studies

• DeCapser and Spencer 


  babies sucked their dummies more when their mothers read the same book they had read during the last 6 months of pregnancy.
• Petitto and Holowka (2002)


  videoed infants and saw most babbling comes from right side of mouth which is controlled by the left side of the brain - responsible for speech production
• Mehler et al (1988) 


  4 day old French babies increased sucking of dummies. showing recognition, when they heard French as opposed to Italian or English. some awareness of the sounds of French before they were born
• Fitzpatrick (2002) 


  found the heart rate of an unborn baby slowed when it heard its mothers voice
• Bristol uni study (2008)


  showed that babies who are exposed to different languages in first 9 months are more able to pick out the sounds of these languages as they get older. phonemic contraction has occurred less than it would if baby had been exposed to one language
• cuttenden (1974)


  demonstrations that understanding of patterns of intonation are still developing in teens
• stages of a child knowing words

  
  

  children comprehend and understand language before they can say it.

  12 months - first recognisable

  18 months - know around 50 words

  24 month - know 200 words

  36 month - know around 2000 words

  learn about 10 new words a day
• early words fall into 4 categories 


  naming, action, social, modifying

  relate to immediate surroundings
• Nelson (1973)

  studied the first 50 words and grouped them

  classes, specific object, actions/events, modifying, personal/social
• Aitchison (1987)


  labelling associated sounds with objects around the child, linking words to things
• 'wug' test 


  children shown a picture of a strange creature - told it was a wug. when they were shown 2 they said there was two wug. they automatically used the rule that states -s is added a noun to form a plural.
• Rescorla (1980)


  overextension - categorical - word is used to refer to things in a similar. category - word car is used to refer to all moving things

  overextension - analytical - word is used to refer to things that aunt clearly in the same category
• genie case study 


  argued cognitive and social interaction she never had the interaction with her parents and so the connections never formed meaning she never learnt raw grammar to make words
• features of CDS 


  more pronounced exaggerated intonation the draw attention to key morphemes or lexemes. simplified vocabulary - helps establish key words. related grammatical 'frames
• kaluli tribe 


  doesn't used CDS and children learn language at the same rate as others (shieffelin and Ochs)
• Bancroft 


  peek-a-boo teaches turn taking from an early age
• Jacob 


  hearing child with deaf parents. didnt learn through imitation and only developed when expert was assigned to speak with him
• Amala and Kamala 


  feral children found in the wild couldn't couldn't speak, and because they were too old they never caught up
• politeness > correctness 


  children respond better when parents correct bad manners rather than errors in their speech
• MLU (mean length of utterance) - brown 


  average length of utterance of the child. the higher the further developed. lower shoes poor/ slow development