Deck 7: Language Acquisition

Question 1

The case of Genie, a child who lived in conditions of isolation and neglect for more than 11 years:

A)was of little public or scientific interest.
B)turned out to be faked.
C)is difficult to evaluate because her experience affected every aspect of her health and development.
D)suggests that participation in a normal social environment is essential to the process of language acquisition.

Answer 1

D

Question 2

Organized, reciprocal interaction between an infant and caregiver is known as:

A)primary intersubjectivity.
B)secondary intersubjectivity.
C)social referencing.
D)jargoning.

Answer 2

A

Question 3

What was Alexander Luria referring to when he claimed that humans have a "double world"?

A)Humans spend part of their life in childhood and part in adulthood.
B)Humans experience both the world they perceive directly and worlds that are the experience of others.
C)Humans understand that the world is large and diverse, but they live their lives in their local communities.
D)Humans begin life dependent on others and move toward greater independence as they grow older.

Answer 3

B

Question 4

Research on the effects of brain injury on language development shows that:

A)adults are more severely affected by right hemisphere damage than left hemisphere damage, but children are not.
B)children are more severely affected by left hemisphere damage than right hemisphere damage, but adults are not.
C)both children and adults are more severely affected by left hemisphere damage.
D)children are affected about equally by left and right hemisphere damage.

Question 5

At birth children:

A)must be taught to attend to language.
B)show a preference for language over other sounds.
C)produce basic sounds in all languages through babbling.
D)can differentiate the basic sound categories of only their language.

Question 6

Damage to Broca's area results in:

A)an inability to comprehend language.
B)an absence or disruption of normal speech.
C)an inability to develop a full vocabulary.
D)difficulties understanding grammatical rules.

Question 7

Which of the following is evidence that children are born into the world predisposed to attend to language and communicate with people around them?

A)At birth, children show a preference for rhythmic womb­like sounds over speech sounds.
B)Children do not say their first word until about 1 year of age.
C)At birth, children are capable of differentiating the basic sound categories or phonemes characteristic of the world's languages.
D)Children learn grammar before they learn pragmatics.

Question 8

Kanzi, a chimpanzee who understood simple requests, was told, "Give Liz a shot." What did he do?

A)He ignored the request and continued with the activity he was already engaged in.
B)He gave a syringe to Liz.
C)He touched the syringe on Liz's arm as if giving her a shot.
D)He touched the syringe to his own arm as if giving himself a shot.

Question 9

Which of the following is evidence of the plasticity of the brain?

A)damage to the left hemisphere is associated with more severe language impairment in children than in adults.
B)right­hemisphere damage is associated with more severe language impairment than is left hemisphere damage.
C)the left hemisphere quickly regenerates in response to damage, resulting in little noticeable language impairment.
D)the right hemisphere becomes the brain center for language among infants with left­hemisphere damage.

Question 10

After chimpanzees are included in everyday human activities for an extended period, they:

A)learn several thousand signs.
B)create word combinations on lexical keyboards that are similar to the verbal utterances of 2­year­old children.
C)produce speech comparable to the speech of 4­ year­old children.
D)frequently use complex communicative language to coordinate actions.

Question 11

When given rehabilitation, Genie, a child who lived in nearly total isolation for more than 11 years:

A)recovered to the point of nearly normal behavior.
B)recovered somewhat, but never developed normal language skills.
C)developed normal language skills but never showed affection toward other people.
D)made little progress in any area of development despite years of rehabilitation.

Question 12

When babies and mothers talk, they share knowledge about objects to which they jointly attend. This is an example of ____________ as a precursor to language.

A)social referencing
B)primary intersubjectivity
C)pragmatic communication
D)secondary intersubjectivity

Question 13

Susan Goldin­Meadow and her colleagues found that "home sign":

A)develops as far as pointing.
B)develops among hearing children of deaf parents.
C)develops among deaf children of hearing parents who do not know sign language.
D)is idiosyncratic and does not resemble normal language in any way.

Question 14

Primary intersubjectivity refers to:

A)a baby's use of cooing before the secondary stage of the sound repertoire, babbling.
B)social referencing.
C)a baby's use of the cry signal starting at birth.
D)sharing feelings as a result of organized face­to­face interactions.

Question 15

The existence of Broca's area and Wernicke's area in the brain suggests that the:

A)left hemisphere of the brain is genetically wired to support normal language processing.
B)right hemisphere of the brain is genetically wired to support normal language processing.
C)brain processes information in a distributed way, such that specific functions are not associated with specific areas.
D)brain is fully developed at birth.

Question 16

The remarkable ability that children demonstrate in their ability to understand and use language is due primarily to:

A)specialized biological structures and systems.
B)participation in language­using communities.
C)both biological factors and social interactions.
D)caregivers' efforts to teach children language skills.

Question 17

Neuroimaging studies reveal that the vocabulary spurt that occurs in early childhood follows:

A)synaptic pruning within Broca's area.
B)myelination of language­related brain regions.
C)the development of connections between the brain regions related to language and vision.
D)gradual differentiation of the left hemisphere.

Question 18

Damage to a specific part of the brain that leads to an inability to comprehend language is known as:

A)Broca's aphasia.
B)Wernicke's aphasia.
C)Williams syndrome.
D)hemispheric aphasia.

Question 19

When chimpanzees are reared as human children they:

A)make recursive utterances.
B)acquire oral language like that of their human counterparts.
C)acquire sign language like that of their human counterparts.
D)can acquire gestures that resemble some aspects of human language.

Question 20

All of the following are strategies for investigating the question of how biology influences language development EXCEPT:

A)comparing human language learning to the language abilities of other species.
B)using neuroimaging techniques to study relationships between brain development and language skills.
C)examining how damage to particular brain regions influences language­related behaviors.
D)exploring how cultural differences in adult­child interaction influence language development.

Question 21

Deaf children raised by parents who do not know sign language:

A)do not learn any language.
B)learn to read lips.
C)develop "home signs" to communicate.
D)learn to vocalize to communicate.

Question 22

What were the results of an experiment in which infants heard a woman speak in either an adult­directed or an infant­directed manner?

A)infants preferred to look at a photograph of the woman who used adult­directed speech than at a photograph of an unfamiliar woman.
B)infants preferred to look at a photograph of the woman who used child­directed speech than at a photograph of an unfamiliar woman.
C)infants demonstrated no clear preference for individuals on the basis of their speech style.
D)infants were better able to learn words from the woman who used adult­directed speech.

Question 23

The practice that North American adults engage in that involves expanding on children's utterances and putting them into grammatically correct forms is called:

A)extending.
B)reformulating.
C)expanding.
D)elaborating.

Question 24

American adults are likely to modify their speech to children to:

A)complicate their own utterances.
B)increase the opportunity to use gestures.
C)immediately correct children's grammatical errors.
D)match the level of complexity in the children's own speech.

Question 25

Which of the following results is of deaf children born to parents who communicate with sign language?

A)They acquire sign language as rapidly as hearing children born into hearing households acquire vocal language.
B)The rate at which they acquire sign language is delayed compared to hearing children born into hearing households.
C)The rate at which they acquire language is accelerated compared to hearing children born into hearing households.
D)They are unable to learn sign language without professional intervention.

Question 26

When compared to dual­language learning children, monolingual children:

A)notice multiple images in an ambiguous figure at an earlier age.
B)notice multiple images in an ambiguous figure at a later age.
C)notice multiple images in an ambiguous figure at about the same age.
D)are more flexible in their interpretation of ambiguous images.

Question 27

What contribution do studies of deaf children born to hearing parents make to our understanding of the language acquisition process?

A)They prove that it is sufficient to be raised in an environment where the actions of all other participants are organized by human language and culture.
B)If the parents do not use sign language, deaf children will not use more than a single sign in any "utterance."
C)They point to the importance of active participation of the child in language­mediated activity.
D)Hearing is essential to acquire language.

Question 28

Which of the following BEST describes the relationship between vocabulary exposure and vocabulary acquisition?

A)There is a positive correlation between vocabulary exposure and vocabulary acquisition.
B)There is a negative correlation between vocabulary exposure and vocabulary acquisition.
C)The rate at which children acquire vocabulary is not influenced by the amount of language they hear.
D)The relationship between vocabulary exposure and vocabulary acquisition has not yet been studied.

Question 29

Children raised with exposure to two languages:

A)show a strong preference for one language.
B)show no preference, but develop better skills at one language.
C)differentiate between the two languages when appropriate in a given conversation.
D)have difficulty in distinguishing the vocabulary of the two languages.

Question 30

A child who believes that sneezes are called "achoos" is struggling with the ____________ aspect of language development.

A)phonological
B)semantic
C)grammatical
D)pragmatic

Question 31

Nicaraguan sign language developed because:

A)a group of teachers created a sign system to map onto Spanish.
B)a community of deaf children was formed, and they developed their own pidgin language.
C)children were taught to lip­read and finger­spell.
D)deaf children were struggling to learn American Sign Language (ASL).

Question 32

Children who use "home sign" fail to:

A)communicate.
B)embed sentences.
C)make two­ and three­word utterances.
D)master complex grammatical distinctions.

Question 33

High pitch, exaggerated intonation, slow speech, and distinct pauses between utterances are speech patterns of:

A)children over the age of 3.
B)adults speaking to children.
C)children under the age of 3.
D)hearing children of deaf parents.

Question 34

Children change from babbling to pronouncing words at about what age?

A)late in the first year
B)around 18 months
C)at the end of the second year
D)around 36 months

Question 35

The relationship between special adult behaviors and children's acquisition of language is that:

A)the use of motherese is essential for children to acquire language.
B)direct instruction of language is essential for children to acquire language.
C)all cultures agree on the best way to assist children in acquiring language.
D)it has not been proven that one method of structuring children's language experience is universally essential in order for a child to acquire language.

Question 36

Approximately what percentage of the world's people are bilingual or multilingual?

A)10
B)25
C)50
D)75

Question 37

The unitary language hypothesis holds that:

A)children exposed to two languages from birth interpret the two languages as part of a single, fused system.
B)the language children use is sensitive to the language used by adults around them.
C)children's speech exhibits regular grammatical patterns that are appropriate to the language they speak.
D)exposure to more than one language can hurt children's language development.

Question 38

Reformulating children's utterances is a common adult strategy in:

A)all North American communities.
B)all communities around the globe.
C)Mandarin­speaking communities.
D)English­speaking U.S.communities.

Question 39

The ____________ aspect of language development refers to learning to segment speech into meaningful units of sound, whereas the ____________ aspect refers to learning the meanings of words.

A)semantic: grammatical
B)pragmatic; semantic
C)phonological; pragmatic
D)phonological; semantic

Question 40

What is the likely next line in the following conversation between a middle­class U.S. mother and her preschool child? Mother: "What did you do at school today?" Child: "Holded baby bunny." Mother:

A)"You holded a baby bunny?"
B)"What did the bitty baby bun­bun feel like?"
C)"You held the baby bunny.You should say 'held,' not 'holded'."
D)"You held a baby bunny! Was the bunny soft?"

Question 41

When Bartlett and Carey arranged for preschool children to learn the word "chromium," the children:

A)learned it only after being tutored.
B)had difficulty learning the unfamiliar word.
C)learned to say the word but could not identify "chromium" objects.
D)learned the word after one experience with its use in a familiar situation.

Question 42

When a child between the ages of 2 and 3 years old cannot produce a particular sound, she will typically:

A)substitute another sound.
B)become frustrated and angry.
C)refuse to use words that include the sound.
D)misunderstand words that include the sound when she hears them.

Question 43

Children acquire ____________ words by the time they are 13 to 14 months old and ____________ words by the time they are 17 to 18 months of age.

A)10; 50
B)10; 200
C)50; 200
D)20; 200

Question 44

The first words that infants raised in English­speaking settings use are generally:

A)verbs for actions.
B)commands for actions.
C)labels for objects.
D)their names.

Question 45

Which of the following is a relational word that appears early in children's vocabularies?

A)"no"
B)"juice"
C)"doggie"
D)"Mommy"

Question 46

The appearance of what words support the idea that children around the age of 2 become sensitive to social expectation?

A)names for nouns and adjectives
B)relational words
C)words to comment on their successes
D)verbs

Question 47

Bartlett and Carey demonstrated children's developing vocabularies in the course of normal conversation by inventing the color "chromium." The findings of this study suggest:

A)children learn by imitation.
B)direct teaching of new vocabulary words is most effective.
C)children acquire language because adults explicitly reward their efforts.
D)children can learn new words when they occur in a close relationship with familiar a action.

Question 48

The basic unit of meaning in language is called a:

A)noun.
B)word.
C)phoneme.
D)morpheme.

Question 49

Which of the following is an example of how adults work with each other and their children to create word meanings?

A)A child says, "I goed to school today."
B)A child says, "dahdee" to commands and requests, and adults ignore that it sounds like "daddy."
C)A child says, "All gone" when he finishes his milk.
D)A child calls all four­legged animals "dogs."

Question 50

A child calls all farm animals "horsey." This is an example of:

A)overextension.
B)underextension.
C)intermediate abstraction.
D)the mediated character of language.

Question 51

Children begin to produce comprehensible words:

A)at birth.
B)when they begin to babble.
C)around their first birthday.
D)just after their second birthday.

Question 52

The term morpheme:

A)is synonymous with phoneme.
B)refers to children's first words.
C)refers to a basic unit of meaning in a language.
D)refers to units of sound that are the same for all languages.

Question 53

The basic sounds of a language are known as:

A)letters.
B)syllables.
C)phonemes.
D)morphemes.

Question 54

The form of mislabeling in which many examples in a category are referred to by a single term that adults use to label only one of the examples is called:

A)expanding.
B)overextension.
C)underextension.
D)protosentencing.

Question 55

When children hear an unfamiliar word in a familiar and highly structured situation, they likely form an idea of the word's meaning and how that word might fit into their existing repertoire. This phenomenon has been termed:

A)pragmatism.
B)fast mapping.
C)mental module.
D)telegraphic ability.

Question 56

Which of the following is an example of an overextension?

A)calling a rose "flower"
B)calling a bird "animal"
C)calling a horse "doggie"
D)using the word "doggie" only for the family pet

Question 57

Children's earliest overextensions are likely to be related to:

A)parents' lack of clarity when speaking to children.
B)perceptual similarities between the items.
C)children's limited memory capacity.
D)children's overly restricted understanding of semantics.

Question 58

The process of identifying what words mean depends primarily on:

A)the child's ability to figure out what a speaker is talking about.
B)adults' interpretation of children's attempts to speak.
C)joint effort on the part of both adults and children to understand each others' utterances.
D)direct instructional strategies on the part of adults.

Question 59

The first words children acquire are:

A)names for common things like sweater and diapers.
B)verbs and adjectives.
C)closely linked to actions they can accomplish or objects they can move.
D)names for large immobile things like trees and houses.

Question 60

When children use words in a narrower way than adults do, it is referred to as:

A)jargoning.
B)telegraphic.
C)overextension.
D)underextension.

Question 61

Keily is watching her mother cook breakfast. On the counter is a spoon and a whisk. Although Keily has never heard the label "whisk" before, she hands her mother the correct tool when her mother asks her to pass the whisk. This is an example of:

A)overextension.
B)underextension.
C)fast mapping.
D)reformulation.

Question 62

Utterances such as, "Sarah eated fast":

A)are usually learned by imitation.
B)are rarely if ever made by children.
C)show that children have some grasp of grammatical rules.
D)provide evidence that children rarely confuse grammatical forms.

Question 63

The elements that create meaning by showing the relations between other elements within the sentence are called:

A)vowels.
B)phonemes.
C)extensions.
D)grammatical morphemes.

Question 64

The process of using grammar to learn the meaning of new words is known as:

A)referential intent.
B)syntactic bookstrapping.
C)fast mapping.
D)chronology.

Question 65

A child's new potential for creating meaning by varying the arrangement of linguistic elements marks the birth of:

A)language.
B)grammar.
C)social words.
D)interpretations.

Question 66

Which of the following is regarding metaphorical language?

A)It is thought to depend on the appearance of deferred imitation.
B)It provides evidence that language production is a creative process.
C)Metaphorical language appears fairly late in childhood.
D)When young children become able to use metaphorical language they also understand the figurative meaning of adult speech.

Question 67

Grammatical morphemes:

A)are innate structures inherent in language.
B)measure the complexity of children's utterances.
C)create meaning by showing the relations between words.
D)show that children do not understand the difference between verbs and nouns.

Question 68

When calculating the complexity with which children speak, researchers often calculate the "mean length of utterance," which is the average:

A)number of syllables per utterance.
B)number of words per utterance.
C)number of morphemes per utterance.
D)time taken to complete utterances.

Question 69

At what age would a parent expect the rate of children's vocabulary acquisition to increase dramatically?

A)6 months
B)12 months
C)18 months
D)30 months

Question 70

The utterance "Boys are playing" contains:

A)5 morphemes.
B)6 morphemes.
C)6 words.
D)4 morphemes.

Question 71

Characteristics of two­word utterances include all of the following EXCEPT:

A)the order of the words can be varied to create different meanings.
B)they are free from ambiguity.
C)they can be used to indicate possession and nonexistence.
D)understanding of their meaning depends upon contextual cues.

Question 72

Neuroimaging studies show that, as children's vocabularies increase, their brain:

A)processes word­object associations more efficiently.
B)processes word­object associations less efficiently.
C)requires more time to store semantic information.
D)utilizes glucose at a higher rate.

Question 73

The figurative use of words provides evidence that language is:

A)innate.
B)creative.
C)imitative.
D)independent of thought.

Question 74

The reason children's sentences such as "I runned home" are informative in understanding children's language acquisition is that they suggest children:

A)can learn from simple imitation.
B)can be taught grammar directly.
C)are familiar with some grammar rules but often misapply them.
D)do not understand anything about grammar.

Question 75

Which picture would a 2­year­old MOST likely select when presented with a sentence such as "Big Bird is daxing Cookie Monster"?

A)a picture of Big Bird doing something to Cookie Monster
B)a picture of Cookie Monster doing something to Big Bird
C)the picture in which her favorite Sesame Street character was doing the action
D)the picture in which her favorite Sesame Street character was the recipient of action

Question 76

The rules that govern both the sequence of words in a sentence and the ordering of parts of words are called:

A)referents.
B)grammar.
C)semantics.
D)deep structure.

Question 77

A child uses the word "doggy" only for his own family's dog, not for other dogs. This is an example of:

A)imitation.
B)mediating.
C)overextension.
D)underextension.

Question 78

B)not intuitively grasped by children.

Question 79

Grammatical morphemes are:
A)acquired in roughly the same sequence by children learning English as a first language.
B)acquired in a different sequence by slow and fast learners.

A)not understood by children until they are about age

Question 80

Which of the following is a likely explanation for the dramatic increase in vocabulary acquisition that occurs in toddlerhood?

A)Adults of toddlers intensify their efforts to teach word meanings.
B)Toddlers demonstrate increasing abilities to use social cues to infer a speaker's intentions.
C)Toddlers are more persistent than younger children in their efforts to communicate their needs.
D)Toddlers are focused on language learning whereas younger children are focused on motor development.