PYSCHOLINGUISTICS

Jessica Ximena Castañeda Villamizar

Universidad Santo Tomás de Aquino, facultad de educación

Assignment 1

Docente: Milena Hernández Leal

Marzo, 2022

TASK 1

Based the reading of the chapter online material proposed for the first leaning strategy,
please respond the following questions:

1) What is the central purpose of Psycholinguistics?

The psycholinguistics propose an explanation of the psychological processes that occur
in people when they produce and understand communicative statements. To do this, it is
studied how or in what way the person acquires that ability. Therefore, the modus
operandi to learn a language and its acquisition at the same time are the main goals of
psycholinguistics.

In addition to trying to explain the innate knowledge of language from babies to adults.

2) Which issues of First language acquisition are the main concerns of the study of
psycholinguistics?

Among the concerns of psycholinguistics and language acquisition are the child's
communicative competence and cognitive development. When children begin to acquire
language as a communication skill, they first build on categories that they have already
discriminated against. The conceptual representations they establish in their first year for
objects, relationships, properties, and other qualities provide a broad cognitive foundation
on which they can map words of speech addressed to children, But as linguistic
representations capture only certain aspects of cognitive representations, both types of
representations remain crucial, not during language acquisition but on other occasions when
children and adults need to draw on non- linguistic and linguistic categories

3) How do you think, the study of psycholinguistics might contribute to you as a

teacher of English as a foreign language?

The study of psycholinguistics provides my teaching work with different answers and
strategies on how to start teaching the L2, it also helps me understand the student's
information processing, and how it establishes links between cognitive processing and
linguistic processing. And hence the need to create a relationship between teaching
procedures and learning processes, that is, which are the procedures that cause or give rise
to certain learning processes.

In addition to knowing what kind of strategies and procedures are carried out in the
acquisition in order to improve said acquisition and thus ensure that the learner reaches the
highest degree of competence in the L2.4) What language areas of linguistics are involved
in L1 language comprehension and production, and what issues does each area cover?

5. What differences does literature establish about the brain and the mind?

Mind: The closest portion to our universe, it is an approximation to the processes of

knowing, how we learn, how we acquire different skills, and the brain, known as an object
of study as physical evidence of what it was made of (organ), but the mind goes beyond the
soft tissue that makes it up.
TASK 2

After reading the chapters 1 and 2 (Pages 8 to 69 of the text psycholingusitics By thomas

Scovel), define the following terms that have to do with the process of acquisition,
production and comprehension of the mother tongue (L1).

 •    Acquisition versus learning: Acquisition could be described as the

modeling that children follow from external examples, that is, repetition,
while learning is built naturally through their own experience.

 •      Nurture versus nature

 •      Babbling: At the babbling stage, children start to use various phonemes, and
many of these phonemes cannot be found in their mother tongue.

 •      Cooing: cooing sounds are supposed to express satisfaction.

 •      Foreign language: It is a language external to your own, to the country

or place where you live.

 •      Mother tongue (L1): It is the first approach to language; it is also the

language with which he is mostly surrounded.

 •      Second Language (L2):  It is a language that is learned or acquired after

acquiring the mother or native language.

 •      Speech:

 •      Idiomorphs: The words that infants can invent.

 •      Language as a cry: That crying can be viewed as the precursor of language

and speech, it is a response to the discomfort that infants can experience.

 •      Iconic language: It is the link that is produced from the sound that is
produced and the communicative intention that it seeks to generate.

 •      Symbolic language: The intention to communicate needs through verbal

language (Crying)

 •      Babbling: At the babbling stage, children start to use various phonemes, and
many of these phonemes cannot be found in their mother tongue
  •      Gurgling: Making soft gurgling sounds, seemingly to express satisfaction.

 •      Clusters:

 •      Articulation:  Is the movement of some organs like tongue, lips, lungs,
larynx, etc. in order to make or produce speech sounds

 •      Logogen: a notion as parallel distributed processing which implies that

simultaneous mental processes are involved in the comprehension of words.
According to this model, the exposure to a word activates a lexical detection
device or a logogen.

 •      Language Acquisition Devise (LAD): It refers to the ability to acquire

language.

 •       Holophrastic language: Term used to describe one-word sentences

used by small children but also found in adult speech

TASK 3

Represent by means of a mind map or infographic poster the process how a child acquires
the mother tongue which is explained in the online book linked above. Use texts images
and all type of resources to make it clear, creative and complete. To do so, consult about the
design of info-graphics in the next link https://youtu.be/71dJAOtb3S8

Canva presentation:
https://www.canva.com/design/DAEnlWK37xM/W_k418rlmnCA4Bcv0lN3bg/edit?
utm_content=DAEnlWK37xM&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_s
ource=sharebutton

TASK 4- OBSERVATION TASk

1. Complete the next chart to identify the child you have selected for the observation
task along this semester
2. Do a brief description of the child based on the questions listed below

Child´s picture 
Child´s name: Valentino Baez Castañeda
Sex: Male
Age: 4 years                                                                             
Short description based on the questions in the box you ask to the family

a.   When does he/she start to talk? He began to babble consonants + vowels when he
was 5 or 6 months old and when he was one year old he began to create idiomorphs, and
at two years his first words.

b.   What were the first words? His first words were ‘’agua’’, ‘’mamá’’, ‘’papá’’
‘’abue’’

c.   What were the most repetitive words? The words ‘’Agua’’ and ‘’mamá’’ were the
most repeated when she started saying them, this because it was with mom that she spent
most of her time and water because it has been one of her favorite drinking sources.

d.   How did he/she express emotions like pain, hungry, desire to sleep or have
something? Most of his emotions were expressed through crying, if he felt sick or
hungry or sleepy, and non-verbal language such as gestures or signs when he was happy,
angry or sad.

e.   How and who taught the baby the first words? The first words he learned as
"agua" were acquired from what he heard, since he constantly drank from the age of a
year and a half. The other words like "mamá", "papá" and "abue" were induced by their
parents and family.

f.    Is he /she going to school? From the age of 4 months, he began to attend a
kindergarten where he shared with other children.

g.   How is her/his progress? One factor that the parents believe has influenced
Valentino's progress has been early participation in the kindergarten, since there he has
been able to share with different children and people such as the teachers who have
contributed to the acquisition of his mother tongue

h.   How does he/she manifest understanding? He manifests understanding by

responding coherently to the different questions that are asked of him.

i.    Does he produce complete sentences?  What type? Examples? He produces

complete sentences and has a large vocabulary for his age. ‘’Estos días jugué con mis
amigos del cole’’ or ‘’Esta montaña es muy empinada’’, ‘’Es muy delicioso este
helado’’.

j.    How does he /she vocalize words? His vocalization is good, he makes himself
understood clearly.

k.   Does he/she relate names with objects or images? He associates very well the
images with the words in any situation.

l.    Does he recognize position of objects? Up, down, over? Recognizes all
prepositions by positioning different objects.