following rules for conversations and storytelling, such as taking turns in conversation introducing topics of conversation staying on topic rephrasing when misunderstood how to use verbal and nonverbal signals how close to stand to someone when speaking how to use facial expressions and eye contact