Application Assignment 1

This topic was divided into two parts. Part one, discuss the building blocks related to the form of language, including development in the areas of phonology, morphology, and syntax. In part two, I will discuss the building blocks of semantic and pragmatic development. We'll start with semantics during this presentation. Semantics is the area of language that involves our system for recognizing words and their meanings. As with each of the other areas of language development, semantic development relates to the acquisition of some knowledge. What exactly are you acquiring during semantic development? Your lexicon, your stockpile of vocabulary, all of the words you know, end or use, and what you know about them. Just as with phonological development, you have mental representations of words in your mind. These representations are quite complex because they draw upon multiple sources of information that you have stored for a word. For example, if you've heard a word used in context or learned its meaning, you will have that linguistic information stored in your brain. If the word relates to other word, you will like we have made connections to those words as well. We call these connections word associations. If the word relates to something that you have seen, you may have visual representations associated with the word. If it's a word that you've read or spelled, you may also have orthographic information stored in your brain. Your mental representation of words and their meanings are very complex. The linguistic information that you have stored for a word may include phonological information or the way the word sounds, grammatical information, or the word class and how it may be used in a sentence. And conceptual information directly related to the meaning of the word. If you look at these figures which depict the cognitive processes used during word reading, you will see that semantic information is central during the process of reading. This is a widely used model of word reading with labels for each component on the left. And a helpful example of how it applies to a given word on the right. What this model implies is that when you read a word, you must process the orthographic information or the spellings of that word, and then activate your semantic system to access all of the information you have stored about that word. You may also draw upon your phonological memory of the word or how it is pronounced. And you will almost certainly draw upon your understanding of the context surrounding that word. All of these systems work together to help you recognize the meaning of the words you read. What I really want to emphasize here is that our processing of a word involves many different areas of language working in coordination with each other. This is true regardless of whether we read the printed word here, the spoken word, or generate thoughts that contain the word. If we focus on only the spoken language route in this model for today, you will see that we first process incoming phonological information. And this must activate our semantic system. We're in all of the information about the meaning of the word is stored. This may be enough to understand the word, but we may use additional information from context to help us refine our understanding of the word. And if we are seasoned language users who also know the spelling of the word, we may even draw upon or orthographic information as we process the word. As you can see, the arrows between various processors lead in both directions, indicating that these systems share information. But what is central to understanding or using a word is having that semantic information to draw upon, which is why semantic development is so critical. When we talk about a person's lexicon or all of the words a person knows and uses. We can discuss this in terms of their receptive lexicon and their expressive lexicon. Think about what you already know about the terms receptive and expressive. What do you think each of these terms is referring to? Receptive generally refers to our understanding of an aspect of language. So receptive lexicon would include all the words the person understands. Expressive refers to our use of language or the output. So expressive lexicon would include all the words the person uses. We commonly refer to these as expressive vocabulary and receptive vocabulary. Receptive and expressive lexicons do not develop at the same pace. We usually understand more words than we use. So how do we learn new words? It is estimated that children learn an average of two new words per day. Solve this word learning is incidental, meaning that they hear a word being used in pick up on the meaning of the word without any special direct attention to the word. Some word learning is more purposeful or deliberate, with special attention drawn to the words meaning. Two examples of the word and, or the context surrounding the word. In the field of education, we call this explicit teaching. Young children learn words better when they have an interest in learning, or when they already have their attention fixated on something. Adults who recognize this about their child will capitalize on the opportunity to label and describe objects or actions that the child is holding, playing with, or attending to. Word learning isn't an all or none phenomenon. Each of the words in our lexicon we know to varying degrees. However, word knowledge deepens with increased exposure in multiple contexts. I always liken this to meeting a large group of people for the first time. Everybody tells you their name and it's hard to remember those names. Sometimes you have to meet a person a second time or third time or fourth time to really internalize their name. Learning a word is similar in that way. For young children, they must first here and develop a phonological representation of a new word. The context surrounding this initial exposure to the word will be very important as it will provide more information that is stored with the mental representation. Words that convey more concrete concepts are easier to learn than words that convey abstract concepts. Beliefs, and mental states are often more abstract. For example, for young children, the concept of being smart is somewhat abstract, making it more difficult to learn. Words with concepts that are more accessible to children are easier to learn. In other words, if a child has already learned other language that will help them learn a new word, that makes learning the word more accessible to the child. Again, words at our abstract are often less accessible to children. Words that are imaginable are easier to learn as well. If a child can draw upon a mental picture when learning a Word, this will facilitate learning the word. Words that are more concrete, maybe more imaginable. Here is just a sampling of the milestones related to development of vocabulary. Your lexicon grows over the span of your life. Rapid growth happens during the first several years of life. But the first words are typically not spoken until about ten to 14 months of age. The average expressive lexicon for a twelv month old contains only a few words. And by the time children enter early adulthood, they've learned up to 60 thousand words. Just as with other areas of language development, semantic development may be influenced by several factors. Interestingly, girls seem to develop a larger vocabulary than boys during the early years. The reason for this is not known, but it may relate to the type and frequency of linguistic interactions that girls have with more mature language users. In addition, the language environment during early development will play a critical role in the number of words learned, the rate of acquisition, and the degree or depth of word knowledge. Some environmental factors that have emerged from research include the socioeconomic or the educational backgrounds of families, or whether or not children attend high-quality preschool programs. Semantic development and the language environment is closely tied to exposure. If a child doesn't hear a word, he or she can't possibly learn the word. This has important implications for children later on in school and life. As children who are raised without rich linguistic input may fall behind children who have this input. The last area of development that we'll discuss is the development of pragmatics, which involves the social use of language. Pragmatic development refers to the acquisition of the rule system that governs how language is used socially. These rules help people adjust their language for different purposes. They also allow us to know what to expect and how to behave as we hold a conversation with others. To communicate effectively, you really do need to be a good communication partner. So the development of this rule system enables us to achieve this goal. During communication, people must know how to communicate with others for different purposes. This is referred to as communication function. It's the intent behind any given message. During pragmatic development, we learn that we communicate differently to achieve different goals. The communication situation will also drive the way we communicate with each other. Children become more skill and tailoring their communication attempts match the function or the intent of their message. However, it's important to realize that if they have difficulty in any of the other areas of language. So in phonology, morphology, syntax, or semantics, that can hinder their ability to achieve their intended goals during communication. There are several purposes for communication. The textbook for this course provides a description of these seven basic communication functions. To become familiar with these, pause the lecture to read the label and description for each function. Now, once you're done, hit play to check your understanding of each. Let's check your understanding which function applies to each of the following utterances. One time a princess was in a castle and the castle was surrounded by dragons, but then the King and the Queen came to save her. Hopefully you chose imaginative. Here's the next one. I don't like it when Timothy takes my truck. This would be an example of personal. I used the pencil, the green one with the eraser. This example is informative. Can I have something to drink? This is an example of instrumental. How did the men build that house? This is an example of heuristic. No, put that block on the top of the tower. This exemplifies regulatory function. What game do you like to play? This exemplifies interactional and perhaps heuristic. Next, let's turn our attention to conversational skills. Another building block of pragmatics. When you communicate with another person, you tend to follow some established conversational procedures. These generally consist of knowing how to start a conversation or initiate a topic of conversation with your conversation partner. Knowing how to wait your turn to speak and how to listen while others speak. Knowing how to contribute to the topic and keep the conversation going, and knowing how and when to exit the conversation. Young children have to develop this knowledge and most are able to do this. Experience and perhaps some explicit training. How often have you heard a parent or a teacher say to a child? I'm talking to another adult right now, what should you do when I'm talking to another adult? This experience allows the child to gradually develop a schema for how conversations work. Obviously, once a child becomes familiarized with the situation of holding a conversation or developing that schema, they become better at doing it. Joint attention is a critical part of early communication development. In early development, this involves a child and an adult attending to an object of interest during interactions. Joint attention to the object is established first, much like topic initiation during a conversation, the child and adult may share and attending to the object and turn taking is established. Eventually the interaction is ended. These early experiences involving joint attention lead into the development of early conversational skills. Children who have significant difficulty maintaining joint attention often have difficulty learning and using the rules of conversation. And sometimes this is an early indicator of difficulty in other areas of language. Last, let's talk about extra linguistic devices used during communication. These are cues that are mostly non-linguistic in nature, and they serve to convey additional meaning above and beyond the actual words used to deliver a message. Some extra linguistic cues are fully non-linguistic. And our supplemental to the message. During communication, we use directional gaze, facial expression, or even posture to provide more information to our listener. We must also learn to interpret these various cues when listening to others during conversation. We may not realize the importance of the extra linguistic cues until we have a communication breakdown during an email or text message with someone, where we communicate an idea in a manner that we think is effective. But the person receiving the message isn't sure how to interpret the message. We use these devices more than we may realize during in-person communication. Some extra linguistic cues are part of the spoken message, or rather they are superimposed over the message. These may be referred to more specifically as paralinguistic cues. And they are aspects of prosity, which are the parameters of voice and speech that include pitch, volume, and duration of sound. Again, these are aspects that make speech sound human and not robotic. And they can be used very purposefully to communicate more information with the linguistic message, such as emotion, excitement, boredom, fear, et cetera. Young children developing their pragmatic rule system tend to learn from extra linguistic cues at an early age and will begin to use these devices to help them communicate their message. When children don't have the words for the message they want to deliver, they may turn to extra linguistic means to supplement their language. At this point, we have covered many key concepts underlying development across all five areas of language. To further your understanding of these building blocks of language and how they develop. Be sure to read the chapter. I have not discussed the various milestones that children reportedly achieved during typical development. So you may want to learn more about these as well as the factors that influence development in each area of language. This is the end of this presentation.