1. PSYCHOLOGY OF LANGUAGE
Heather Ferguson

2. OVERVIEW Definition of language Stages of language perception
Stages of language production
Theories of language acquisition
Critical period hypothesis
Case study
Bilingualism

3. WHAT IS LANGUAGE?
‘The systematic, conventional use of sounds, signs, or written symbols in a human society for communication and self-expression.’
David Crystal

4. STAGES OF LANGUAGE PERCEPTION
At birth
Already prefer the sounds of their mother’s voice
Can discriminate between mother’s native language an other languages

5. Discriminating sounds
Adult speakers have difficulty discriminating between language sounds that are not phonemic contrasts in their native language
Young infants do not demonstrate this difficulty initially
They can discriminate any contrasting phonetic sounds in the world’s languages

6. How can we possibly know that?
Are /s/ and /ç/ different sounds for you, baby?

7. Testing Infants Some helpful things infants do for experimenters:
They look longer at new stimuli compared to familiar stimuli
They suck faster when exposed to new stimuli

8. Testing Infants Habituation-dishabituation method
Habituate infant on one stimulus
Show new, different stimulus
Does the infant react to the new stimulus as new?
Habituation-dishabituation measures
Time looks to stimulus
High-amplitude sucking paradigm
Does the infant start sucking faster on a pacifier (that’s hooked up to a monitoring device)?

9. Testing Infants
ba ba ba ba ba ba

10. Testing Infants
ba ba pa ba ba ba

11. Limited-time Offer
However, infants can only discriminate all phonemes for a limited period of time
At 4 to 6 months phonetic sensitivity diminishes.
By 12 months, infants are very poor at distinguishing foreign contrasts
The (speech) perceptual system is being reorganized around these time periods (4-6 months & months)

12. Theory
Exposure and habituation to the sounds of the target language impedes an infant’s ability to perceive phonetic contrasts that the native language does not make
There are innate language abilities that are lost due to experience with a first language
One is born with all language sounds available, but sound distinctions are lost as sound system develops

13. Phonemic Organization Account
Loss of perceptual ability is related to development of phonemic categories for the first language- phonemic organization

14. Infant-directed Speech
7-week-old infants prefer infant-directed speech (‘motherese’) to adult-directed speech
Regardless of gender of speaker
Older infants show this preference as well, but younger infants are more responsive, both in terms of attention and affect

15. STAGES OF LANGUAGE PRODUCTION
The larynx
At birth- the larynx is relatively high, and entire vocal tract is quite different from adults
At 3 months- larynx begins to descend (won’t reach adult location until ~3 years old)
At 4 months- the vocal tract begins to resemble an adult vocal tract

16. Infant Speech Production
Because of their maturing vocal tract, some sounds are genuinely difficult for young children to produce

17. Stage I (0-8 weeks): Basic biological noises
Reflexive
Hunger, pain and discomfort resulting in crying
Vegetative
Sucking, swallowing, coughing, burping
Airstream mechanism and vocal folds used to produce pitch patterns in a rhythmical fashion

18. Stage II (2-5 months): Cooing and laughing
Cooing sounds develop alongside crying
Quieter, lower-pitched and more musical than crying
Short-vowel-like sounds preceded by a consonant-like sound produced at the back of the mouth
No rhythm or intonational contour
Laughing sounds emerge at around 4 months

19. Stage III (5-7½ months): Vocal Play
High-pitched segments over one second long, frequently repeated (longer in duration than cooing)
Wider intonation ranges (low to high)
Large inventory of consonant and vowel sounds, with periodic focus on particular places of articulation

20. Stage IV (~6-12 months): Babbling
Features of babbling:
Sounds are a subset of possible sounds found in spoken language
Syllabic organisation
Reduplication
Same two sounds repeated (“babababa” “papapapap”)
Variegated babbling (~12 months)
Sounds change between syllables (“bamipabo”)

21. Stage IV (~6-12 months): Babbling
Features of babbling:
Lack of meaning/ reference
Rhythm and intonation reminiscent of speech
Continuity of phonetic form and syllable type between a child’s babbling and first words
Infants will often seem to ‘practise’ when alone
Suggests that babbling is related more to practising speech sounds than communication

22. Babbling & Sign Language
Deaf infants also babble
Often delayed (11-24 months) compared to hearing infants
Often different in character (e.g. fewer different kinds of consonants)
This indicates that exposure to a spoken language influences babbling
Infants (hearing and deaf) who are exposed to sign language will babble manually

23. Stage V (9-18months): Melodic Utterance
Variations in melody, rhythm and intonation become a major feature toward the end of the first year
Begins to sound language-like

24. First Words Around 12 months
Focus on words related to the here and now, concrete things:
People’s names, toys, clothes, food they eat
Words for things that they can influence (one-word stage)
“ball” likely to be learned earlier than “chair” or “tree”

25. First Words Two kinds of errors children can make:
Overextension- refer to all four legged animals as dogs
Underextension- refer to only the family dog as dog

26. The Mapping Problem Child says “What’s that?” and points to:
So…how could this possibly go wrong?

27. The Mapping Problem Potential problems:
More than one referent could apply to the word, “teacup”

28. The Mapping Problem Potential problems:
More than one word may apply to a referent:
Tea?
Teacup?
Saucer?
A drink?
Cup?

29. The Mapping Problem Apparent solutions:
Whole object bias- children prefer to attach new labels to the whole object
Mutual exclusivity bias- children prefer to have only one name for an object

30. Early “Multiword” Utterances
By about 15months babies have a vocabulary of about words
Two years
Vocabulary rapidly increases to 100’s of words
Child constructs primitive sentences- two-word stage (“no eat, throw ball”)

31. Early “Multiword” Utterances
Thirty months
Utterances progress beyond 2- word stage and show basic propositional structure (telegraphic stage)
Functional words appear (“the, in, of”)
Children overgeneralise rules (“goed”)
Five years old
Basic structure of language is in place
Vocabulary of words

32. THEORIES OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
Nativist Theories
Language is entirely innate
Learning Theories
Language is entirely learned
Cognitive Theories
Language development is related to other cognitive developments
Social Interactionist Theory
Language is acquired through communicative interaction

33. NATIVISM Emphasizes a child’s inborn capacities for language
Language is acquired through a genetic program
Language acquisition is distinct from other cognitive processes

34. NATIVISM Noam Chomsky- the language acquisition device (LAD)
Children are born with a basic understanding of language and a mental capacity to learn it quickly
Brain is ‘over- connected’ at birth. Connections that are not used die or become dormant, and new connections based on experience form
There is a specific time period of function

35. NATIVISM Universal grammar: Key assumption:
Children are pre-programmed with a kind of default language which can be altered with exposure to a specific language
Key assumption:
Infants develops language even when other cognitive skills are low

36. Evidence in Favour of a Pre-determined Biological Language System:
Other primates don’t learn language simply by being treated like human infants
Gua (chimp, 1993)
Raised alongside a 9½month-old boy for 9 months
Never spoke but learned to comprehend spoken requests
Viki (chimp, 1951)
Raised alone from 3 days- 7 years old
Capable of picture recognition, sorting of pictures and objects into conceptual categories
Understood large number of words and phrases
But, comprehension contextually determined

37. Evidence in Favour of a Pre-determined Biological Language System:
Children with other cognitive deficits still learn language
Language skills can persist even in cases of profound mental retardation

38. Evidence in Favour of a Pre-determined Biological Language System:
Poverty of the stimulus
Language input to children is ill-formed and incomplete (motherese)
Children don’t receive explicit rules about what not to do
They don’t get it even if you do tell them

39. Evidence in Favour of a Pre-determined Biological Language System:
Creoles
Pidgins develop in language contact situations (mostly colonial)
(Pidgin = a language that has been constructed from two or more shared languages for communication between communities. A pidgin is not a mother tongue)
Creoles develop from children exposed primarily to pidgins
(Creole = a language that has developed from a mixture of languages)
Children are, in essence, filling the gaps of pidgins

40. Evidence in Favour of a Pre-determined Biological Language System:
Evidence for critical period of language acquisition

41. THE CRITICAL PERIOD HYPOTHESIS
Eric Lenneberg, 1967

42. THE CRITICAL PERIOD HYPOTHESIS
Lenneberg theorized that…
The acquisition of language is an innate (you are born with it) process
Biological factors limit the critical period for acquisition of a language to a ‘window of opportunity’ from roughly two years of age to puberty
If a child does not learn a language before the onset of puberty, the child will never master language at all

43. Bird Song and the Critical Period Hypothesis
Some birds (like Sparrows) have courtship songs
Songs have dialectal variation
Individual song is a version of other songs it hears during the ‘critical period’ of first 100 days of life
Bird learns song by trial and error (babbling)
When deprived of song input early in life, they fail to produce a normal song

44. THE CRITICAL PERIOD HYPOTHESIS
The critical period and the human brain…
Lenneberg believed that after lateralization (a process by which the two sides of the brain develop specialized functions), the brain loses plasticity
Lenneberg claimed that lateralization of the language function is normally completed at puberty, making post-adolescent language acquisition difficult

45. CASE STUDY
The story of Genie

46. The Story of Genie Read about Genie and decide for yourself…
How does Genie’s language development relate to Lenneberg’s theory?
What is the strongest evidence in support of the Critical Period Hypothesis
Was Genie’s early language deprivation the ONLY thing that contributed to her abnormal language development?

47. The Story of Genie Main points…
From 20 months- 13 years old Genie was not allowed to make noise and was not spoken to (father barked or growled at her)
When found could not speak or understand words (except name and ‘sorry’)
Over time, vocab increased and she learned to speak in 2/ 3- word sentences
BUT, speech has remained garbled and she has never mastered grammar needed for language

48. Genie and the Critical Period Hypothesis
At first, a number of researchers thought that Genie would prove Lenneberg’s theory wrong as…
1 year after her escape she was producing 2/ 3- word sentences
She could distinguish between singular/ plural nouns and positive and negative sentences
Genie’s language resembled that of a normal month old child

49. Genie and the Critical Period Hypothesis
BUT,
As time went on, Genie’s vocab did not ‘explode’ as is the case with normally developing children
Four years later…
She still had not mastered grammar
She could not ask questions properly (“where is may I have a penny”)
She confused pronouns, using ‘you’ and ‘me’ interchangeably

50. Genie and the Critical Period Hypothesis
Has Genie supported Lenneberg’s theory? NO!
Why?
Genie’s personal history was so disastrous that it is not clear why she did not make progress with her language
It is possible that Genie did not master language because she had passed the ‘critical period’
BUT, other explanations are available

51. Genie and the Critical Period Hypothesis
Genie’s brain may have been abnormal
Brain scans showed that Genie’s brain was unusual
As we know, for most people, the areas of the brain responsible for language functions are located in the left hemisphere
BUT, Genie’s brain was dominated by the right hemisphere

52. Genie and the Critical Period Hypothesis
Conclusions…
Genie’s lack of progress does suggest that, over a certain age, any child who has not learnt a language will have difficulty acquiring one
BUT, other explanations can not be ruled out
Therefore, Lenneberg’s hypothesis is not proven, but it is strongly supported

53. LEARNING THEORIES Associated with Skinner, Pavlov, etc
Language is learned through basic processes like associations, reinforcement and imitation
Language acquisition occurs through three processes:

54. LEARNING THEORIES Classical Conditioning US UR US + CS CR “bottle”

55. LEARNING THEORIES Operant Conditioning Reinforcement/ rewards
Children are rewarded for early attempts at language
Selective reinforcement shapes children’s language as the requirement for a reward becomes more specific

56. LEARNING THEORIES Social learning
Observation and imitation of others, especially those who are powerful, nurturing and similar to the child

57. Limitations of Learning Theories
BUT, these processes can not fully account for language development in children because…
Not enough to explain the complexities of language itself
Most parents do not consistently reinforce proper speech
Children say things they would not have heard an adult say
Aspects of language development are universal and do not vary with different experiences

58. COGNITIVE THEORIES Language is unique to humans
But, not a modular, pre-programmed ability
General disposition for learning that allows language
Pattern recognition
Imitation
Language development is related to other forms of development
For these kinds of theories to be true infants must have general skills that clearly contribute to language

59. Cognition and Language
Cognitive skills that are not language specific but none-the-less contribute to language
Newborns prefer face-like to non-face-like stimuli
Quickly learn to recognize their mother’s face
Young infants focus on the eye region more than other facial regions
More inclined to look at a pleasantly moving face than a still one

60. Cognition and Language
Infants know much more than they can demonstrate physically
So, infants come to the language environment with a much more sophisticated view of the world than has been previously thought
LAD not necessarily needed!

61. INTERACTIONIST VIEW Both inborn capacities and learning are important
Emphasizes the use of language and the fit between the child and the language environment
Jerome Bruner- the language acquisition support system (LASS)
Social context of language development is important
Language- skilled adults structure and support the child’s language learning environment

62. INTERACTIONIST VIEW
Parent- child language interaction characterised by:
Infant- directed speech (‘motherese’)
High- pitched, simple, redundant speech adults use with babies
Recasting
Rephrasing what child says, often as a question
Echoing
Repeating what a child says
Expanding
Restating in a more advanced way what a child says
Labelling
Naming objects

63. SUMMARY OF THEORIES OF LANGUAGE ACQUSITION
Language is clearly genetically specified
It appears that only humans develop a full version of it
But not yet established to what extent language is directly specified and to what extent its development is tied up with other aspects of cognitive and social development

64. BILINGUALISM

65. Bilingualism and the Critical Period Hypothesis
What is a bilingual?
A person who uses or is able to use two languages, especially with equal fluency
Is there a cognitive advantage to bilingualism?
Early studies showing a disadvantage
Studies of immigrants
Confounded by social class
Later studies showing an advantage
Avoided social class confounds
Picked up new confounds eg. ‘who is bilingual?”

66. Bilingualism and the Critical Period Hypothesis
Evidence for…
It is significantly harder for older adults to master a second language
Evidence against…
Some late L2 learners can become ‘perfectly fluent speakers’ (Long, 1990; Birdsong, 1992)

67. Brain and Bilingualism: Issues
Are the separate languages of bilinguals stored in separate parts of the brain?
Does neural representation vary with age of acquisition?
Is there a “language switch” somewhere in the brain?

68. Brain and Bilingualism
Mixed evidence for differing brain regions in early and late bilinguals…
Some studies have found similar patterns in early and late bilinguals (Chee et al., 1999b)

69. Brain and Bilingualism
But, some fMRI studies have found different patterns of activation in sentence production in early and late bilinguals (Kim et al., 1997)

70. Bilingualism Conclusions
The two or more languages of bilinguals are distributed across the same brain regions that are used by monolinguals (Broca’s and Wernicke’s)
For both monolinguals and bilinguals, the regions involved in language use vary by task, expertise and strategy
The same areas may have to “work harder” and additional areas may be recruited for processing in the weaker language
Second language learning appears to be easier in the critical period than later in life, BUT it is possible to become fluent in a second language
Second language is not necessarily the weaker language!

71. LANGUAGE REFERENCES
Gleitman, H : Language in Psychology. Chapter 9, pp
Bee, H. The developing Child