Developmental

Perceptual development: Vision- How is a newborn's vision?

Newborn vision is rather poorly developed – adult level not reached until 6 months old Until 2 months of age, infants see objects 30 cm away most clearly – VISUAL ACUITY LIMITED. After this age, they will look at objects across a room.

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Object and depth perception- Explain motion.

at 4 – 5 weeks babies blink at object moving towards their face. Still at 4 months they respond to 2 objects as if they are 1 (Spelke & Hermer, 1996).

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Explain Binocular depth cues.

at 2 – 3 months infants start to react to the fact that images from the 2 eyes differ.

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Explain pictorial depth cues.

(eg: overlapping lines and objects masking other objects) are the last to develop (3 to 9 months).

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Explain newborns with shape/colour/texture.

become prominent for distinguishing objects at around 4 months

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DeLoache, Uttal and Rosengren (2013) study?

18 to 30 month old infants were allowed to play with full size toys (a slide, a child’s chair, and a child size toy car). Children were then presented with miniature versions of the same toys.

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What did the children do?

After playing with the big toys (for example sitting in the car) children would try to do the same with the miniature versions.

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Perceptual development- taste. How is newborns taste?

Infants can detect some tastes at birth. Other tastes are not developed at birth but sensitivity to all tastes is present by the end of the first 3-4 months This is thought to be due to the later development of the specific receptors.

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Mennella, Jagnow & Beauchamp (2001) study?

mothers who were going to breastfeed were assigned to one of three groups:

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Group 1?

1- Last trimester pregnancy drink is carrot juice and breastfeeding drink is water (CW.

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Group 2?

2- Last trimester pregnancy drink is water and breastfeeding drink is carrot juice. (WC)

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Group 3?

Last trimester pregnancy drink is water and breastfeeding drink is water. (WW)

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What did the test consist of?

Infants were tested when 5 to 6 months old for their preference for a carrot-based cereal. Infants were coded for negative facial expressions (coder) and taste preference (mother) when eating either plain or carrot flavoured cereal.

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What were the results for CW?

Infants whose mothers had taken carrot juice during pregnancy (CW) showed significantly less negative facial responses while eating carrot flavoured cereal, and significantly more liking for carrot flavoured cereal.

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Results for WC?

Similar trend for infant exposed to carrot juice during breast-feeding (WC). They showed less negative face expressions for the carrot juice cereal.

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Results for WW?

Babies preferred plain cereal and had more negative facial expressions for the carrot cereal.

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Perceptual development- smell- When is smell developed?

The sense of smell is developed in very young infants

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Coffield, Mayhew, Haviland-Jones and Walker-Andrews (2014) study?

Tested 36 6-7month old infants’ levels of distress and attention when watching videos showing a woman expressing either happiness or sadness (with order of emotion counterbalanced). Infants were placed into one of two conditions.

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What were the two conditions?

No odour condition or odour (pine or baby talc) condition.

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Results for group 1- saw happy video first

Those in the no odour condition looked at the sad video for less time than the happy video to a large extent, whereas those in the odour condition did not have much difference in looking time for the two videos.

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Results for group 2- saw sad video first

For the odour condition there was no change in looking time between the two videos, and there was a high looking time overall. Those with no odour looked at the happy video for longer than the sad video.

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What does this show? Summary?

Odour prevented the usual stressful effects of sad mood – children paid attention to the video longer.

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Perceptual development- hearing?

In the last 10/12 weeks of pregnancy the foetus can hear sounds. At birth preference for complex sounds (voices / noises) to pure tones. At 3 days infants turn their eyes towards a sound, but ability to identify specific location improves in time.

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What is multisensory development and who studied this?

Vision and hearing-Jordan and Brannon (2006) asked whether infants are able to match the sound of a number of people speaking to a visual cue showing different numbers of people.

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What was the study method?

Infants of 7 months of age saw a pair of videos: on one side, two women said the word “look” synchronously, on the other, three women said “look”. At the same time, the infant heard a recording of either two or three women saying “look”.

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What were the results of this?

Infants spent significantly longer looking at the stimuli in which the number of women they saw and heard matched. This suggests that infants can analyse speech to determine how many people are talking, and can match numbers across modalities.

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Give another example of multisensory development and who studied this?

Vision and touch- San & Streri (2007) habituated new-born infants (mean 41 hours old) to either a particular shape or texture. Infants touched one of these objects without seeing them until they became bored with (or habituated to) the object.

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Results from this study.

Infants do have multimodal recognition, they found it Easier to recognise texture from vision to touch and shape from touch to vision, and in terms of shape they recognised from touch to vision, but not vision to touch.

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What do all the multisensory develpment studies show?

Infants are able to use their vision to match to both touch and hearing early in development.

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How do Piaget and Gibson interpret this?

Piaget – lack of connections between sensory systems at birth – separist view Gibson – slow differentiation from initially connected sensory systems over development – unification view.

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Synaesthetic Associations?

One possibility that is discussed in the literature is that infants start with more connections between sensory systems than adults. Some of these may be lost as they mature.

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What is imitation and over-imitation?

Imitation (and mimicry) of others are common social behaviours Other animals also imitate, but not to the same extent as humans. Over- imitation is Copying someone and then going a little bit further in our own actions and only humans can do this.

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What is perceptually transparent?

When you imitate someone else doing an action, you can see yourself doing it.

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What is perceptually opaque e.g. actions like facial expressions.

Can’t be “guided by sensory information about the degree of similarity between the model’s and the observer’s behaviour. To imitate (them) requires a neurocognitive mechanism that relates the seen and unfelt to the felt and unseen.

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Define evolutionary and experimental?

Evolutionary: innate mechanism that matches observed action onto executed? Experiential: we learn to match our expressions to those of another?

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Meltzoff & Moore (1997) imitation study in newborns?

Present three facial gestures: mouth widening, lips pursing, tongue protrusion + control (neutral). Newborns faces are videod and then judged offline.

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What were the results of the study?

The study claimed to show evidence of imitation of the gestures. Supports argument that imitation is an innate ability. Newborns are only a few hours old and are able to imitate facial gestures.

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What are the criticisms of the view of the innate ability of imitation in newborns?

Problems with stats (Anisfeld, 1991; 1996): Have only actually found imitation of tongue protrusion, given error in interpreting statistics. Replication of the study also only find evidence in toungue protusion.

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What do Oostenbroek and colleagues, 2016 find?

No replication of any imitation.

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What did Jones, 1996, 2006 find?

Tongue protusion effect not driven by matching mechanisms. Newborns are sticking out their tongues not because they are trying to copy, but because they find something interesting. Newborns protrude tongue to anything interesting, like flashing light

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What does this suggest?

Matching is learned. Associative learning account (Heyes, 2005; 2010) Start out life with separate sensory and motor representations of action No way of telling that one representation corresponds to the other

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How do or abilities link to associative learning?

our environment provides us with much opportunity to perceive and produce the same action at the same time. Therefore, linking the representations through associative learning.

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Learning sources- White et al. (1964): study on self observation?

2-3 month orphans spend majority of waking hours watching their own hands.

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What does this show?

Infants learn a lot just by studying the environment themselves. They spend a majority of their time watching their hands.

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What do the infants struggle with?

They cannot always realise that what they are doing causes what they are feeling. For example, pulling their hair makes them cry because it hurts. They do not realise that pulling their hair is causing this.

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Learning sources- Amsterdam (1972) mirror-self oberservation study?

85% of 6-12 month olds respond to mirror image as a playmate, interacting with it (and therefore moving a lot)

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Learning sources-Uzgiris et al. (1986)- Caregives imitate

Infants spend large proportion of waking hours actively interacting face-to-face with adults. Caregivers shape to contain much imitation. Similar to earlier study, but children not in orphanages will spend time interacting with adults,

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Learning sources- O'Toole & Dublin (1968)- Synchronous action

In 55% of spoon feeding sequences, infant and caregiver opened their mouths.

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Evidence for learning account?

Range of experience just suggests it is possible Lack of neonatal imitation does not directly support the learning hypothesis.

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Can mappings be altered? Yes argument.

If the mappings develop through experience, should be possible to modify with difference experience. The associative learning account predicts yes.

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No argument

Natural selection account predicts ‘no’ Pinker (1997) argues that experience-based alteration of innate systems would usually be maladaptive.

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Heyes et al. (2005) study?

Degree to which imitative hand responses are performed faster than non-imitative (‘automatic imitation’) Control group (matching, copying hand gestures) vs a group who had received non-matching training (open hand when see a closing hand).

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Results from this

Non-matching training group showed less automatic imitation than control group. So training alters mappings, consistent with learning account.

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Experience vs learning- Heyes (2011)- wealth of stimulus

Associative Sequence Learning (ASL) model (Heyes) Interaction with environment drives mechanisms for imitation Imitation skills improve as infants experience more of the environment

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Experience vs learning- Heyes (2011)- poverty of stimulus

AIM model – Meltzoff & Moore Can’t be based on learning as infants “display” imitation so early on There is insufficient information in the stimulus (i.e. the environment) to account for behaviour. Imitation is innate.

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Summary of imitation.

More likely that imitation abilities develop through (domain general) associative learning than evolve through natural selection

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What is action understanding?

Motor representations of observed action activated not only when we want to imitate an action, but also when passively watching. Imitation does not necessarily imply understanding. How do we know children understand what they are copying.

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What are mirror neurons?

Automatic activation of motor system when observing actions also shown in monkeys - ‘mirror neurons’ in ventral premotor cortex that fire when monkey observes or executes the same action. Mirror neurons used to describe a lot, e.g. movement, autism.

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What are the steps of action understanding?

Some have proposed that the function of these motor activations is to understand / interpret what we see:observe another's action-motor commands for producing oneself-intentions that drive that action in us-same intention drives another action.

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Example of this.

Waving See someone wave- motor commands activated- brain thinks when I wave I’m trying to be friendly- Waves back.

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Kilner et al. 2007 view

If the function of motor activations is to interpret what we see, they may anticipate how an action will unfold by predicting what someone will do

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Southgate et al. 2009 study on prediction.

When 9month olds observe an action, motor activity before the action is actually observed, indicating that the infant predicts what someone else will do.

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Southgate et al. 2010 study on predicition.

When 9month olds observe only part of a familiar grasping action, motor activations indicate that they represented the unobserved part too.

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Summary of action understanding.

Our motor system represents observed actions during passive observation. Actions are represented before they happen and in their entirety, even if only partially presented .

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Overall view.

Some support for hypothesis that we use motor system to understand / interpret actions.

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FACE PERCEPTION

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What is face perception? (Taylor, Batty & Itier 2004)

Faces are probably the most important visual stimulus to us as humans, certainly in terms of our social interactions.

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How does the ability to recognive faces emerge?

Evolutionary; innate template of human face, predisposing us to good face perception. Experimental; we learn to see faces as faces. To distinguish between these hypotheses: investigate face processing in newborns (neonate).

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What are early studies on this?

Three different boards of faces, one looks like a face two don't. Stimuli matched for contrast. Even at 4 years old, infants prefer board lookling like a face compared to the other two. (Fantz (1961, 1963).

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However, what factors need to be considered?

Well-established preferences in infants; high-contrast patterns, moderate complexity, regular/symmetrical e.g. bulls-eyes, gratings. Control for these factors when investigating whether infancts recognise faces.

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Improvements to previous study (Maurer & Barrera 1981)?

Stimuli matched for number of elements, symmetry and external contour. A is face B is not like a face but has similar features in a different order. 2 month children would look longer at face than others, 1 month would look at face and similar face.

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What is a different method that could be used?

Rather than amount of time looking at static stimuli, investigate the extent to which babies will track the stimuli (face tracking).

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Experiment? (Johnson & Morton 1991)

Replication of Goren, Sarty & Wu 1975. Three different types of faces; face, scrambled and blank. Newborns show a preference to the face condition.

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Summary...

Looking time towards static images: face preference only at 2 months Tracking of moving stimuli: face preference at birth.

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What about face tracking in older infants? (Johnson & Morton 1991)

Only significant different between faces and other stimuli at one month, not 3 or 5. Infants look for longer at static faces than other stimuli at 2 months and older, but not before Infants track faces further than other stimuli at birth (not 3 m+)

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What are the two mechanisms mediating face processing?

CONSPEC- mediates tracking, innate template directing attention to faces. CONLERN- mediates looking to static faces. Develops through learning. Assumes that CONSPEC 'trains up' CONLERN.

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Is CONLERN experience-driven?

If so, we should build representations only for the range of stimuli which we encounter, and demonstrate superior processing of these (i.e. CONLEARN would be domain-general). Example is human faces and monkey faces either right way up or upside down.

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Experiment for this? (Pascalis et al. 2002)

Looking time paradigm. Familiarise adults, 6 month olds and 9 month olds with one set of human and monkey faces. Then afterwards, look at the amount of time spent looking at novel faces relative to familiar.

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Results?

Adult data; they looked at humans with a novel face for longer than a familiar face, looked at novel monkey face slightly longer than familiar face, but not as big a difference as in human faces.

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What about children?

At 6 months, discriminate equally well between human faces and monkey faces. At 9 months, discriminate better between human faces.

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Expertise effects: Same Vs. Other races?

Sangrigoli & deSchnonen (2004); studied face recognition of 3-5 year old Caucasias with native (French) faces and Asian faces. Children showed superior recognition of Caucasian faces compared to Asiatic faces.

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What did they explore?

Explored face recognition ability of 3 month old Caucasian infants with Caucasian faces and Asian faces.

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Experiment 1?

Habituated to a single face, then recognition assessed. Caucasians recognised more easily than Asiastic faces (Same-race effect).

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Experiment 2?

Habituated to three faces, then recognition assessed. Recognition shown for both types of faces.

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Reversibility? (Sanrigoli et al. 2005).

If 'other race' effect is a 'same race' effect in Korean participants adopted by Caucasian families, this is strong support for experiential nature of effect. Adults who were adopted into Caucasian families aged 3-9 years.

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Continued...

Adoptees performed similarly to French PPts.

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Diamond & Carey 1986

Dog and bird breeders show similar recognition effects with dogs & birds as with humans.

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Gauthier et al. 2000

Car experts with cars- distinct cortical networks for processing faces or all stimuli for which we are experts. Same brain areas activated when car experts observe cars and bird experts observe birds.

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What do these all demonstrate?

These demonstrations of similar expertise effects with non-face stimuli, suggest that CONLERN may learn perceptual representations of *any* stimuli.

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Why is this controversial?

The stimulus generality of these mechanisms is controversial. Kanwisher (e.g. 2010, PNAS article) believes that faces are special (e.g. states that imaging analyses are of insufficient resolution).

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Summary?

Findings concerning face processing in the first few months of life suggest that we possess: An innate mechanism which directs our attention towards faces (CONSPEC).

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Continued...

Which ‘trains up’ expertise for the faces which we encounter within a stimulus-general perceptual learning mechanism (CONLERN).

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MOTOR DEVELOPMENT

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What is ubiquitos movement?

Ubiquitous comes to us from the noun ubiquity, meaning "presence everywhere or in many places simultaneously." ... (Another noun form, ubiquitousness, arrived around 1874.) Both words are ultimately derived from the Latin word for "everywhere.

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Leverson, Haga & Sigmudsson H (2012) study?

Motor development was looked at over the life-span. Five different motor tasks were used to study changes in motor performance within 338 participants (7-79 yrs).

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Results?

Results showed that motor performance increases from childhood (7-9) to young adulthood (19-25) and decreases from young adulthood (19-25) to old age (66-80).

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What are the physical growth trends?

Cephalocaudal- head to foot, proximodistal midline to extremeities (legs, arms).

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Who experiences motor difficulties?

Are (or can be) experienced by children with...developmental coordination disorder (DCD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), williams syndrome, premature birth, down syndrome, dyslexia, autism and more.

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What are examples of motor difficulties?

Climbing, threading, jumping, rolling, grasping, standing, drawing, using lego, walking, handwriting.

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Why should we study motor development?

Directly measurable, observal development, visible; crawling, standing, running, dancing. Well-described developmental change and developmental norms, used to study more developmental processes and other domains.

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What did Adolph & Robinson 2015 say?

motor behaviour is the only way to translate mental activity into actual activity.

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Motor development in newborns?

Immature nervous system, poorly controlled limb movements, but evidence of motor control; use of crying for attention, coordinate sucking, swallowing, breathing when feeding.

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Reflexes in first 6 months?

Basis for later development, e.g. until 2 months; steppig (percuser to walking), until 3-4 months; palmar grasp (precursor to voluntary grasp), until 4 months; sucking reflex (then becomes voluntary).

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Grasp reflex?

Grasps around a bigger thumb or finger with their whole hand.

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Babinski reflex?

When finger moved accross their foot they flex like it is tingling them and spread their toes out.

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Moro reflex?

When an adult does rasberries, the baby grabs their head and then spreads arms out until the adult does this again.

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Motor developments listed. From Adolphs & Robinson, (2015). Data from Bayley (1969) and Frankenburg et al., 1992.

0-3 m prone, lifts head. 1-5 m prone, chest up; uses arms for support, 2-7 m rolls over, 5-8m sits without support, 5-11 m crawls on hands and knees, 9-15 m stands without support, 10-16 m walks without support.

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From reflexes to motor skill learning?

Reflexes dissapear, we learn new motor skills, we perform existing skills with more control.

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THEORIES- the golden age?

1880s to 1940s, influences from biology (maturational), details descriptions/motor 'cataloues', developmental norms and standardised testing e.g. Bayley Scales of Infant development.

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THEORIES- the dormant years?

Catalogues made, maturation, dominance of experimental and cognitive psychology.

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THEORIES- rebirth?

1980s onwards, advances in theory, technology and brain knowledge.

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THEORIES- maturational accounts of motor development?

Arnold Gessel 1938 and Myrtle McGraw 1943; influenced by Darwin; importance of maturation (biological 'unfolding') from central nervous system. Detailed descritive accounts (Gesell 53 stages of rattle behaviour. Patterns- must be brain maturation.

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Continue...

Fixed sequence of emergence of separate skills, increasing cortical control of muscular movements drive development, innate and genetically determined; hierarchical, minor role given to experience.

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Jimmy & Johnny experiment (McGraw 1935, see Thelen 2000).

McGraw was influenced by Gesell but also recognised intertwined nature of experience and biology. She is often cited as maturationist, but not always.

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What did she do?

Trained one twin in culturally generic skills (walking/sitting) and culturally specific skills (swimming/roller skating), other twin had no training. Results showed some improvements in trained twin's skills, but small effects long-term.

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What are the two influential ideas in motor development?

1. Ecoloical (Gibsonian) psycholgy. 2. Bernstein's degrees of freedom problem.

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Ecological psycholoy? (James and Eleanor Gibson 1960s, 1980s).

Child perceives the world in an organised way to for interaction with it, focus on matching capabilities with environment: "Affordances" for action. Perception and action interlinked.

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Thelen (1995) view on movement as perception?

People perceive in order to move and move in order to perceive. What, then, is movement but a form of perception, a way of knowing the world as well as acting on it?

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Movement, perception and action visual cliff (E.J Gibson & Walk 1960)?

Safety glass invisible to infant, caregiver beckons, experienced and inexperiences crawlers of 7.5-8.5m, experiences had 65% of visual cliff, inexperienced 35% avoidance. Shows crawling experience predicts perception of affordances for action.

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Bernstein's view of psychology (environmental context).

Bernstein (1967 translation from 1930s): the ‘degrees-of-freedom problem’: how does the brain organise all the nerves, muscles, cells into movements?

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Answer to this?

Some movements do not arise from a neural signal, but from forces in the environment Environment constrains the degrees of freedom: need to stay upright, move forward…walking is most efficient (Thelen, 1995) .

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Therefore?

Therefore: Not just due to increasing cortical control as the maturationists suggested.

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Dynamic systems theory of motor development? (Adolph & Berger, 2006; Thelen, 1989, 1995)

CNS development, goal in mind, movement capacity of the body, environmental facilitation. The four contributors to new motos skills are not static but interaction.

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Continued...

Flexible movement patterns Emphasis on practice to refine and improve skills Exploration as a driving force for development.

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The case of the disappearing reflex (Thelen & Fisher 1982 ,1983).

Infants and their lefs gain weight at the same time as stepping dissapearing, stepping could be 'restored' or 'inhibited' depending on the context. Maturational account: reflexes are inhibited with increasing cortical maturity.

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Individual differences and related skills

Skills related to one another; e.g. head control and chest control=sit with support. Individual differences in older of acquisition as well as in the types of movement produced along the way.

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Cross-cultural differences?

Variations in cultural-rearing practices are associated with different motor outcomes, e.g. west indians ofjamaica and kipsigies of kenya, practice motor skills, keep babies upright in holes dug in the ground with blankets, tend not to crawl

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Continued...

This is in contrast to western trends.

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Maturational approach?

Provided developmental norms, legacy of standardised testing, central nervous system development is still an important idea.

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Dynamic systems theory?

Differences in outcomes are dependent on multiple factors; importance of differences in context, cultural conditions & experience of the infanct/child, sequence of emergence not fixed & skills build on one another,cortical control is not only driver.

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Advantages of dynamic systems theory

Formal language for emergence of new behaviours (Yates, 1987); framework for study (Wolff, 1992) Can be modelled mathematically; enable generation of predictions (e.g., under what conditions change will occur).

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Continued...

Accounts for the evidence of the role of experience and multiple interacting influences.

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Questions to be answered (Aslin 1993)?

How do we set goals for action? (still need executive functioning) Why does a system go for a particular ‘attractor state’ ? How does it move from one to another?

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Onset of locomotion?

The beginning of locomotion (self-initiation of movement) is thought to be related the development of a range of skills in other domains.

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Examples?

perception of distance, wariness of heights, spatial search strategies, receiving social signals, proximity seeking for attachment.

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Locomotion & Joint attention? (Campos et al. 1997).

8.5 months- olds, 22 per group, "look over there" + pointing to toy, DV= where infant looked.

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Locomotion: cross-cultural (Tao & Dung 1997)

Infants in urban China: onset of locomotion approx. 3 months later than Western norms (Bayley, 1969). Traditional practice: kept swaddled on a bed, thick warm clothing, crawling discouraged for cleanliness.

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Experiment 1

90 Chinese infants, 8-11 months Crawlers (5+ weeks) took significantly fewer trials to look to the correct direction than prelocomotors and ≤ 3 week experienced crawlers Effect of crawling experience still significant after controlling for age.

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Experiment 2

Limited locomotor experience vs. allowed to crawl on floor of flat (equivalent ages) Floor crawlers turned to correct direction on significantly more trials than infants with limited locomotor experience.

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Summary

Theories of motor development have evolved significantly over the last 150 years or so The maturational account has been very influential and leaves a lasting legacy of standardised testing and developmental norms…

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Continued...

but is now generally recognised as outdated and flawed because it doesn’t take account of multiple, interacting influences on motor development In turn, locomotor experience is closely connected to development in many other domains.

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CONCEPTUAL DEVELOPMENT: THE DEVELOPMENT OF CATEORISATION

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What are concepts and what are categories?

Concepts are ways to organise knowledge of "objects, events on the basis of some similarity". Categories are like concepts but have structure too. They imply sorting are are of great interest to developmental theorisits.

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What else do categories imply?

They imply hierarchy and the idea of iheriting properties.

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What is perceptual categorisation?

The grouping together of objects that have similar appearances. It is more than just objects that are perceived categorically.Based on observable properties only.

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What are the other types of categorisation?

Conceptual (based on observable properties and included some cognitive component (e.g. knowing something about the category)- not always obvious properties, e.g. colour of blood. Other typel taxonomic (based on kinds) and thematic (based on schemas).

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Typical study for perceptual categorisation?

Infants are shown a number of instances from one category and then given a preference test that pairs a novel member of the familiar category with an exemplar from a novel category.

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What are the resutls?

A preference for the novel exemplar... is taken as evidence that the infant has formed a categorical representation of the familiar category.

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What procedures are used for perceptual categorisation?

The categorization abilities of infants in the domain of vision have been revealed largely through the use of a familiarization-novelty preference procedure which relies on the preference that infants have for novel stimuli (Fantz, 1964).

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What is categorical representation?

Formation of a perceptually-based mental representation, which allows the infant to generalise new instances to a familiar category. The infant is taking information from perception, storing it in a new form to deal with things in that category.

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Experiment for this?

Shown three trials of cats. Trial 4 had a dog and a cat. They looked more at the new dog than the new cat. Novelty preference, could be other conditions though, for example the background of the dog picture.

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What is more common?

To have 6 training trals, and report looking as; average of trials 1-3, average of trials 4-6

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What features are being encoded? (Quinn, P.C. & Eimas, P.D (1996)

Animals faces, bodies, sounds, smells, behaviour?

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How was this tested?

Participants shown either whole animal condition, face only condition and body only condition. Found people looked longer in trials 1-3 than 4-6 and longer at the whole animal, then face only, then body only. Novelty preference in fo, then wa, then b

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Experient on 3-4 year olds?

Ex1: Cats and dogs can be categorised as different from birds, exp2: control study to check for a priori preference for birds, ex3: control study to check for discriminability of stimuli, ex4: compare train on dogs or cats, test with novel dog or cat

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Results from this experiment and adult version?

Category of dogs includes cats, category of cats does not include dogs. If trained on cats, dog is suprising, trained on dogs, cat is a bit less surprising. Trained on dogs, little difference between new dogs and new cats- similar to infant data.

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Why could this be?

Perceptual categorisation- formation of a perceptually-based mental representation, which allows the infant to generalise new instances to a familiar category.

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Rosch's category heirarchy?

Developed an approach to categorisation, widely influential. Three broad level of categories that we encode- superordinate, basic (most important, first one we learn) and subordinate.

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What are related principles in Rosch's theory?

Cognitive economy; things in this category, things not in this category, cue validity; if it has this feature, it is one of those.

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What are basic level objects?

Natural discontinuities- where we 'cut' the world, maximise cue validity.

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Examples of levels

Superordinate- furniture, vehicles. Basic- chair, table, lamp, car, truck. Subordinate- kitchen chair, easy chair, sports car, jumbo jet.

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What is the basic level seen in?

Common attributes, shape similarity, motor movements, maximised cue validity (probabilty of category Y given cue X), maximise category resemblence.

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Why do children use the basic levels?

Early words spoken, early words known. Should be other way round, comprehension precedes production.

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Define perceptual categorization

The grouping together of objects that have similar appearances.

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Define superordinate level

The general level with a category hierarchy, such as an "animal"

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Define subordinate level

The most specific level within a category hiearchy, such as "poodle".

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Define basic level

The middle level, and often the first level learned, within a category hierarchy, such as "dog".

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LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT- THE PRELINGUISTIC PERIOD

LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT- THE PRELINGUISTC PERIOD

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What is prelinguistic?

Before language, preverbal, infants without speech, learning about language in the first year of life.

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What develops?

Messages (pragmatics), sentences (syntax); grammar, word order, morphology, words (semantics); lexical level, speech sounds; phonetics- vocal sounds, phonology- for language sounds at segmental level, suprasegmentals.

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How does children's knowledge of language progress?

Their knowlede largely progresses from smaller to larger units.

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What are the stages in productive language development?

COmmunicative crying, babbling, reduplication, one-word stage, two-word stage, multi-word speech, narratives, the 'pre-linguistic period is getting ready to talk.

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What is receptive language?

What you hear. This is productive.

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Learning in the womb ('in utero')?

Maternal voice preference at birth, familiar story preference at birth, maternal language preference at birth, child-directed speech at birth.

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How do we know?

High amplitude sucking, preferential listening methods (prefer family language, e.g. Germanic child would prefer Dutch to French, fetal heart language.

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Describe high amplitude sucking (HAS)

Babies **** more to hear wat they want to hear. To show a preference or to show dishabituation.

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HAS- preference in neonates (DeCapser and Fifer (1980)?

3-10 day olds heard either own or another mother's voice (recorded that day or the day before), half had to slow down sucking to hear their mother, half had to speed up, opposite for other mother, sucking rates reliably changed in favour of own mum.

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What is this an example of?

High amplitude sucking and preference- later we will look at habituation-dishabituation.

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Another key preference (and method)?

Child-directed speech preference (Cooper & Aslin 1990), one-day-old and one-month-old babies prefer to hear infant-directed speech over adult-directed speech.

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Describe preferential listening?

Based on looking, contigency between looking and sound.

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Experiment on this?

Different stimuli and going to see what the child prefers. Record looking. The child learns that there's a contingency between a light flashing and speech. If they look one way they hear Infant directed speech, whereas the other they hear adult DS.

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What do children do?

Infants will look more at the lamp producing infant directed speech rather than adult directed.

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Link to categorical perception?

Phonological development, generally studies in infants using High Amplitude Sucking (HAS), key question- can you tell the difference? E.g. minimal contrast pairs 'big pig', 'late rate'.

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High amplitude sucking and dishabituation?

Based on the habituaton paradigm: infants pay more attention to new stimuli than to old stimuli. Rate or strenght of ****ing on a dummy controls the presentation of a repeated stimuli. Infants learn that the more they **** the more they hear a sound.

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What does this show?

Infants are habituated to one syllable until their sucking rate drops.

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Example experiment based on above.

Can infants tell the difference between ba and pa. They **** more if they notice the change. Does not require preference, requires them to recognise the change, not to be bored.

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What happens when the infant has habituated to the sound?

The syllable is changed, if infants noticce the change, they will increase their rate of sucking in order to hear the new syllable.

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Perception of phonemes? What is the difference between 'pa'and 'ba'?

The gap- voice onset time, the timing that you voice the plosive

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Categorical perception in adults?

Speech sounds vary in their phonetic features, e.g. /ba/ and /pa/ differ only in Voice Onset Time (VOT) Possible to artificially synthesise sounds between /ba/ & /pa/ along a VOT continuum and ask people what they hear.

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Categorical perception in infants?

Eimas et al (1971) habituated 1 & 4 month olds to sound /ba/, after habituation the control group heard the same token of /ba/ again. The 'different' group heard a token of a different sound /pa/, from the other side of the category boundary.

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Continued...

The 'same' group heard another token of /ba/, from the same side of the category boundary?

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Changes during the first year

Becoming a native listener.

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Development during the first year? Very young infants?

Very young infants show categorical perception of native language contrasts and must logically have the capacity to do the same for non-native language contrasts.

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Adults?

Adults show categorical perception only for native language contrasts, and often fail to discriminate non-native contrasts .

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When does the child’s language environment begin to shape his or her perception of speech?

Werker et al. (1981) investigated when infants begin to perceive non-native speech contrasts like adults.

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Werker's conditioned head turn procedure?

Infants hear the same sound once per second .The sound changes. If the infant turns her head, she is rewarded by an illuminated, moving toy. The infant becomes conditioned (learns) to turn her head whenever the sound changes.

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Werker and Development during the first year.

Tested English- hearing infants ability to distinguish sounds that English adults canno, Hindi sounds. English adults recognised a lot less than Hindi adults.

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What were children able to distinguish?

Found at 6-8months infants are 'universal listeners'. English hearing infants can discriminate Hindi contrasts as well as HIndi speaking adults. You are born able to tell contrasts apart and you can still do it 6-8 months later.

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What about 10-12 months?

Werker& Tees (1984) replicated findings of early sensitivity to non-native speech contrasts. Critical period for the maintenance of phonemic sensitivity. By 10-12 months they are like adults for English, at this age Hindi and Salish infantsdistinguis

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Speech segmentation: finding words in adults' speech. Simple definition?

Lexical segmentation, how do you find the words in fluent speech .

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What is speech segmentation?

The acoustic gaps do not coincide with the gaps between words. Your brain put them in. You are hearing like you read; word and a gap. There is not this space with words in spoken language, your brain puts these in.

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Finding words in speech, when can they do it?

Spectrographic analysis of the acoustic energy in sentences Speech produces a continuous auditory stream not discrete units When are infants first able to extract individual words from this stream? The problem of lexical segmentation.

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Preferential listening; two sides

Jusczyk & Aslin (1995) used preferential listening to explore when infants can segment words from continuous speech. Light is illimuniated in one side of child, when they look at light they hear sound or sequence of sounds particular to that light.

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What does the child learn?

Learns that her gaze controls what they hear.

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Study 1?

Infants familiarised to sentences containing target words (e.g. “cup” and “dog”) Infants heard lists of isolated words on each side On one side: familiarised words On the other: non-familiarised words.

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Study 2?

Infants familiarised to lists of isolated words Infants heard sentences on each side On one side: sentences containing familiarised words On the other: sentences containing non-familiarised words Listening times to each stream were measured.

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Results?

Both studies showed that infants become able to segment words from fluent speech between 6 and 7.5 months At this age, infants listened longer to the target words/ sentences containing target words.

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How do they do it- using prosodic cues (stress cues)?

In ‘stress languages’, adults use a Metrical Segmentation Strategy to segment speech into words (e.g. stressed syllable often denotes start of new word).

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Jusczyk, Cutler & Redanz (1993)?

Between 6 & 9 months, infants develop a preference for dominant language stress pattern: Strong/Weak: e.g. kingdom, butter, sinus or Weak/Strong: e.g. resent, guitar, befall 9-month-olds preferred S/W to W/S – but 6-month-olds did not show pref.

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Using prosodic cues- Juscyk et al (1999)?

Gave infants a choice of listening to sentences that containes or did not contain the familiarised words. 7.5 month-old infants who heard strong/weak words preferred sentences containing familiarised words.

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What does this suggest?

Suggests that the rhythmic processes in English helps us pick out words.

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How do they do it- using syllable statistics?

The statistics of speech provide a further clue to how it should be divided into words Syllables within a word co-occur more often than syllables belonging to different words E.g. be- is more often followed by -cause or -hind than by good or there.

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What do infants do?

Perhaps infants learn which syllables tend to go together, and divide speech into words accordingly?

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Saffran et al (1996) experiment on this (read paper)?

explored whether infants are sensitive to co-occurrences of syllables within and between words. Infants were exposed to 2 minutes of unstressed nonsense strings made up of four words, e.g. “ti-bu-do” & “pi-go-la”.

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Conditions?

Allowed infants to choose between listening to; a familiarised ‘word’ (e.g. “ti-bu-do”) a part-word, made from the end of one word and the beginning of another (e.g. “do-pi-go”),

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Continued...

Infants had used the statistics of the speech to segment out the whole words , Transition probability- tu would 100% predict pi Use syllable statistics to find words.

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VOCABULARY DEVELOPMENT

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Define reference?

Words refer, they are about something in the world, words are their own existence. Most of our words have arbritatry MAPPING- a connection between one thing to another, forming a connection is known as mapping.

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Profile of lexical development?

An 18 year old school leaver will know around 60,000 words, a 6 year old will know 13,000 words. A new word is learnt every one to two hours from 12 months to 18 years.

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Diary study?

More new words are produced between 25-27 months. Slow rate early on to faster rate of learning words.

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The vocabulary spurt?

Word production starts at around 12 months, early development is slow. Non-linear growth in productive vocabulary. Vocabulary spurt between 18 & 24 months.

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What are the explanations of the vocabulary spurt?

1. Sound e.g. segmentation of speech, 2. concept e.g. categorisation of objects, 3. mapping e.g. naming insight. An arbritary mapping between a sound and a concept.

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Segmentation of speech?

Lexical segmenntation, Plunkett (1993); 2 danish between 12 &24 months, home visits 3/month audio/video recorded & transcribed.

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What were the utterances coded as?

Target lexemes- words e.g. giraffe, that. Sub-lexical forms (SLFs)- undershooting solutions e.g. -raffe, -at. Formulaic expressions- overshooting solutions e.g. wassat, gimme.

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What did they find?

The vocabulary spurt closely related to solution of speech segmentation problems. Both children had the spurt around 22-24 months.

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What is token frequency?

saying the same words multiple times, the type frequency would be 1.

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Vocab spurt explanation 2- categorisation of objects?

Gopnik & Meltzoff (1987) found a relationship between the age at which a productive naming spurt was seen and the emergence of 'advanced object sorting' skills.

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What did Gopnik & Meltzoff (1987) argue?

They argued that the vocabulary spurt reflects the uderstanding that all things belong in categories. Variants of the task, sometimes physically sorting objects, sometimes watching the order they touch the objects.a

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Another experiment on categorasation of objects?

Meints, Plunkett & Harris (1999) found that at 12 months infants' concepts only include typical referents. At 18 & 24 months, both typical and atypical referents are included in the infants' concepts of words.

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What does this suggest?

there is some relationship between vocabulary development and categorisation.

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Vocab spurt explanation 3- naming insight?

Understanding something about language itself- McShane (1979) argued that the vocab spurt reflects the child's discovery that all things can and should have names.

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What did Kamhi (1986) claim?

That this insight was an observable developmental phenomenon "at 6pm on the evening of 22 Feb, Alison realised that words could be used to name objects".

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Who is Quine (1960)?

Philosopher, interested in ideas of meaning and comunication. Infinite number of possibilities for what this means.- Quine's mapping problem- gavagai examples to follow.

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The disambiguation problem?

What does gavagai mean when named next to a rabbit, is is the whole rabbit, part of it, its food, its name?? Problem proposed for anyone trying to learn a new language.

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First solution for this?

Syntactic Bootstrapping hypothesis- also called linguistic 'context'. Pre-school children can use the sentence context in which a word is used to infer the meaning of; count nouns, mass nouns, proper nouns, adjectives, verbs.

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Results?

Children of 18 months are surprisingly sensitive to small cues, the differences between this is a wug or some wug. Child is bootstrapping themselves into language, pulling themselves up using close-class words.

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Solution two?

Constraints on the hypothesis space. Shown three different pictures, two familiar one that people may not know. The new thing is a gavaigi, the new thing gets the unknown name, even if it is that or not.

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What did Markman (1989),Golinkoff et al( 1994) say about this?

Children can make assumptions about new a word’s meaning because they are equipped with a set of word learning biases and constraints. Children constrain/limit their guesses to get round the infinite hypothesis.

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What are some hypothesised contraints?

Conventionality; we all use same words for the same thing, we generally share a language. Whole object principle; words name whole objects, not bits of them. Shape bias: extend the new term on the basis of shape rather than other properties.

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Continued...

Mutual exclusivity: objects cannot have more than one name, taxonomic assumption: new words refer to categories/kinds, principle of contrast: all distinctions in word signal differences in meaning.

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What is an example of the whole object principle?

Behaviour= children apply new words to whole objects rather than to salient properties of objects... explanation= children biased to apply new words to whole objects rather than salient properties of whole objects.

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Shape bias in 2 and 3 year olds?

"This is a dax", is this a dax? When the shape changes, they do not see it as a dax. However, the change in size and texture they still see as a dax. Most significant changes in 2 years old. True at basic level.

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Example of mutual exclusivity?

Behaviour= children apply new words to objects without names, rather than to objects that already have names. Children are constrained to assume objects can only have one name. Youtube example- 'theres a toma here. can you give me the toma'

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What do chidren do?

Give unusual objects rather than duck, for example.

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Solution 3?

There are three things and an adult is looking at one of them. This is a social influence- the Gavagai is the one the person is looking at, children learns from adult.

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The social-pragmatic approach?

Word learning occurs in situations of joint attention (JA). The child knows that there are sharing attention with the adult.

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What are the two ways in which JA might solve mapping problem?

adult speaker ‘follows-in’ on child’s focus of attention, (and labels object that child is already attending to) infant switches focus to match adult speaker’s focus, (and attaches label to object attended to by adult).

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Age affects in social-pragmatic approach?

By 18 months, infants attach new words to objects at the focus of the speaker’s attention, By same age, infants will attach a new word to the object looked at by the speaker, not the object the infant was looking at when they heard the word,

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Continued...

Ability to draw attention to what the speaker is looking at and move attention away from what they were initially looking at to look at what the speaker is looking at.

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Solution 4?

The associative learning approach- shown different groups of objects multiple times, the one you see more you assume is the gavaigi.

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Continued...

General learning mechanisms, PLUS the natural statistical co-variation of words and their referents to discover words' meanings, referents co-vary with words, referents move in temporal coincidence with words. A succession of examples help.

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Smith & Yu (2008) experiment on this approach?

Tested infants' ability to learn word-object pairs based on how these co-occured across trials. Shows pair of made up objects, would see two pictures and hear two words at a time, fairly quickly you learn what they are.

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Results of this?

12 & 14 month old infants showed evidence of cross-situational learning. Put some pairs up and only say one word, children will look at the correct answer. Both 12 and 14 month look at target picture longer than distractor, but 14 month slightly bett

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GRAMMATICAL DEVELOPMENT

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What does successful language require?

Vocabulary and grammar (synax- word order) and morphology (word shape).

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What is a morpheme?

The smallest unit of a lanuage that carries meaning, free morphemes (words) occur in large numbers and in isolation, bound morphemes occur in much smaller numbers and are always attached to free morphemes.

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Berko productive morphology test on 4 years +?

This is a wug. Now there is another one. There are two of them. There are two? Child most likely will say 'wugs' because they have learnt this technique.

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Define morphology?

The process of combining morphemes to build complex words e.g. indisputable (in – dispute – able).

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Requirements for morphology?

A human brain- most studies with great apes have been unsuccessful and language input.

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Other animals and morphology?

A dog can do a lot of fetching, understands mutual exclusivity, limited domain, a parrot is good at categorsation and talking, limited level. Both know Google/Youtube.

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What is the requirement for language input?

Newport (1990)- the critical period, ASL, US English. 30 congenitally/prelingually deaf adults, primary language ASL. Native learners , exposed to ASL from birth by deaf signing parents, 'early' learners, exposed from deaf peers at 4-6, late l at 12.

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What were the tasks?

ASL verbs of motion, battery of tests of production and comprehension; syntax, morphology. Production tasks; short videotaped events, elicit one sign or simple sentences, score use of correct morphemes or syntactic forms.

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Results?

All got word order 100 percent correct, but morphology showed native doing better than early and early learners doing better than late learners. Late learners Initially at strict ‘oral’ schools (no ASL allowed).

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Newport (1990) age of acquisition study?

46 participants; first language chinese or korean, university students in the U.S for some years, varying in age and age of arrival. 23 native speakers of English.

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How were they tested?

Grammatical judgement test 276 simple short sentences in US English Half the sentences were grammatical Half contained a grammatical violation Tasks: say whether the sentence was grammatical or not.

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Results?

Native had a high mean school, and the younger the age of arrival the better their score. Shows there is a critical period in grammar.

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What does grammatical development look like? 'putting words together'?

Early word combinations- Brown (1973)- MLU- mean length of utterance (number of morphemes), my dog= 2 morphemes, my mummy's dog= 4 morphemes. More morphemes used the older they get.

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Grammatical stages? (Brown 1973)

1. Telegraphic; word order, 1.75 MLU. 2. Added morphemes (present progressive) 2.25 MLU. 3. Questions, negation, copular, 2.75 MLU. 4. complex sentences, regular past tense, third person 3.50 MLU.

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Continued...

5. Further complexity, coordination of noun and verb phrases, conjunctions, 4.0 MLU.

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What kind of errors do children make?

Children's early utterances suprisignly error- free, they make errors of omission not commission in telegraphic, e..g. will say put floor, but put it to the table. Their utterances look like similified versions of the adult form.

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Chanes in performance; U-shaped learning?

Good performance of go went, feet, but makes errors like oed, wented, feets, foots. These are called over-regularisation errors.

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What are the two routes to the past tense?

Pinker, Marcus; child initially learns words in context but unrelated to each other, child learns rule but overextends it, child withdraws from overextension.

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Other route?

Mature state: Detect word, look up in lexicon If an exception, apply learned mapping Otherwise, inflect by rule(s).

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Theoritcal issues in language development?

Behaviourist account- Learning theory- children learn language through experience. Skinner's behaviourism; children learn to produce grammatical sentences in the same way they learn words; through imitation and reinforcement.

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Parental influence?

Parental approval or disapproval indicates the grammaticality of the child’s utterances, thereby reinforcing correct utterances.

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A different view?

Chomsky- Experience of language cannot account for linguistic productivity = the ability to produce and understand sentences never produced or heard before Productivity implies implicit knowledge of syntactic rules

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LAD theory? (language acquisition theory)

LAD specifies the fundamental grammatical principles shared by all languages (Universal Grammar) The LAD, and therefore the ability to acquire language, is innate, domain-specific and uniquely human. Universal Nativist Modular Minimal role experienc

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Continued...

Minimal role played by child’s experience of language Principles and parameters Principles are the universal rules with which the child starts out Parameters are set by the language the child hears Once the parameters are set, the principles applied

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Examples;

Principle: Every sentence has a subject Principle: Some languages allow subject to be dropped Parameter: Whether subject must be specified in the language Child hears ‘I don’t speak English’ or ‘je ne parle pas français’ or ‘_ no hablo español’.

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Continued...

Child hears ‘I don’t speak English’ or ‘je ne parle pas français’ or ‘_ no hablo español’ and sets parameter as null subject or non-null subject accordingly Principle can then be applied to all instances in language.

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Argument from the poverty of the stimulus?

Chomsky’s claims about Universal Grammar stem from his Argument from the Poverty of the Stimulus: Positive evidence is under-specified No negative evidence Yet… children progress rapidly to a full mastery of syntax, making surprisingly few errors.

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Does negative evidence exist?

Explicit disapproval? (Brown & Hanlon,1970) No evidence that approval or disapproval are contingent on syntactic correctness Parents only correct semantic errors.

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Does negative evidence exist?

‘Subtle negative feedback’ Parental repetitions/ recasts more likely after errors (Hirsh-Pasek et al. 1984; Demetras et al, 1986 Bohannon & Stanowicz, 1988; Saxton references on reading list).

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Is negative feedback used?

Direct Contrast Hypothesis (Saxton, 1997) 5-year-olds trained with novel verbs E.g. neak/noke (a repeated clapping motion in which an object is trapped between the palms) – like speak/spoke.

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Testing groups?

Two; negative feedback and positive demonstration by adult.

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Negative evidence?

Negative evidence (correction) resulted in more frequent subsequent correct use of the past tense form compared with positive demonstration. So: Negative feedback is used! (sometimes).

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What is specific language inpairment?

Larry Leonard (and Dorothy Bishop) ~7% 5-year-olds show a specific language impairment (SLI; Tomblin, 1996), defined as language skills significantly below age norms, plus normal-range IQ, hearing, motor & neurological function.

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Characteristics?

Poor vocabulary knowledge (link to ‘late talker’ status at age 2) Omission of grammatical morphemes (“I need go now”) Difficulty interpreting subtleties in language (‘pragmatics’).

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In some cases?

In some cases, articulation problems Delayed, rather than deviant language But unlikely to catch up (link to learning disability in adulthood).

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What is the underlying problem in SLI? (four explanations)

1. Incomplete grammatical rule systems- immature grammatical development, inability to induce grammar and hence reliance on rote learning, controversial argument this is genetic i.e. a specific impairments to LAD itself.

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Second problem?

Difficulty processing grammatical morphemes; surface hypothesis, a difficulty perceiving & using low salience or low frequencey morphemes.

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What type of impairment is this?

a grammar-specific processing impairment – because of the unique difficulty of hearing, processing and linking these low salience, brief bits of information.

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Third problem?

Auditory processing deficit? difficulty with processing rapid auditorily-presented information (Tallal & Stark, 1981) i.e. an impairment of auditory processing, not specific to language (‘domain-general’).

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Fourth problem?

Generally limited processing ability: Generalised Slowing Hypothesis (Kail, 1994; Miller et al., 2001) limited working memory capacity (Gathercole & Baddeley, 1993) i.e. a general processing impairment which impacts particularly on language (rapidity

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Summary of grammar?

Grammar is what is most special about language Grammar is easy to pick up as a first language learner Much easier to learn as a second language early Grammatical development is orderly.

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Continued...

There are still heated arguments about language … perhaps because it can tell us about how the mind is organised.

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