Term
Non-native speakers of English were tested to see how well they were able to produce past tense in English. Below is the graph of their performance. Explain what this graph shows.
90% at age 2 that drops to 30% at age 14 then stays at 30% through the rest of ages |
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Definition
| Anything along the lines of: the older they were when they acquired English, the less able they were to produce past tense correctly. |
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Term
| Explain the difference between Phonics and Whole Language approaches to teaching reading. |
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Definition
| Phonics approach emphasizes the sound of the text, and involves decoding and developing letter- to-phoneme mapping skills; Whole-language emphasizes the meaning of the text and involves using context to guess a word’s meaning. |
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Term
| What is the Matthew Effect? |
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Definition
| It is the effect of reading practice on reading development. Basically, children who are initially good readers improve at faster rate than children who are initially poor readers. |
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Term
| Define the term “critical period” as it pertains to language development. |
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Definition
| A child must be exposed to language during a specific maturational state in order for language to be fully acquired. If exposure occurs after this period, language is never fully acquired |
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Term
| Feral children (like Victor in “The Wild Child”) have been used to argue for a critical period in language acquisition. Based on Victor’s linguistic behavior, as portrayed in the film, what is one piece of evidence that supports the idea of a critical period? **To get full credit, your answer has to include a specific example from the movie. |
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Definition
| Anything along the lines of: he was not exposed to language early on, and so had a lot of difficulty learning it PLUS an actual example from the movie. |
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Term
| What is one difference between pidgins and creoles? (you only need to list one to get full credit). |
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Definition
Pidgins are learned as a second language; creoles are learned as the native language Pidgins lack grammar; creoles have grammar
Pidgins are tied to specific contexts; creoles are not restricted in use. |
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Term
| In the Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition, intention reading is posited to underlie language development. Explain what intention reading is. |
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Definition
| Intention reading is the ability to understand what is going on inside other people’s minds; it includes the ability to share and follow attention of other people, the ability to direct attention of others, and the ability to learn the communicative intentions of others. |
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Term
| In Vygotsky’s developmental theory, the distance between the child’s actual developmental level and the child’s potential level of functioning is called |
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Definition
| zone of proximal development. |
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Term
| The support provided by the caregiver to get the child to the potential developmental level is called |
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Definition
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Term
| Provide one piece of evidence that supports the role of input in children’s grammatical development. |
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Definition
| Any of the following: Feral children; children pick up on prosodic cues to sentence structure; amount of language input correlates with grammatical development; adults are more likely to repeat children’s utterances if they are grammatically correct; adults are more likely to ask for clarification for ill-formed sentences; adults recast the incorrect productions; children are sensitive to adults’ feedback; adults’ repetition and expansion of children’ utterances correlates with grammatical development |
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Term
| Nativists claim that there is not enough negative evidence in the child’s environment to explain acquisition of grammar. What do they mean by “negative evidence”? |
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Definition
| Negative evidence would be corrective feedback on children’s ungrammatical productions. According to nativist theories, there is very little of negative evidence in children’s acquisition process. |
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Term
| What is the difference between analytic (or “word”) babies and gestalt (or “tune”) babies? |
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Definition
| Analytic babies pay attention to sounds and syllables. Gestalt babies pay attention to longer, phraselike units, and not to individual segments, and they attend to prosodic cues. |
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Term
| Give two specific examples of how African American English differs from Standard American English. Your examples can come from phonology, lexicon/semantics, morphosyntax, or pragmatics. |
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Definition
| Anything along the lines of: f /θ , v/ð and t/ θ, d/ð in prevocalic positions, consonant cluster reduction, undifferentiated pronoun case, regularized reflexive, appositive pronoun, deletion of the copula/auxiliary, lack of Subject-Verb Agreement, use of habitual be and remote past tense been, use of Fitna/sposeta/bouta, use of multiple negation, use of double modal, Zero Possessive, Zero Past Tense, Zero Plural, omission of Third person singular -s |
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Term
| In the Hammer & Weiss (1999) paper, African-American mother-child interactions were studied. Give an example of one difference found between the behaviors of mothers with Low Socio-Economic Status and mothers with Middle Socio-Economic Status. |
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Definition
| Medium SES mothers allowed children to initiate play interactions more; were more verbal during initiations; used a larger variety of words during interactions. |
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Term
| Explain what Rapid Auditory Processing is, and how it may explain why different typically- developing children acquire oral language at different rates. |
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Definition
| Rapid Auditory Processing involves ability to process and categorize brief, rapidly changing auditory signals. These acoustic cues are critically important for identifying and distinguishing sound transitions in speech. Children who are good at RAP may be better at picking up the language. |
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Term
| What is one specific difference between language acquisition patterns in males vs. females? |
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Definition
| Girls tend to begin speaking before boys; girls tend to have a higher vocabulary, produce more two-word utterances, and have larger MLUs; girls tend to ask for help more than boys; boys tend to be more assertive and demanding, while girls tend to be more polite and cooperative; boys interrupt more frequently than girls, use imperatives more |
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Term
| What is the McGurk effect? |
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Definition
| The McGurk effect is a demonstration of how visual and auditory information get integrated by the human brain. |
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Term
| A child has a chronological age of 8, and a mental age of 4. Calculate this child’s IQ. |
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Definition
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Term
| Given the child’s IQ, would you identify the child as having normal intellectual ability, enhanced intellectual ability, or intellectual disability? |
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Definition
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Term
| a) What is the relationship between language abilities and intellectual abilities in children with Williams Syndrome? **Hint: Is language impaired to the same degree as cognition? To a larger degree? To a smaller degree? |
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Definition
| Language development is less impaired than would be expected given the level of cognitive development. |
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Term
| b) What does this relationship (between language abilities and intellectual abilities in children with Williams Syndrome) tell us about modularity of language? |
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Definition
| This tells us that language and cognition are related, but at the same time separable from each other. |
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Term
| Based on the movie “Sound and Fury,” provide one argument against cochlear implants. |
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Definition
Anything along the lines of: By fitting a child with cochlear implants, you deprive him/her of his/her cultural
heritage. |
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Term
| Carlos is a typically-developing bilingual child who was exposed to both Spanish and English at birth. When he was 4 years old, he scored lower on a test of English vocabulary than his 4-year-old monolingual, English- speaking friend Karl. How would you explain why Carlos scored lower on the test of English vocabulary than his monolingual friend, even though he is developing normally? |
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Definition
| Some words are language-specific (e.g., a child will only have a word in one language, but not the other), which is why bilingual children score lower on vocabulary tests than monolingual children. |
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Term
| What is one possible explanation for the recent increase in the incidence of autism? |
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Definition
| Any of the following: actual increase due to environmental agents; better diagnostic criteria; widened category of autism; increased awareness |
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Term
| Explain how the Extended Optional Infinitive Account accounts for the grammatical difficulties demonstrated by children who have Specific Language Impairment. |
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Definition
| EOI account argues that children with SLI have immature grammatical knowledge due to the fact that they “get stuck” in the stage of grammatical development when the use of grammatical markings is thought to be optional. |
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Term
| Explain what Theory of Mind is. |
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Definition
| Theory of Mind is the ability to take the perspectives of others that may differ from one’s own. |
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Term
| Provide one specific example of vocabulary difficulties exhibited by children with SLI |
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Definition
| For vocabulary, any of the following: Core vocabulary emerges late; slow word-mapping skills, and therefore slower acquisition rate; high use of general, all-purpose words such as “thing”; high use of circumlocutions; difficulty with multiple meanings of homophones |
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Term
| one specific example of grammatical difficulties exhibited by children with SLI |
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Definition
| For grammar, any of the following: Difficulty with grammatical morphemes (largely, omit them from utterances); difficulties with verb inflections and agreement morphology; difficulty with complex sentence structures (including questions and subordinate clauses). |
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Term
| Provide two specific examples of language difficulties exhibited by children with Autism who do develop oral language. These examples can be from any linguistic domain (phonology, vocabulary, grammar, or pragmatics). |
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Definition
| Any of the following: Echolalia; prosodic deficits; difficulty with emotion words and mental- state words; restricted and idiosyncratic patterns of word-use; shorter sentences; inappropriate word order; pronoun reversal; lack of topic initiation and maintenance; lack of conversational repair skills; generally inappropriate speech; limited turn-taking; language is often not directed at or responsive to other people. |
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Term
| What is the difference between inflectional and derivational morphemes? |
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Definition
| Derivational Morphemes change the word’s meaning or the part of speech; Inflectional Morphemes modify the free morpheme to fit the grammatical structure |
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Term
| Human language is symbolic, generative, and rule-based. Which of these properties of human language is learned successfully by apes, and which of these properties of human language is learned less successfully by apes? |
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Definition
| successful: symbolic or generative Unsuccessful: rule-based |
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Term
| Use minimal pairs to prove that in English, sounds “k” and “t” are two different phonemes. |
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Definition
| call/tall; pack/pat; take/cake; etc. |
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Term
| What is a semantic category? |
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Definition
| Semantic category is a grouping of words based on their similarity in meaning (e.g., animals is a semantic category) |
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Term
Which of Grice’s Conversational Principles is being violated by Louise in the following exchange? What does this violation actually mean to imply?
Thelma: Do you think Brad is single? Louise: Well, he does fly to Houston every chance he gets.... |
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Definition
| Relevance; the violation implies that Brad is not single. |
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Term
| Explain the term “joint attention.” How is it different from mutual gaze? |
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Definition
| Joint attention is when an infant and a caregiver pay attention to the same thing. It is different from mutual gaze where an infant and a caregiver look at each other. |
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Term
| When a 9-month-old successfully anticipates the movement of a toy when it disappears behind a partition and reappears on the other side, she is said to have developed |
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Definition
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Term
| Explain why pointing is thought to be a communicative behavior, while grasping is thought to be a non-communicative behavior. |
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Definition
Pointing is a communicative behavior because it is separate from the intention to get the object. Instead, it is used to communicate something to the caregiver. Grasping is non-communicative because it is performed with the intention to get the object.
OR: Pointing necessarily involves another person, while grasping does not. |
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Term
| Define the term “habituation.” |
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Definition
| Habituation is infant’s stable decrease in attention to the repeating stimulus. |
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Term
| What is the “principle of common fate”? |
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Definition
| It states that objects that move together belong together. OR, if the object moves on one trajectory, children will assume that it constitutes a single entity. |
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Term
| What is the difference between nasal sounds and oral sounds? |
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Definition
| Nasal sounds are produced with air streaming through the nose, while oral sounds are produced with air streaming only through the mouth. OR: velum is down on nasals, and up on orals. |
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Term
One of the sounds below is voiced and another is voiceless. Which one is which and why?
Sound /z/ as in “buzz”.
Sound /s/ as in “bus.” |
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Definition
| /z/ is voiced because vocal cords vibrate; /s/ is voiceless because vocal cords do not vibrate |
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Term
| List two properties of child-directed speech that differentiate it from speech directed at adults (Note: Answer “intonation/prosody/melody” will not count; you need to be more specific). |
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Definition
| Any of the following: Short utterances, simple syntax, small core vocabulary, higher pitch, more variable pitch, exaggerated stress, object labels are pronounced more distinctly. |
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Term
| Explain the notion of “meaning-making.” |
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Definition
| Meaning making is when parents interpret infants’ behaviors as communicative/meaningful |
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Term
| Explain the difference between stops and fricatives. |
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Definition
| Stops are produced with the tightest obstruction of the vocal tract (or articulators close off the air completely); Fricatives are produced with a partial obstruction of the vocal tract (or articulators come close to closing off the airway, but leave a small opening for the air to pass through). |
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Term
| What is the difference between categorical perception in an infant who is 3 months old and an infant who is 15 months old? |
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Definition
| A 3-month-old perceives differences between all sound-categories (even the ones that do not exist in the ambient language). A 12-month-old perceives only native-language categories. |
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Term
| Explain the term “phonotactic constraints” and give an example of a phonotactic constraint in English. |
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Definition
| Phonotactic constraints are rules that govern co-occurrence of sounds. An example can be that words cannot start with velar nasals; words cannot start words with lp clusters, etc. |
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Term
| A child who says “take” for “stake”, and “no” for “snow” demonstrates a phonological process called |
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Definition
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Term
| Explain the difference between reduplicative babbling and variegated babbling. |
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Definition
| Reduplicative = same syllable repeated. Variegated = different syllables strung together. |
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Term
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Definition
| Protowords are fake, invented words that mean something to the child. |
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Term
| Explain the term “segmentation” as it applies to children’s word-learning, and give one example of how children solve the “segmentation problem”. |
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Definition
| Segmentation refers to the ability to find individual words within a continuous stream of speech. Children solve the segmentation problem through one of the following: Statistical learning, picking up on prosodic cues, child-directed speech. |
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Term
| Nouns predominate in English-speaking children’s early language production. What is one explanation for why this may be the case? |
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Definition
| Any of the following: caregivers tend to use more nouns than any other grammatical class; (2) nouns are easier to identify in the environment than verbs; (3) nouns are more concrete; (4) nouns are easier to learn through observation. |
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Term
A child applies the word “ball” to a ball, a balloon, a marble, and an egg.
This type of error in early word use is called _ |
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Definition
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Term
A child applies the word “ball” to a ball, a balloon, a marble, and an egg.
What is one explanation for why children may make this type or error? |
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Definition
| Any of the following: children have different categories than adults; children may have retrieval difficulties and replace more difficult words (e.g., marble) with easier words (e.g., ball); children may use conscious strategy of replacing the word they don’t know (e.g., marble) with the closest related word they do know (e.g., ball). |
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Term
| What is the “mutual exclusivity principle”? |
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Definition
| It is an assumptions that children make when mapping words to referents which tells them that each object has only one name. |
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Term
| Explain the distinction between lexical category words and functional category words. |
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Definition
| Lexical category includes words that carry the meaning of the sentence. Functional category includes words that do not carry meaning, but rather serve a grammatical function. |
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Term
| In English, things are localized in space using categories of containment and support – objects are located in, or on other objects. Which categories does Korean use to localize objects in space, and are these same or different from English categories? |
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Definition
| Korean uses tight-fit and loose-fit categories, and these are different from English. |
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Term
The child produced the following sentences:
1. Mary is going. 2. Drive car.
Based on this information, what is the child’s MLU? (You must show your calculations to earn credit). |
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Definition
| 4 for the first one; 2 for the second one; 4+2/2=3 |
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Term
Children’s comprehension of grammar outpaces their production of grammar. How does the
“Cookie Monster” experiment prove this? |
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Definition
| The “Cookie Monster” experiment shows that children who are in a single-word production stage can use word-order cues in comprehending sentences (e.g., can tell the difference between “Cookie Monster is tickling Big Bird” and “Big Bird is tickling Cookie Monster.”) |
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Term
| Explain the term “Linguistic Relativity.” Provide one piece of evidence that would support the existence of linguistic relativity. |
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Definition
| Any of the following – number concepts in Piraha; gender influences on conceptualization of inanimate objects; relative vs. absolute systems of spatial orientation. |
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