Statistical Learning In The Learning Process

1021 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The three theories of child language acquisition

Infants have an incredible mind because they have the ability to learn and master a language in a relatively quick matter of time. The elasticity of babies and children’s brains is remarkable. It has been quite astonishing to watch my eleven month old niece grow and learn as she studies the things that my family and I say and do. She understands a range of words and sentences, even though she is not able to actually articulate them yet. Soon she will be going from a blabbering mumbo jumbo speaking baby to being able to enunciate clear, complex words and sentences in only a matter of years. Neuroscientists are now able to paint a picture of the transitional period of what happens in a baby’s brain during this learning process. When a baby …show more content…

Adults have the ability to differentiate where one word ends and the next begins, but the process of separating words from the flow of speech necessitates intricate mental processing. When someone is speaking, the words arrive to the ear as an uninterrupted flow of sound that doesn’t separate the words spoken. An infant uses statistical learning to understand the sounds of whole words. Studies show that eight month old infants discover word- like components supported by the probability that one syllable will follow another. Scientists conducted an experiment in which babies listened to a series of computer synthesized gibberish words made up of syllables, some of which arose together more often than other syllables. The infants were able to focus on syllables that correspond with the nonsense language and they identified probable words. This breakthrough study demonstrated infants’ statistical learning capabilities presented a theory of language beyond the general idea that a child learns only because of parental habituation and the assertion of whether a word is correct or incorrect. Babies are learning far before parents recognize that it is even occurring. Additional studies shaped a crucial discovery that provided an imperative sign that the statistical learning process does not solely entail submissive listening. The infant brain does not reveal to be a passive process for

Show More
Related

  • Health And Social Care Level 3 Unit 19 P1

    1243 Words  | 3 Pages

    Their intellectual development increases as they start to communicate and socialise with others. The baby will talk in a language to express themselves and how they are feeling gaining knowledge.

    Read More

  • The Importance of Early Brain Development

    714 Words  | 2 Pages

    It has been proven that a child’s early years are the peak at which the mind can bend and shape, creating the foundation for a life. We know now that even before birth, the mind is a delicate matter that if improperly taken care of could alter a person’s entire life. Nourishment and stimulation before and after the birth of a child mold’s the brain in its most malleable state. Medical and scientific institutes paired with parenting information organizations have made information readily available for parents, childcare providers, and students to advise them of the importance of childhood brain development. This information is not only critical for the child, but for the person they will become in the future.

    Read More

  • Toddler Room Observation

    648 Words  | 2 Pages

    The most popular method for educators at the centre to build on children’s comments and conversations is by talking with them, particularly by talking through processes or experiences as they are happening. With infants this process of talking through experiences and processes seems more like narration. Spending time in the infant room feels solidary as I talk to myself for most of the day, however it is important to remind myself that the child is learning through my one-sided conversations. Baby’s language develops socially, they listen to those speaking around them and then begin to internalise the words that are high frequency (Clarke, 2004). As they develop their vocabulary grows as they build their repertoire through socialisation. Research

    Read More

  • Early Learning

    1294 Words  | 3 Pages

    Early Learning The purpose of this research paper is to investigate the issue of preschool to determine if children who participate in structured preschool programs are more successful in kindergarten or first grade. There are a few types of preschool programs. First, there are structured preschool programs that focus on emphasizing an actual school setting and classroom activities in order to prepare the child for kindergarten or first grade. There are also day care centers, which are not as structured as preschool centers.

    Read More

  • Language Attainment May Begin in the Womb

    1087 Words  | 3 Pages

    Neuronal plasticity found in infants, and the learning process has been of keen interest to neurobiologists for some time. How does the brain develop and attain the skills we need as one grows is fascinating. It is commonly understood that a crying infant can only be consoled by his/her mother, and is able to recognize her voice over the voice of a stranger. A number of studies have also been done on the distinct reaction of infants to sounds of their own language versus a foreign language, familiar melodies or fragments of stories they may have heard repeatedly during the fetus stage (Partanen et. al, 2013). However, these studies relied heavily on the infant’s reactions, which bared little credibility (Skwarecki, 2013). One research team developed a technique to show that infants actually develop memory of the sounds they hear while in the womb, and are able to recognize the similar sounds at the time of birth. The team was able to trace changes in brain activity in new born infants, and thus provided quantitative evidence that memory forms before birth (Partanen et. al, 2013). This paper begins by examining the literature that identifies associations between MMR used as a tool to measure auditory input and Exposure to Psuedoword and how its varations create memory traces.

    Read More

  • Eye Gaze Essay

    963 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the process of human infants’ development, infants start to learn how to communicate with the others at the surprising early age, for example: Newborns can follow objects to make saccades to peripheral targets (Farroni et al., 2004);Infants’ responding eye gaze behaviour increase constantly since two months old (Scaife & Bruner, 1975); Cooper and Aslin pointed out that this preference showed up as early as the infants were one month old in 1990. Infants not only can respond to eye contact, vocal cues also are used for gaining more reference information during a communication, particularly when the speech is conducted forward to the infants. It had been reported in many studies that infants show more preference to infant-directed communication

    Read More

  • Bilingualism and Cognitive Control: A State of the Art Review

    1664 Words  | 4 Pages

    Werker, J. F., & Byers-Heinlein, K. (2008). Bilingualism in infancy: First steps in perception and comprehension. Trends in cognitive sciences, 12(4), 144-151.

    Read More

  • Learning and Memory Applied

    1221 Words  | 3 Pages

    Learning and memory are fascinating. The world could not function without either. They both are used in many different fashions in a wide variety of places. Learning and Memory have been carefully studied by professionals but are also well known and used by the common people on a daily basis. I am one of those common people, a student who is constantly learning and making the most of my memory. Since enrolling in The Psychology of Learning and Memory class I have come to the realization that I encounter situations in my life that exemplify the very concepts I have studied. I have also learned that it is beneficial to apply the lessons learned in class to my everyday life. Positive reinforcement, learned helplessness and serial recall are a few among many of the learning and memory models that have come to action in my life and in my final reflections surrounding the course.

    Read More

  • Infant-Directed Speech and Its Effect on Language Acquisition

    1651 Words  | 4 Pages

    Soderstrom, M. (2007). Beyond baby talk: Re-evaluating the nature and content of speech input to preverbal infants. Developmental Review, 27(4), 501-532.

    Read More

  • Three Main Theories of Child Language Acquisition

    892 Words  | 2 Pages

    There are three main theories of child language acquisition; Cognitive Theory, Imitation and Positive Reinforcement, and Innateness of Certain Linguistic Features (Linguistics 201). All three theories offer a substantial amount of proof and experiments, but none of them have been proven entirely correct. The search for how children acquire their native language in such a short period of time has been studied for many centuries. In a changing world, it is difficult to pinpoint any definite specifics of language because of the diversity and modification throughout thousands of millions of years.

    Read More

  • Children Language Acquisition

    693 Words  | 2 Pages

    Consequently, usually around the sixth month, the infant begins to babble. A large variety of sounds are produced in this period, many of them do not considered occur in the language of the household. During this period, children are learning to distinguish between the sound that are part of their language, and the one which does not. In the stage of babbling, children are learnt to maintain the correct sounds and suppressed the one which are incorrect.

    Read More

  • Language Acquisition

    3235 Words  | 7 Pages

    Language is multifaceted. It contains both verbal and non-verbal aspects that children seem to acquire quickly. Before birth, virtually all the neurons (nerve cells) are formed, and they migrate into their proper locations in the brain in the infant. When a baby is born, it can see and hear and smell and respond to touch, but their perceptions are limited at such a young age. The brain stem, a primitive region that controls vital functions like heartbeat and breathing, has completed its wiring. Elsewhere the connections between neurons are wispy and weak. But over the first few months of life, the brain’s higher centers explode with new synapses. “For the large majority of people, the dominant area in language processing is in the middle of the left hemisphere of the brain, in particular in Broca’s Area and Wernicke’s Area” (Siegler, 1998, p. 142). This helps an ...

    Read More

  • Language Development in Children

    1962 Words  | 4 Pages

    Babies begin to develop language skills long before they embark on speaking. The foundation for learning language begins before birth by the baby listening and recognizing his/her mother’s heartbeat and voice in the womb. “In a study, researchers played a 2-minute recording of a popular Chinese poem to 60 pregnant women and their unborn babies while monitoring total heart rates. Heart rates rose while the babies listened to their own mother's voice, but they fell and stayed lower while the stranger recited. Obviously, the babies were paying close attention, leading the researchers to suspect they were not only recognizing morn, but beginning to learn the ins and outs of language” (Dawidowska and Harrar (2003))....

    Read More

  • Language Acquisition

    7590 Words  | 16 Pages

    Still today, it is the commonly held belief that children acquire their mother tongue through imitation of the parents, caregivers or the people in their environment. Linguists too had the same conviction until 1957, when a then relatively unknown man, A. Noam Chomsky, propounded his theory that the capacity to acquire language is in fact innate. This revolutionized the study of language acquisition, and after a brief period of controversy upon the publication of his book, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, in 1964, his theories are now generally accepted as largely true. As a consequence, he was responsible for the emergence of a new field during the 1960s, Developmental Psycholinguistics, which deals with children’s first language acquisition. He was not the first to question our hitherto mute acceptance of a debatable concept – long before, Plato wondered how children could possibly acquire so complex a skill as language with so little experience of life. Experiments have clearly identified an ability to discern syntactical nuances in very young infants, although they are still at the pre-linguistic stage. Children of three, however, are able to manipulate very complicated syntactical sentences, although they are unable to tie their own shoelaces, for example. Indeed, language is not a skill such as many others, like learning to drive or perform mathematical operations – it cannot be taught as such in these early stages. Rather, it is the acquisition of language which fascinates linguists today, and how it is possible. Noam Chomsky turned the world’s eyes to this enigmatic question at a time when it was assumed to have a deceptively simple explanation.

    Read More

  • Reflection On Learning Theory

    1731 Words  | 4 Pages

    Each of the three learning theories, Cognitivism, Constructivism, and Behaviorism, has worth and merit in my opinion. Yet, each one has its own unique qualities with one common factor, the learning process. It seems to me that the best teacher is one who would utilize all the theories of learning. However, if I look closely, I am most likely favoring one or two more than the others in my own instructional methods. I read the brief definition of these three theories and realized that I needed to examine a more in-depth explanation of each of them. The theory of cognitivism focuses on the mind of the learner

    Read More

More about Statistical Learning In The Learning Process

Open Document