PSY 130 Final Exam 2025

What is infant-directed speech? What are its characteristics, and why might parents use it? - -• Infant directed speech is speech that consists of higher pitches, larger pitch ranges and smoothed/ connected pitch ranges. • Parents might use this because it is responding to infant language preferences and infants are more likely to respond to infant directed speech compared to adult directed speech. This may be because IDS is easier for infants to hear, it soothes infants, and gets the infants attention. In addition, it conveys approval and prohibition. What is categorical speech perception? Do infants have it? Describe the methods and results of a study that test infants' categorical speech perception. - -• Categorical speech perception is the ability to hear sounds categorically (either acoustic changes or category changes). • Infants have categorical speech perception and this was tested using habituation and sucking procedures. Infants were habituated using the sound "ba" and were dishabituated using a different sounding "ba". Infants were presented with one "ba" (were sucking on pacifier) once they were bored (stopped sucking pacifier), and when presented with new "ba" sound (they started sucking again). • Results infants are better at detecting acoustic changes rather than category changes. How do infants figure out where words begin and end in ordinary sentences? Describe one study that tested this ability. What did the study find? - -• Infants use statistical learning (keep track of which sounds go together in the same order) when it comes to detecting the beginning and end of sentences. • Head turn preference task 8 mo infants were presented with a jumble of words with no pauses like khsfujebt(tokibu)udfbhjfts • Methods Word trials had heard words like tokibu and the non word trials had words that were in the study but were not easily identifiable like Batoki. • Results Infants listened longer to the word trials (tokibu) rather than the non word trials. Predictable sequences of sounds = words! In the first year of life, infants' vocal production changes quite a bit: They begin with cries and burps and progress all the way to jargon babbling. Based on what we discussed in lecture, describe two factors that contribute to these changes in production. Be sure to state how these factors affect infants' production. - -• Growth speech is limited when bbs mouths aren't fully developed. Their tongue takes up most of the mouth, Larynx is higher, and the epiglottis hasn't descended yet. (can only produce certain sounds) • Motor development and practice Fluent coordination of speech needs practice. Bbs need to learn how to control breathing, vocal chords, shape of mouth/lips, and tongue. • Input easy sounds for bbs are universal (ex: Ouuuuu). Sounds vary depending on the language they are exposed to (ex: "buhh" sounds are seen more in American bbs than Japanese). Bbs also hone in on intonation (the rise and fall of the voice). Deaf babies also babble but at a delayed time. When do children say their first word? What stage do they enter when these say this word? What types of words do they say during this stage? Describe one error that children make during this stage. - -• 1st words start at 12-18mo and this is the 1st word stage. • They types of words they say are content words like shoe, ball, cup, etc. (never function words like and, but, of, etc) • Error at this stage overextension. They use one word for everything because they do not know a lot of words. In class, we discussed several examples of how language comprehension often precedes language production in development. Describe two examples of cases where children comprehend something before they can produce it. Be specific about what children can comprehend, how we know this, and how we know that their comprehension precedes their production. - -• 16-18mo Infants are presented one of the two statements "Big bird is tickling cookie monster" or "Cookie monster is tickling Big Bird". Then these children were presented with a video that either matched or didn't match the statements. It was found that children looked longer at the video that matched the correct statement. • 2yr old infants were presented with a picture comprehension task that tasked infants with matching the sentence to the picture. The sentences were fully comprehensive or were missing function words. Sentences included "Find the bird", "Find was bird for me", "Find—bird for me" or "Find gub bird for me". It was found that children were more accurate finding the picture when they hear the correct function word. Children have a number of biases or assumptions that they can use to learn the meanings of new words. Describe two of these assumptions. For each, provide an example of a situation where this assumption would help children learn a new word. - -• Whole object bias Children assume words are for the entire object rather than object parts. • Mutual Exclusivity Children presented with 2 objects. They know one of the objects is a cup but don't know the name of the other object. Instructor calls the strange object a blicket. Child assumes the name of the object is a blicket. Johnson and Newport conducted a study that examined Chinese and Korean immigrants' ability to detect errors in ungrammatical English sentences. Their participants differed in how long they had been speaking English, as well as how old they were when they were first exposed to English. What did their study find? What do these results tell us about why it is hard to learn language later in life? - -• Results All speakers did well with vocabulary and basic grammar rules. However, the older speakers arrived to the states did worse on the finer points of grammar (ex: plural uses of S). Skill in the language was predicted by the age of exposure and not length (ex: if a speaker was a between the ages of 0-7 their scores were higher on language skills). • Reasons why learning language later in life is harder is because as a child you might be immersed in the new language whereas when you are learning a language later you might be in a classroom setting= boring. Also during adolescence a shift happens in brain development and those neurons for learning a language may disappear. Results from the Sally/Anne task suggested that false-belief understanding did not emerge until age 4. Describe the methods and results of a more recent task that suggests false-belief understanding emerges earlier than previously thought. - -• Methods of new false belief task instead of a series of images being presented and questions, 15mo infants were tasked with only watching an actor do the task. 2 events were presented where the false belief and true belief would be in the yellow box or in the green box. • Results of new false belief task 15-month-olds kept track of the actor's belief. •True-belief: looked longer at green-box event •False-belief: looked longer at yellow-box event Infants know that people have mental states and people have beliefs different than their own. Describe DeLoache's scale model task. How do children perform at different ages? How does DeLoache explain these results? - -• Task Children are presented with a small replica of a room. Instructor hides a toy in the small room while the child watches and hides a toy in the real identical room in the exact same spot as the small room. Children are then asked to find the