The role of systematicity in early referent selection

Previous studies showed that word learning is affected by children's existing knowledge. For instance, knowledge of semantic category aids word learning, whereas a dense phonological neighbourhood impedes learning of similar-sounding words. Here, we examined to what extent children associate similar-sounding words (e.g., rat and cat) with objects of the same semantic category (e.g., both are animals), that is, to what extent children assume meaning overlap given form overlap between two words. We tested this by first presenting children (N = 93, Mage = 22.4 months) with novel word-object associations. Then, we examined the extent to which children assume that a similar sounding novel label, that is, a phonological neighbour, refers to a similar looking object, that is, a likely semantic neighbour, as opposed to a dissimilar looking object. Were children to preferentially fixate the similar-looking novel object, it would suggest that systematic word form-meaning relations aid referent selection in young children. While we did not find any evidence for such word form-meaning systematicity, we demonstrated that children showed robust learning for the trained novel word-object associations, and were able to discriminate between similar-sounding labels and also similar-looking objects. Thus, we argue that unlike iconicity which appears early in vocabulary development, we find no evidence for systematicity in early referent selection.

Specificity of phonological representations in U.S. English-speaking late talkers and typical talkers

Late talkers are a heterogeneous group of children who experience delayed language development in the absence of other known causes. Late talkers show delays in expressive phonological development, but less is known about their receptive phonological development. In the current study, U.S. monolingual English-speaking typical talkers (TTs) (n = 23, mean age = 26.27 months, 57% male; 78.3% White) and late talkers (n = 22, mean age = 24.57 months, 59% male, 72.7% White) completed a Looking-While-Listening task to assess their sensitivity to mispronunciations. Results revealed that late talkers and TTs looked to the referent of a word for a shorter duration when it was mispronounced than when it was correctly pronounced, suggesting they were sensitive to mispronunciations. However, there were no significant differences between the two groups in their sensitivity to mispronunciations.

The Influence of Misarticulations on Children's Word Identification and Processing

PURPOSE

The purpose of the present studies was to determine how children's identification and processing of misarticulated words was influenced by substitution commonness.

METHOD

Sixty-one typically developing preschoolers across 3 experiments heard accurate productions of words (e.g., "leaf"), words containing common substitutions (e.g., "weaf"), and words containing uncommon substitutions (e.g., "yeaf"). On each trial, preschoolers chose between a real object picture (e.g., a leaf) and a nonobject (e.g., an anomalous line drawing). Accuracy and processing were measured using MouseTracker and eye tracking.

RESULTS

Overall, children chose real objects significantly more when presented with accurate productions (e.g., "leaf") than misarticulated productions (e.g., "weaf" or "yeaf"). Within misarticulation conditions, children chose real objects significantly more when hearing common misarticulations (e.g., "weaf") than uncommon misarticulations (e.g., "yeaf"). Preschoolers identified words significantly faster and with greater certainty in accurate conditions than misarticulated conditions.

CONCLUSIONS

The results of the present studies indicate that the commonness of substitutions influences children's identification of misarticulated words. Children hear common substitutions more frequently and therefore were supported in their identification of these words as real objects. The presence of substitutions, however, slowed reaction time when compared with accurate productions.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.5965510.

When the body reveals the mind: Children's use of others' body orientation to understand their focus of attention

A considerable amount of research has examined children's ability to rely on explicit social cues such as pointing to understand others' referential intentions. Yet, skillful social interaction also requires reliance on and learning from implicit cues (i.e., cues that are not displayed with the explicit intention to teach or inform someone). From an embodied point of view, orienting movements and body orientation are salient cues that reveal something about a person's intentional relations without being explicit communicative cues. In three experiments, the current study investigated the development of the ability to use body information in a word learning situation. To this end, we presented 2-year-old children, 3.5-year-old children, and adults with movies on an eye-tracking screen in which an actor oriented her upper body to one of two objects while uttering a novel word. The results show that the 3.5-year-old children and adults, but not the 2-year-old children, related the novel word to the referred object (Experiments 1 and 2). Yet, when the actor oriented her body to one object while pointing to the other object, children of both age groups relied on the pointing cue (Experiment 3). This suggests that by 3.5 years children use another's body orientation as an indicator of her intentional relations but that they prioritize explicit social cues over the implicit body posture cues. Overall, the study supports theoretical views that an appreciation of others' intentional relations does not emerge as an all-or-nothing ability but rather emerges gradually during the course of early development.

The strong, the weak, and the first: The impact of phonological stress on processing of orthographic errors in silent reading

In auditory speech processing, phonological stress functions as an attention holding cue, which facilitates detection of mispronunciations and phonetic deviants in strong syllables as compared to weak ones. Whereas silent reading involves activation of phonological information including word stress, it is not clear whether it has any functional relevance for visual language processing. We investigated whether phonological stress impacts orthographic processing such as detection of misspellings in silent reading. In an ERP experiment, participants silently read intact and misspelled German words. We manipulated the strength of the misspelled syllable (strong vs. weak) as well as its position (word-initial vs. word-middle). No effect of stress was observed for misspellings occurring in a word-initial position suggesting that misspellings in word-initial position disrupt visual word processing regardless of the phonological strength of the first syllable. In contrast, phonological strength modulated the ERPs when misspellings occurred in the middle of the word: misspellings embedded in strong syllables enhanced the P600 and the N400-like component compared to misspellings in weak syllables. In this case, i.e., when misspellings occur in the middle of a letter string, lexical access may be hindered more when errors occur in strong syllables, as reflected in the enhanced N400 in strong compared to weak syllables. This in turn may facilitate active reanalysis as mirrored in the increased P600 in the strong condition. The findings are discussed in the context of the relatively late activation of phonological form in visual word recognition and its interaction with other perceptual visual information. Overall, the results demonstrate the functional significance of phonological stress in visual word processing.

Spoken word recognition in early childhood: Comparative effects of vowel, consonant and lexical tone variation

The majority of the world's languages exploit consonants, vowels and lexical tones to contrast the meanings of individual words. However, the majority of experimental research on early language development focuses on consonant-vowel languages. In the present study, the role of consonants, vowels and lexical tones in emergent word knowledge are directly compared in toddlers (2.5-3.5 years) and preschoolers (4-5 years) who were bilingual native learners of a consonant-vowel-tone language (Mandarin Chinese). Using a preferential looking paradigm, participants were presented with correct pronunciations and consonantal, vowel, and tonal variations of known words. Responses to each type of variation were assessed via gaze fixations to a visual target. When their labels were correctly pronounced, visual targets were reliably identified at both age groups. However, in toddlers, there was a high degree of sensitivity to mispronunciations due to variation in lexical tones relative to those due to consonants and vowels. This pattern was reversed in preschoolers, who were more sensitive to consonant and vowel variation than to tone variation. Findings are discussed in terms of properties of tones, vowels and consonants and the respective role of each source of variation in tone languages.