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Fitzpatrick N, Floccia C. Comparing child word associations to adult associative norms: Evidence for child-specific associations with a strong priming effect in 3-year-olds. Behav Res Methods 2024:10.3758/s13428-024-02414-3. [PMID: 38862866 DOI: 10.3758/s13428-024-02414-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 03/22/2024] [Indexed: 06/13/2024]
Abstract
Investigating how infants first establish relationships between words is a necessary step towards understanding how an interconnected network of semantic relationships develops in the adult lexical-semantic system. Stimuli selection for these child studies is critical since words must be both familiar and highly imageable. However, there has been a reliance on adult word association norms to inform stimuli selection in English infant studies to date, as no resource currently exists for child-specific word associations. We present three experiments that explore the strength of word-word relationships in 3-year-olds. Experiment 1 collected children's word associations (WA) (N = 150; female = 84, L1 = British English) and compared them to adult associative norms (Moss & Older, 1996; Nelson et al., 2004 (Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 36(3), 402-407)). Experiment 2 replicated WAs from Experiment 1 in an online adaptation of the task (N = 24: 13 female, L1 = British English). Both experiments indicated a high proportion of child-specific WAs not represented in adult norms (Moss & Older, 1996; Nelson et al., 2004 (Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 36(3), 402-407)). Experiment 3 tested noun-noun WAs from these responses in an online semantic priming study (N = 40: 19 female, L1 = British English) and found that association type modulated priming (F(2.57, 100.1) = 13.13, p <. 0001, generalized η2 = .19). This research presents a resource of child-specific imageable noun-noun word pair stimuli suitable for testing young children in word recognition and semantic priming studies.
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2
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Foushee R, Srinivasan M. Infants who are rarely spoken to nevertheless understand many words. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2024; 121:e2311425121. [PMID: 38814865 PMCID: PMC11161804 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2311425121] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/06/2023] [Accepted: 02/16/2024] [Indexed: 06/01/2024] Open
Abstract
Theories of language development-informed largely by studies of Western, middleclass infants-have highlighted the language that caregivers direct to children as a key driver of language learning. However, some have argued that language development unfolds similarly across environmental contexts, including those in which childdirected language is scarce. This raises the possibility that children are able to learn from other sources of language in their environments, particularly the language directed to others in their environment. We explore this hypothesis with infants in an indigenous Tseltal-speaking community in Southern Mexico who are rarely spoken to, yet have the opportunity to overhear a great deal of other-directed language by virtue of being carried on their mothers' backs. Adapting a previously established gaze-tracking method for detecting early word knowledge to our field setting, we find that Tseltal infants exhibit implicit knowledge of common nouns (Exp. 1), analogous to their US peers who are frequently spoken to. Moreover, they exhibit comprehension of Tseltal honorific terms that are exclusively used to greet adults in the community (Exp. 2), representing language that could only have been learned through overhearing. In so doing, Tseltal infants demonstrate an ability to discriminate words with similar meanings and perceptually similar referents at an earlier age than has been shown among Western children. Together, these results suggest that for some infants, learning from overhearing may be an important path toward developing language.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ruthe Foushee
- Department of Psychology, New School for Social Research, New York, NY10011
- Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, CA94705
| | - Mahesh Srinivasan
- Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, CA94705
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3
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Weaver H, Zettersten M, Saffran JR. Becoming word meaning experts: Infants' processing of familiar words in the context of typical and atypical exemplars. Child Dev 2024. [PMID: 38822689 DOI: 10.1111/cdev.14120] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/03/2024]
Abstract
How do infants become word meaning experts? This registered report investigated the structure of infants' early lexical representations by manipulating the typicality of exemplars from familiar animal categories. 14- to 18-month-old infants (N = 84; 51 female; M = 15.7 months; race/ethnicity: 64% White, 8% Asian, 2% Hispanic, 1% Black, and 23% multiple categories; participating 2022-2023) were tested on their ability to recognize typical and atypical category exemplars after hearing familiar basic-level category labels. Infants robustly recognized both typical (d = 0.79, 95% CI [0.54, 1.03]) and atypical (d = 0.70, 95% CI [0.46, 0.94]) exemplars, with no significant difference between typicality conditions (d = 0.14, 95% CI [-0.08, 0.35]). These results support a broad-to-narrow account of infants' early word meanings. Implications for the role of experience in the development of lexical knowledge are discussed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Haley Weaver
- Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, USA
| | - Martin Zettersten
- Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA
| | - Jenny R Saffran
- Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, USA
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4
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Jeppsen C, Baxelbaum K, Tomblin B, Klein K, McMurray B. The development of lexical processing: Real-time phonological competition and semantic activation in school age children. Q J Exp Psychol (Hove) 2024:17470218241244799. [PMID: 38508999 DOI: 10.1177/17470218241244799] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 03/22/2024]
Abstract
Prior research suggests that the development of speech perception and word recognition stabilises in early childhood. However, recent work suggests that development of these processes continues throughout adolescence. This study aimed to investigate whether these developmental changes are based solely within the lexical system or are due to domain general changes, and to extend this investigation to lexical-semantic processing. We used two Visual World Paradigm tasks: one to examine phonological and semantic processing, one to capture non-linguistic domain-general skills. We tested 43 seven- to nine-year-olds, 42 ten- to thirteen-year-olds, and 30 sixteen- to seventeen-year-olds. Older children were quicker to fixate the target word and exhibited earlier onset and offset of fixations to both semantic and phonological competitors. Visual/cognitive skills explained significant, but not all, variance in the development of these effects. Developmental changes in semantic activation were largely attributable to changes in upstream phonological processing. These results suggest that the concurrent development of linguistic processes and broader visual/cognitive skills lead to developmental changes in real-time phonological competition, while semantic activation is more stable across these ages.
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Affiliation(s)
- Charlotte Jeppsen
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA
| | - Keith Baxelbaum
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA
| | - Bruce Tomblin
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA
| | - Kelsey Klein
- Department of Audiology and Speech Pathology, The University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, TN, USA
| | - Bob McMurray
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA
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5
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Kudrnova V, Spelke ES, Thomas AJ. Infants Infer Social Relationships Between Individuals Who Engage in Imitative Social Interactions. Open Mind (Camb) 2024; 8:202-216. [PMID: 38476663 PMCID: PMC10932586 DOI: 10.1162/opmi_a_00124] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/07/2023] [Accepted: 12/17/2023] [Indexed: 03/14/2024] Open
Abstract
Infants are born into rich social networks and are faced with the challenge of learning about them. When infants observe social interactions, they make predictions about future behavior, but it is not clear whether these predictions are based on social dispositions, social relationships, or both. The current studies (N = 188, N = 90 males) address this question in 12-month-old infants and 16- to 18-month-old toddlers who observe social interactions involving imitation. In Studies 1 and 3, infants and toddlers expected that imitators, compared to non-imitators, would respond to their social partners' distress. Likewise, they expected the targets of imitation, compared to non-targets, to respond to their partner's distress. In Study 2, these expectations did not generalize to interactions with a new partner, providing evidence that infants learned about the relationships between individuals as opposed to their dispositions. In Study 3, infants did not make predictions about responses to laughter, suggesting that infants see imitation as indicative of a specific kind of social relationship. Together, these results provide evidence that imitative interactions support infants' and toddlers' learning about the social relationships connecting unknown individuals.
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Saksida A, Langus A. Object labeling and disambiguation in 4-month-old infants. Child Dev 2024; 95:462-480. [PMID: 37587752 DOI: 10.1111/cdev.13993] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/13/2022] [Revised: 07/06/2023] [Accepted: 07/23/2023] [Indexed: 08/18/2023]
Abstract
The account that word learning starts in earnest during the second year of life, when infants have mastered the disambiguation skills, has recently been challenged by evidence that infants during the first year already know many common words. The preliminary ability to rapidly map and disambiguate linguistic labels was tested in Italian-speaking infants (N = 96, 47 boys; age = 4 and 6 months, eye tracking). Infants can rapidly map linguistic labels to objects and movements, and disambiguate the intended referents to novel words, but they fail with sinewave analogs. In hearing infants, mapping and disambiguation emerge early in development, and are flexible as to which visual referents infants are willing to map to linguistic labels, but may be constrained to linguistic sounds.
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Affiliation(s)
- Amanda Saksida
- Institute for Maternal and Child Health-IRCCS "Burlo Garofolo"-Trieste, Trieste, Italy
| | - Alan Langus
- Cognitive Sciences, Department of Linguistics, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany
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LaTourrette A, Waxman S, Wakschlag LS, Norton ES, Weisleder A. From Recognizing Known Words to Learning New Ones: Comparing Online Speech Processing in Typically Developing and Late-Talking 2-Year-Olds. JOURNAL OF SPEECH, LANGUAGE, AND HEARING RESEARCH : JSLHR 2023; 66:1658-1677. [PMID: 36989138 PMCID: PMC10457094 DOI: 10.1044/2023_jslhr-22-00580] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/06/2022] [Revised: 12/17/2022] [Accepted: 01/16/2023] [Indexed: 05/11/2023]
Abstract
PURPOSE This study examines online speech processing in typically developing and late-talking 2-year-old children, comparing both groups' word recognition, word prediction, and word learning. METHOD English-acquiring U.S. children, from the "When to Worry" study of language and social-emotional development, were identified as typical talkers (n = 67, M age = 27.0 months, SD = 1.4; Study 1) or late talkers (n = 30, M age = 27.0 months, SD = 2.0; Study 2). Children completed an eye-tracking task assessing their ability to recognize both nouns and verbs, to use verbs to predict an upcoming noun's referent, and to use verbs to infer the meaning of novel nouns. RESULTS Both typical and late talkers recognized nouns and verbs and used familiar verbs to predict the referents of upcoming nouns, whether the noun was familiar ("You can eat the apple") or novel ("You can eat the dax"). Late talkers were slower in using familiar nouns to orient to the target and were both slower and less accurate in using familiar verbs to identify the upcoming noun's referent. Notably, however, both groups learned and retained novel word meanings with similar success. CONCLUSIONS Late talkers demonstrated slower lexical processing, especially for verbs. Yet, their success in using familiar verbs to learn novel nouns suggests that, as a group, their slower processing did not impair word learning in this task. This sets the foundation for future work investigating whether these measures predict later language outcomes and can differentiate late talkers with transient delays from those with language disorders.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Sandra Waxman
- Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL
- Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL
- Institute for Innovations in Developmental Sciences, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL
| | - Lauren S. Wakschlag
- Institute for Innovations in Developmental Sciences, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL
- Department of Medical Social Sciences, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL
| | - Elizabeth S. Norton
- Institute for Innovations in Developmental Sciences, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL
- Department of Medical Social Sciences, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL
- Roxelyn and Richard Pepper Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL
| | - Adriana Weisleder
- Institute for Innovations in Developmental Sciences, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL
- Roxelyn and Richard Pepper Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL
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Reuter T, Mazzei C, Lew-Williams C, Emberson L. Infants' lexical comprehension and lexical anticipation abilities are closely linked in early language development. INFANCY 2023; 28:532-549. [PMID: 36808682 DOI: 10.1111/infa.12534] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/20/2022] [Revised: 11/23/2022] [Accepted: 01/15/2023] [Indexed: 02/22/2023]
Abstract
Theories across cognitive domains propose that anticipating upcoming sensory input supports information processing. In line with this view, prior findings indicate that adults and children anticipate upcoming words during real-time language processing, via such processes as prediction and priming. However, it is unclear if anticipatory processes are strictly an outcome of prior language development or are more entwined with language learning and development. We operationalized this theoretical question as whether developmental emergence of comprehension of lexical items occurs before or concurrently with the anticipation of these lexical items. To this end, we tested infants of ages 12, 15, 18, and 24 months (N = 67) on their abilities to comprehend and anticipate familiar nouns. In an eye-tracking task, infants viewed pairs of images and heard sentences with either informative words (e.g., eat) that allowed them to anticipate an upcoming noun (e.g., cookie), or uninformative words (e.g., see). Findings indicated that infants' comprehension and anticipation abilities are closely linked over developmental time and within individuals. Importantly, we do not find evidence for lexical comprehension in the absence of lexical anticipation. Thus, anticipatory processes are present early in infants' second year, suggesting they are a part of language development rather than solely an outcome of it.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tracy Reuter
- Department of Psychology, Princeton University, New Jersey, Princeton, USA
| | - Carolyn Mazzei
- Department of Psychology, Princeton University, New Jersey, Princeton, USA.,Faculty of Education, Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK
| | - Casey Lew-Williams
- Department of Psychology, Princeton University, New Jersey, Princeton, USA
| | - Lauren Emberson
- Department of Psychology, Princeton University, New Jersey, Princeton, USA.,Psychology Department, University of British Columbia, British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
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Kartushina N, Mayor J. Coping with dialects from birth: Role of variability on infants' early language development. Insights from Norwegian dialects. Dev Sci 2023; 26:e13264. [PMID: 35397136 PMCID: PMC10078477 DOI: 10.1111/desc.13264] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/18/2018] [Revised: 01/13/2022] [Accepted: 03/18/2022] [Indexed: 12/15/2022]
Abstract
Previous research suggests that exposure to accent variability can affect toddlers' familiar word recognition and word comprehension. The current preregistered study addressed the gap in knowledge on early language development in infants exposed to two dialects from birth and assessed the role of dialect similarity in infants' word recognition and comprehension. A 12-month-old Norwegian-learning infants, exposed to native Norwegian parents speaking the same or two Norwegian dialects, took part in two eye-tracking tasks, assessing familiar word form recognition and word comprehension. Their parents' speech was assessed for similarity by native Norwegian speakers. First, in contrast to previous research, our results revealed no listening preference for words over nonwords in both monodialectal and bidialectal infants, suggesting potential language-specific differences in the onset of word recognition. Second, the results showed evidence for word comprehension in monodialectal infants, but not in bidialectal infants, suggesting that exposure to dialectal variability impacts early word acquisition. Third, perceptual similarity between parental dialects tendentially facilitated bidialectal infants' word recognition and comprehension. Forth, the results revealed a strong correlation between the raters and parents' assessment of similarity between dialects, indicating that parental estimations can be reliably used to assess infants' speech variability at home. Finally, our results revealed a strong relationship between word recognition and comprehension in monodialectal infants and the absence of such a relationship in bidialectal infants, suggesting that either these two skills do not necessarily align in infants exposed to more variable input, or that the alignment might occur at a later stage.
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Affiliation(s)
- Natalia Kartushina
- Center for Multilingualism in Society across the Lifespan, Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies, Faculty of Humanities, University of Oslo, Henrik Wergelands hus, Oslo, Norway.,Department of Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
| | - Julien Mayor
- Department of Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
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10
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Campbell J, Hall DG. The scope of infants' early object word extensions. Cognition 2022; 228:105210. [PMID: 35816913 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105210] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/03/2021] [Revised: 06/18/2022] [Accepted: 06/21/2022] [Indexed: 11/03/2022]
Abstract
Recent research indicates that 6- to 9-month-olds understand a number of object words, but the nature of this understanding is unclear. This work examined whether infants restrict these terms to individual objects (like proper names) or extend them across multiple objects from a category (like common nouns). Experiment 1 reports evidence that 6-month-olds comprehend the name for their mother (e.g., "Mommy") as restricted to the individual person. Experiment 2 offers support for the claim that 6- and 9-month-olds understand both a label that is restricted to an individual person (e.g., "Mommy") and a label that extends to multiple members of an object category (i.e., "hand" or "ball"). Experiment 3 provides evidence that 12- to 15-month-olds comprehend both a word that is restricted to an individual (e.g., "Fido") and a word that extends to multiple category members (e.g., "dog") for the same object (i.e., a pet dog). The findings indicate that infants understand both individual- and categorical-scope words early in development, suggesting that neither lexical type represents a privileged starting point in word learning. We propose that cross-situational learning abilities, along with intuitive biases to conceptualize objects from particular semantic classes as either individuals or members of categories, play a role in infants' learning of words of the two lexical types.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jennifer Campbell
- Department of Psychology, The University of British Columbia, Canada
| | - D Geoffrey Hall
- Department of Psychology, The University of British Columbia, Canada.
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11
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Pomiechowska B, Csibra G. Nonverbal Action Interpretation Guides Novel Word Disambiguation in 12-Month-Olds. Open Mind (Camb) 2022; 6:51-76. [DOI: 10.1162/opmi_a_00055] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/16/2020] [Accepted: 04/08/2022] [Indexed: 11/04/2022] Open
Abstract
Abstract
Whether young infants can exploit sociopragmatic information to interpret new words is a matter of debate. Based on findings and theories from the action interpretation literature, we hypothesized that 12-month-olds should distinguish communicative object-directed actions expressing reference from instrumental object-directed actions indicative of one’s goals, and selectively use the former to identify referents of novel linguistic expressions. This hypothesis was tested across four eye-tracking experiments. Infants watched pairs of unfamiliar objects, one of which was first targeted by either a communicative action (e.g., pointing) or an instrumental action (e.g., grasping) and then labeled with a novel word. As predicted, infants fast-mapped the novel words onto the targeted objects after pointing (Experiments 1 and 4) but not after grasping (Experiment 2) unless the grasping action was preceded by an ostensive signal (Experiment 3). Moreover, whenever infants mapped a novel word onto the object indicated by a communicative action, they tended to map a different novel word onto the distractor object, displaying a mutual exclusivity effect. This reliance on nonverbal action interpretation in the disambiguation of novel words indicates that sociopragmatic inferences about reference likely supplement associative and statistical learning mechanisms from the outset of word learning.
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Affiliation(s)
- Barbara Pomiechowska
- Cognitive Development Center, Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University
| | - Gergely Csibra
- Cognitive Development Center, Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University
- Birkbeck College, University of London
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12
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Meylan SC, Bergelson E. Learning Through Processing: Toward an Integrated Approach to Early Word Learning. ANNUAL REVIEW OF LINGUISTICS 2021; 8:77-99. [PMID: 35481110 PMCID: PMC9037961 DOI: 10.1146/annurev-linguistics-031220-011146] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/14/2023]
Abstract
Children's linguistic knowledge and the learning mechanisms by which they acquire it grow substantially in infancy and toddlerhood, yet theories of word learning largely fail to incorporate these shifts. Moreover, researchers' often-siloed focus on either familiar word recognition or novel word learning limits the critical consideration of how these two relate. As a step toward a mechanistic theory of language acquisition, we present a framework of "learning through processing" and relate it to the prevailing methods used to assess children's early knowledge of words. Incorporating recent empirical work, we posit a specific, testable timeline of qualitative changes in the learning process in this interval. We conclude with several challenges and avenues for building a comprehensive theory of early word learning: better characterization of the input, reconciling results across approaches, and treating lexical knowledge in the nascent grammar with sufficient sophistication to ensure generalizability across languages and development.
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Affiliation(s)
- Stephan C Meylan
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
- Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA
| | - Elika Bergelson
- Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA
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13
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Pomiechowska B, Bródy G, Csibra G, Gliga T. Twelve-month-olds disambiguate new words using mutual-exclusivity inferences. Cognition 2021; 213:104691. [PMID: 33934847 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104691] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/31/2020] [Revised: 03/15/2021] [Accepted: 03/17/2021] [Indexed: 12/12/2022]
Abstract
Representing objects in terms of their kinds enables inferences based on the long-term knowledge made available through kind concepts. For example, children readily use lexical knowledge linked to familiar kind concepts to disambiguate new words (e.g., "find the toma"): they exclude members of familiar kinds falling under familiar kind labels (e.g., a ball) as potential referents and link new labels to available unfamiliar objects (e.g., a funnel), a phenomenon dubbed as 'mutual exclusivity'. Younger infants' failure in mutual exclusivity tasks has been commonly interpreted as a limitation of early word-learning or inferential abilities. Here, we investigated an alternative explanation, according to which infants do not spontaneously represent familiar objects under kind concepts, hence lacking access to the information necessary for rejecting them as referents of novel labels. Building on findings about conceptual development and communication, we hypothesized that nonverbal communication could prompt infants to set up kind-based representations which, in turn, would promote mutual exclusivity inferences. This hypothesis was tested in a looking-while-listening task involving novel word disambiguation. Twelve-month-olds saw pairs of objects, one familiar and one unfamiliar, and heard familiar kind labels or novel words. Across two experiments providing a cross-lab replication in two different languages, infants successfully disambiguated novel words when the familiar object had been pointed at before labeling, but not when it had been highlighted in a non-communicative manner (Experiment 1) or not highlighted at all (Experiment 2). Nonverbal communication induced infants to recruit kind-based representations of familiar objects that they failed to recruit in its absence and that, once activated, supported mutual-exclusivity inferences. Developmental changes in children's appreciation of communicative contexts may modulate the expression of early inferential and word learning competences.
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Affiliation(s)
- Barbara Pomiechowska
- Cognitive Development Center, Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, Hungary.
| | - Gábor Bródy
- Cognitive Development Center, Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, Hungary; Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences, Brown University, United States
| | - Gergely Csibra
- Cognitive Development Center, Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, Hungary; Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London, United Kingdom
| | - Teodora Gliga
- School of Psychology, University of East Anglia, United Kingdom
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14
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Lo CH, Rosslund A, Chai JH, Mayor J, Kartushina N. Tablet assessment of word comprehension reveals coarse word representations in 18–20‐month‐old toddlers. INFANCY 2021; 26:596-616. [DOI: 10.1111/infa.12401] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/31/2020] [Revised: 01/29/2021] [Accepted: 01/31/2021] [Indexed: 11/26/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Chang Huan Lo
- School of Psychology University of Nottingham Malaysia Semenyih Malaysia
| | - Audun Rosslund
- Department of Psychology & Center for Multilingualism in Society across the Lifespan (MultiLing) University of Oslo Oslo Norway
| | - Jun Ho Chai
- School of Psychology University of Nottingham Malaysia Semenyih Malaysia
| | - Julien Mayor
- Department of Psychology University of Oslo Oslo Norway
| | - Natalia Kartushina
- Department of Psychology & Center for Multilingualism in Society across the Lifespan (MultiLing) University of Oslo Oslo Norway
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15
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Avila-Varela DS, Arias-Trejo N, Mani N. A longitudinal study of the role of vocabulary size in priming effects in early childhood. J Exp Child Psychol 2021; 205:105071. [PMID: 33529992 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2020.105071] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/10/2020] [Revised: 12/10/2020] [Accepted: 12/13/2020] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
Studies on lexical development in young children often suggest that the organization of the early lexicon may vary with age and increasing vocabulary size. In the current study, we explicitly examined this suggestion in further detail using a longitudinal study of the development of phonological and semantic priming effects in the same group of toddlers at three different ages. In particular, our longitudinal design allows us to disentangle effects of increasing age and vocabulary size on priming and the extent to which vocabulary size may predict later priming effects. We tested phonological and semantic priming effects in monolingual German infants at 18, 21, and 24 months of age. We used the intermodal preferential looking paradigm combined with eye tracking to measure the influence of phonologically and semantic related/unrelated primes on target recognition. We found that phonological priming effects were predicted by participants' current vocabulary size even after controlling for participants' age and participants' early vocabulary size. Semantic priming effects were, in contrast, not predicted by vocabulary size. Finally, we also found a relationship between early phonological priming effects and later semantic priming effects as well as between early semantic priming effects and later phonological priming effects, potentially suggesting (limited) consistency in lexical structure across development. Taken together, these results highlight the important role of vocabulary size in the development of priming effects in early childhood.
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Affiliation(s)
- Daniela S Avila-Varela
- Psychology of Language Research Group, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, 37073 Göttingen, Germany; Leibniz ScienceCampus "Primate Cognition", 37077 Göttingen, Germany; Center for Brain and Cognition, Department of Technology, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 08005 Barcelona, Spain.
| | - Natalia Arias-Trejo
- Laboratorio de Psicolingüística, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Copilco Universidad, Coyoacan 04510, Ciudad de México, México
| | - Nivedita Mani
- Psychology of Language Research Group, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, 37073 Göttingen, Germany; Leibniz ScienceCampus "Primate Cognition", 37077 Göttingen, Germany
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Luchkina E, Waxman SR. Semantic priming supports infants' ability to learn names of unseen objects. PLoS One 2021; 16:e0244968. [PMID: 33412565 PMCID: PMC7790528 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0244968] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/14/2020] [Accepted: 12/18/2020] [Indexed: 11/30/2022] Open
Abstract
Human language permits us to call to mind objects, events, and ideas that we cannot witness directly. This capacity rests upon abstract verbal reference: the appreciation that words are linked to mental representations that can be established, retrieved and modified, even when the entities to which a word refers is perceptually unavailable. Although establishing verbal reference is a pivotal achievement, questions concerning its developmental origins remain. To address this gap, we investigate infants’ ability to establish a representation of an object, hidden from view, from language input alone. In two experiments, 15-month-olds (N = 72) and 12-month-olds (N = 72) watch as an actor names three familiar, visible objects; she then provides a novel name for a fourth, hidden fully from infants’ view. In the Semantic Priming condition, the visible familiar objects all belong to the same semantic neighborhood (e.g., apple, banana, orange). In the No Priming condition, the objects are drawn from different semantic neighborhoods (e.g., apple, shoe, car). At test infants view two objects. If infants can use the naming information alone to identify the likely referent, then infants in the Semantic Priming, but not in the No Priming condition, will successfully infer the referent of the fourth (hidden) object. Brief summary of results here. Implications for the development of abstract verbal reference will be discussed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Elena Luchkina
- Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, United States of America
- Institute of Policy Research, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, United States of America
- * E-mail:
| | - Sandra R. Waxman
- Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, United States of America
- Institute of Policy Research, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, United States of America
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Garrison H, Baudet G, Breitfeld E, Aberman A, Bergelson E. Familiarity plays a small role in noun comprehension at 12-18 months. INFANCY 2020; 25:458-477. [PMID: 32744800 DOI: 10.1111/infa.12333] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/23/2019] [Revised: 02/29/2020] [Accepted: 03/08/2020] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Abstract
Infants amass thousands of hours of experience with particular items, each of which is representative of a broader category that often shares perceptual features. Robust word comprehension requires generalizing known labels to new category members. While young infants have been found to look at common nouns when they are named aloud, the role of item familiarity has not been well examined. This study compares 12- to 18-month-olds' word comprehension in the context of pairs of their own items (e.g., photographs of their own shoe and ball) versus new tokens from the same category (e.g., a new shoe and ball). Our results replicate previous work showing that noun comprehension improves rapidly over the second year, while also suggesting that item familiarity appears to play a far smaller role in comprehension in this age range. This in turn suggests that even before age 2, ready generalization beyond particular experiences is an intrinsic component of lexical development.
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18
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Taxitari L, Twomey KE, Westermann G, Mani N. The Limits of Infants' Early Word Learning. LANGUAGE LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT : THE OFFICIAL JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT 2019; 16:1-21. [PMID: 32256251 PMCID: PMC7077354 DOI: 10.1080/15475441.2019.1670184] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/23/2023]
Abstract
In this series of experiments, we tested the limits of young infants' word learning and generalization abilities in light of recent findings reporting sophisticated word learning abilities in the first year of life. Ten-month-old infants were trained with two word-object pairs and tested with either the same or different members of the corresponding categories. In Experiment 1, infants showed successful learning of the word-object associations, when trained and tested with a single exemplar from each category. In Experiment 2, infants were presented with multiple within-category items during training but failed to learn the word-object associations. In Experiment 3, infants were presented with a single exemplar from each category during training, and failed to generalize words to a new category exemplar. However, when infants were trained with items from perceptually and conceptually distinct categories in Experiment 4, they showed weak evidence for generalization of words to novel members of the corresponding categories. It is suggested that word learning in the first year begins as the formation of simple associations between words and objects that become enriched as experience with objects, words and categories accumulates across development.
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Affiliation(s)
- Loukia Taxitari
- Department of Secondary General Education, Ministry of Education and Culture, Nicosia, Cyprus
| | - Katherine E. Twomey
- Division of Human Communication, Development and Hearing, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
| | - Gert Westermann
- Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
| | - Nivedita Mani
- Georg-Elias-Müller Institute for Psychology, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
- Leibniz ScienceCampus Primate Cognition, Göttingen, Germany
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Kartushina N, Mayor J. Word knowledge in six- to nine-month-old Norwegian infants? Not without additional frequency cues. ROYAL SOCIETY OPEN SCIENCE 2019; 6:180711. [PMID: 31598270 PMCID: PMC6774954 DOI: 10.1098/rsos.180711] [Citation(s) in RCA: 22] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/03/2019] [Accepted: 08/23/2019] [Indexed: 06/10/2023]
Abstract
The past 5 years have witnessed claims that infants as young as six months of age understand the meaning of several words. To reach this conclusion, researchers presented infants with pairs of pictures from distinct semantic domains and observed longer looks at an object upon hearing its name as compared with the name of the other object. However, these gaze patterns might indicate infants' sensibility to the word frequency and/or its contextual relatedness to the object regardless of a firm semantic understanding of this word. The current study attempted, first, to replicate, in Norwegian language, the results of recent studies showing that six- to nine-month-old English-learning infants understand the meaning of many common words. Second, it assessed the robustness of a 'comprehension' interpretation by dissociating semantic knowledge from confounded extra-linguistic cues via the manipulation of the contingency between words and objects. Our planned analyses revealed that Norwegian six- to nine-month-old infants did not understand the meaning of the words used in the study. Our exploratory analyses showed evidence of word comprehension at eight to nine months of age-rather than from six to seven months of age for English-learning infants-suggesting that there are cross-linguistic differences in the onset of word comprehension. In addition, our study revealed that eight- to nine-month-old infants cannot rely exclusively on single extra-linguistic cues to disambiguate between two items, thus suggesting the existence of early word-object mappings. However, these mappings are weak, as infants need additional cues (such as an imbalance in frequency of word use) to reveal word recognition. Our results suggest that the very onset of word comprehension is not based on the infants' knowledge of words per se. Rather, infants use a converging set of cues to identify referents, among which frequency is a robust (pre-semantic) cue that infants exploit to guide object disambiguation and, in turn, learn new words.
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Affiliation(s)
- Natalia Kartushina
- Department of Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Oslo, Forskningsveien 3A, 0373 Oslo, Norway
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20
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Smith LB, Jayaraman S, Clerkin E, Yu C. The Developing Infant Creates a Curriculum for Statistical Learning. Trends Cogn Sci 2018. [PMID: 29519675 DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2018.02.004] [Citation(s) in RCA: 99] [Impact Index Per Article: 16.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/17/2022]
Abstract
New efforts are using head cameras and eye-trackers worn by infants to capture everyday visual environments from the point of view of the infant learner. From this vantage point, the training sets for statistical learning develop as the sensorimotor abilities of the infant develop, yielding a series of ordered datasets for visual learning that differ in content and structure between timepoints but are highly selective at each timepoint. These changing environments may constitute a developmentally ordered curriculum that optimizes learning across many domains. Future advances in computational models will be necessary to connect the developmentally changing content and statistics of infant experience to the internal machinery that does the learning.
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Affiliation(s)
- Linda B Smith
- Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University, 1101 East 10th Street, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA.
| | - Swapnaa Jayaraman
- Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University, 1101 East 10th Street, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA
| | - Elizabeth Clerkin
- Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University, 1101 East 10th Street, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA
| | - Chen Yu
- Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University, 1101 East 10th Street, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA
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21
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Abstract
Recent research reported the surprising finding that even 6-mo-olds understand common nouns [Bergelson E, Swingley D (2012) Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 109:3253-3258]. However, is their early lexicon structured and acquired like older learners? We test 6-mo-olds for a hallmark of the mature lexicon: cross-word relations. We also examine whether properties of the home environment that have been linked with lexical knowledge in older children are detectable in the initial stage of comprehension. We use a new dataset, which includes in-lab comprehension and home measures from the same infants. We find evidence for cross-word structure: On seeing two images of common nouns, infants looked significantly more at named target images when the competitor images were semantically unrelated (e.g., milk and foot) than when they were related (e.g., milk and juice), just as older learners do. We further find initial evidence for home-lab links: common noun "copresence" (i.e., whether words' referents were present and attended to in home recordings) correlated with in-lab comprehension. These findings suggest that, even in neophyte word learners, cross-word relations are formed early and the home learning environment measurably helps shape the lexicon from the outset.
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Affiliation(s)
- Elika Bergelson
- Psychology & Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708;
- Brain & Cognitive Sciences, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627
| | - Richard N Aslin
- Brain & Cognitive Sciences, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627
- Haskins Laboratories, New Haven, CT 06511
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