ENG511 Final Term Short Questions

Q. Explain cognitive process

Cognition is "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought and experience. It encompasses processes such as attention, memory and evaluation, comprehension and production of language. Cognitive processes use existing knowledge and generate new knowledge. So, cognitive processes are a function of the brain, a cognitive theory will not necessarily make reference to the brain or to biological processes (compare neuro cognitive). It may purely describe behavior in terms of information flow or function.

Q. What do you know about Piaget’s theory of cognitive development?

Piaget is known for studying the stages children pass through during cognitive development.

Sensorimotor stage Infancy (0–2 years)

Pre-operational stage Toddler and Early Childhood (2–7 years)

Concrete operational stage Elementary and Early Adolescence (7–12 years)

Formal operational stage Adolescence and Adulthood (12 years and on)

Q. Explain briefly operating principles

Operating principles are children‟s preferred ways of taking in (or operating on) information.

Principle 1: Children Learn What They Hear Most

Principle 2: Children Learn Words for Things and Events That Interest Them

Principle 3: Interactive and Responsive Rather Than Passive Contexts Promote Language Learning

Principle 4: Children Learn Words Best in Meaningful Contexts

Principle 5: Children Need to Hear Diverse Examples of Words and Language Structures

Principle 6: Vocabulary and Grammatical Development Are Reciprocal Processes

Q. What do you know about sensorimotor schemata

A sensorimotor schema is a psychological construct which gathers together the perceptions and associated actions, schemas available to a young infant are biological and very limited and initially consist of reflexes. The schema represents knowledge generalized from all the experiences. Sensorimotor schemata are ways of organizing the world that emerge in the first two years of life. As children interact with their environments, they go through an astonishing amount of cognitive growth in a relatively short period of time.

Q. What are the sub-stages of sensorimotor schemata?

Reflexes (0-1 month): The child understands the environment purely through inborn reflexes.

Primary Circular Reactions (1-4 months): This substage involves coordinating sensation and new schemas.

Secondary Circular Reactions (4-8 months): The child becomes more focused on the world.

Coordination of Reactions (8-12 months): The child starts to show clearly intentional actions.

Tertiary Circular Reactions (12-18 months): Children begin a period of trial-and-error experimentation Early Representational Thought (18-24 months):Children begin to develop symbols

Q. Discuss whole object bias and taxonomic bias

As children are exposed to adult words for objects, many referents are possible for these words (Quine, 1960). It seems unlikely that children explore every possible meaning of a given word, given what we have learned about the speed of lexical acquisition. Whole object bias and taxonomic are cognitive constraints a child use in development.

Q. What is whole object bias?

When children encounter a new label, they prefer to attach the label to the entire object rather than to part of the object.

Even in cases where color or a dynamic activity are made salient to children, they will still interpret the new word as a label for whole objects (Markman,1991).

Q. What is Taxonomic Bias?

Children will assume that the object label is a taxonomic category rather than a name for an individual dog

Children focus on thematic relations between objects when categorizing.

The new word is assumed to refer to other objects within the same taxonomic category.

Q. What is mutual exclusivity bias?

Mutual exclusivity is a word learning constraint that involves the tendency to assign one label/name, and in turn avoid assigning a second label, to a single object. This assumption is typically first seen in the early stages of word learning by toddlers, but it is not limited to young childhood.

Q. What are impairments of language and cognition?

A cognitive-linguistic impairment can often result from a right brain injury. This does not directly affect the language area of the brain, but can affect attention, memory, problem solving and interpretive language, which in turn affect communicative abilities.

A close relationship exists between language and cognition (individuals with down syndrome)

Some individuals display cognitive skills that are advanced relative to the individual‟s linguistic skills.

Cognition is sufficient for language

Q. What is the language bioprogram hypothesis?

How innate processes operate in child language has been called the language bioprogram hypothesis by Bickerton. Bickerton‟s claim, is that we, as children, have an innate grammar that is available biologically if our language input is insufficient to acquire the language of our community.

Q. Define pidgins and creoles.

A pidgin is „„an auxiliary language that arises when speakers of several mutually unintelligible languages are in close contact‟‟ (Bickerton).

A creole occurs when the children of these immigrants acquire a pidgin as their native language.

Creole languages are largely invented by children and show fundamental similarities, which derive from a biological program for language.

Q. What is the language bioprogram?

Unlike pidgins, the creoles resembled the structural rules of other languages. From these observations, Bickerton concludes that children have an innate grammar that, in the absence of proper environmental input, serves as the child‟s language system. He calls this system the Language Bioprogram. Studies of creole language suggest that we have a linguistic backup system, the language bioprogram, which springs into action when language input is limited.

Q. Define preemption principle.

„„If you hear people using a form different from the one you are using, and do not hear anyone using your form, abandon yours and use theirs‟‟

Q. What is parameter setting?

Parameters is a framework within generative linguistics in which the syntax of a natural language is described in accordance with general principles (i.e. abstract rules or grammars) and specific parameters (i.e. markers, switches) that for particular languages are either turned on or off.

According to Chomsky, children are born with the knowledge of the parameters and their possible settings.

Q. What is head parameter?

Each phrase in the language has one element that is most essential, which is called the head.

the man with the bow tie

English is a head-first language, In contrast, in Japanese the heads appear last rather than first.

Watashi wa nihonjin desu ( I Japanese am)

Another parameter is the null-subject parameter (sometimes called the prodrop parameter).

(11) Play it. (12) Eating cereal.

Q. Explain the subset principle.

Whenever there are two competing grammars generating languages of which one is a proper subset of the other, the learning strategy of the child is to select the less inclusive one.

Children learning fixed-word-order languages generally stick to the orders used by their parents. Children learning free-word-order languages appear to use only some of the permissible orders of their language, at least in certain circumstances.

Q. What are the issues of negative evidence?

At the grammatical level, positive evidence is evidence that a particular utterance is grammatical in the language that the child is learning; negative evidence is evidence that a particular utterance is ungrammatical.

Although negative evidence is present and may assist language development, it is not necessary. The contrast between the poverty of the stimulus and the robustness of the child‟s language remains the soundest justification for innate mechanisms.