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Stages of Sleep, Language Acquisition and Development Essay

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A. Describe the stages of sleep. Identify the major sleep disorders. Using an electroencephalogram, researchers noted four distinct stages of NREM sleep and one stage of REM sleep. As we sleep, we cycle through these stages like a circuit at the gym; spending more time on some machines and less time on others. We spend as much as ninety minutes in NREM stages and as little as ten minutes in REM per circuit. The stages of NREM sleep can be identified by their characteristic wavelengths, based on brain activity, as seen on the EEG. We use the cycles per second (cps) to categorize the stages. In stage 1, the lightest of sleep stages, we see a wave of 3-7 cps, which is down from the 'drowsy' measurement of 8-12 cps. As we fall deeper into …show more content…

Somnambulism, or sleepwalking, can be dangerous due to the fact that the person is wandering about without any conscious awareness. B. Describe the way language is acquired. To describe the way language is acquired, we're going to talk about how we perceive words and speech, how we learn the meaning of different words, and how we learn to use grammar properly. As children, we immediately start our life by hearing the world around us and it's up to our brain to figure out what all the sound means. Research suggests that we are biologically ready to separate sound contrasts that are important for the language spoken around us. We also get help from those around us in the form of infant-directed speech, commonly called baby-talk. We get our information via speech that has been slowed and simplified, and often in a higher pitch, that helps us grasp these new words. We, as children, are amazing new word learners. Like little sponges, absorbing every new word even if we don't immediately get the proper meaning. We hear a new word and guess what that word might mean based on our surroundings. For example, everything in your living room has a name. Now, imagine that someone you trusted very much came in and commented on how lovely your inglenook was. You would have trouble immediately knowing what this person was talking about, but you would make a hypothesis. You would look at where

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