PSY 357 ACTUAL EXAM FULL QUESTIONS
AND CORRECT ANSWERS GRADED A PLUS
●● Be able to identify the types of methods by which the language
processing abilities of fetuses have been investigated—both in and out
of the womb.
Answer: Read poems, and had them recorded. Played recording into the
womb and measured fetus's response to the recordings which indicated
that the fetus recognize its mother's' voice. Done by measuring heart
rate, increase in heart rate when mother's voice is played. Heart rate
increases with familiar rhyme compared to unfamiliar rhyme.
●● Be able to identify the age at which Mehler and colleagues (1988)
showed that infants can distinguish intonational contours in their
maternal language (such as French) and those in another language (such
as Russian), and understand the implications of this finding.
Answer: Done on newborn infants, they were exposed to french in the
womb. They found that the sucking rate went down as they played them
french (got habituated to it). They then played them Russian and the
sucking rate increased. This means that babies could detect the
difference at 4 days old between french and Russian. Not able to tell the
difference, but can notice a difference in prosody
●● What exactly are fetuses getting from language?
,Answer: Important parts of speech sounds include frequencies up to
4000 Hz. telephones restrict that to under 3000 Hz. But infants in the
womb only hear up to 1000 Hz
They are not hearing speech sounds per se
Rather the rhythms of language, voices rising and falling, and stress
patterns (prosody)
●● Adults talk in a simplified way with children (child-directed speech
CDS, mortherese, or baby talk):
Answer: More pauses
Shorter sentences
More redundancy
Slower
Exaggerated prosody
High pitch
Why? Infants prefer it more and it keeps and directs attention (to new
and important words). Encourages participation in turn-like
conversations.
●● Given a list of babies and adults of different languages and ages, be
able to apply findings from phoneme discrimination abilities to choose
the baby/adult that would or would not be able to detect differences
between certain phonemes of a given language.
_Be familiar with the research technique devised by Janet Werker to
examine these abilities in infants (Part 1)
, Answer: Children are equipped with categorical perception (for example
/b/ and /p/), sucking increases when a change in the category is
presented.
Seems to begin with the ability to detect all differences between
phonemes, lost over the 1st year of development as perceptual abilities
mature to master their language. Can be seen with Japanese speakers,
can notice the difference between /r/ and /l/ up until age 1.
●● Given a list of babies and adults of different languages and ages, be
able to apply findings from phoneme discrimination abilities to choose
the baby/adult that would or would not be able to detect differences
between certain phonemes of a given language.
_Be familiar with the research technique devised by Janet Werker to
examine these abilities in infants (Part 2)
Answer: Has baby turn head when sound changes, a young infant can
hear the changes
In all three cases, perceivers lose the dual-phoneme distinction after one
year because their language gives them experience in dealing with the
sounds within those categories- a different experience.
Evidence for this being from experience is found from the Zulu click
consonants.
Zulu click consonants are not similar to English sounds at all
Older English speaking infants and adults can tell Zulu click constants
apart since we have no experience to expand/ erase categorical
boundaries
AND CORRECT ANSWERS GRADED A PLUS
●● Be able to identify the types of methods by which the language
processing abilities of fetuses have been investigated—both in and out
of the womb.
Answer: Read poems, and had them recorded. Played recording into the
womb and measured fetus's response to the recordings which indicated
that the fetus recognize its mother's' voice. Done by measuring heart
rate, increase in heart rate when mother's voice is played. Heart rate
increases with familiar rhyme compared to unfamiliar rhyme.
●● Be able to identify the age at which Mehler and colleagues (1988)
showed that infants can distinguish intonational contours in their
maternal language (such as French) and those in another language (such
as Russian), and understand the implications of this finding.
Answer: Done on newborn infants, they were exposed to french in the
womb. They found that the sucking rate went down as they played them
french (got habituated to it). They then played them Russian and the
sucking rate increased. This means that babies could detect the
difference at 4 days old between french and Russian. Not able to tell the
difference, but can notice a difference in prosody
●● What exactly are fetuses getting from language?
,Answer: Important parts of speech sounds include frequencies up to
4000 Hz. telephones restrict that to under 3000 Hz. But infants in the
womb only hear up to 1000 Hz
They are not hearing speech sounds per se
Rather the rhythms of language, voices rising and falling, and stress
patterns (prosody)
●● Adults talk in a simplified way with children (child-directed speech
CDS, mortherese, or baby talk):
Answer: More pauses
Shorter sentences
More redundancy
Slower
Exaggerated prosody
High pitch
Why? Infants prefer it more and it keeps and directs attention (to new
and important words). Encourages participation in turn-like
conversations.
●● Given a list of babies and adults of different languages and ages, be
able to apply findings from phoneme discrimination abilities to choose
the baby/adult that would or would not be able to detect differences
between certain phonemes of a given language.
_Be familiar with the research technique devised by Janet Werker to
examine these abilities in infants (Part 1)
, Answer: Children are equipped with categorical perception (for example
/b/ and /p/), sucking increases when a change in the category is
presented.
Seems to begin with the ability to detect all differences between
phonemes, lost over the 1st year of development as perceptual abilities
mature to master their language. Can be seen with Japanese speakers,
can notice the difference between /r/ and /l/ up until age 1.
●● Given a list of babies and adults of different languages and ages, be
able to apply findings from phoneme discrimination abilities to choose
the baby/adult that would or would not be able to detect differences
between certain phonemes of a given language.
_Be familiar with the research technique devised by Janet Werker to
examine these abilities in infants (Part 2)
Answer: Has baby turn head when sound changes, a young infant can
hear the changes
In all three cases, perceivers lose the dual-phoneme distinction after one
year because their language gives them experience in dealing with the
sounds within those categories- a different experience.
Evidence for this being from experience is found from the Zulu click
consonants.
Zulu click consonants are not similar to English sounds at all
Older English speaking infants and adults can tell Zulu click constants
apart since we have no experience to expand/ erase categorical
boundaries
