Publications (31) View all
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Dataset: BritishJDP-2010
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Article: Talking About the Near and Dear: Infants' Comprehension of Displaced Speech.
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ABSTRACT: The present research investigated the role of familiarity and proximity in infants' comprehension of displaced speech. When 13- and 16-month-old infants heard a researcher talk about a familiar person immediately after she left the room, they showed comprehension of the name by looking, pointing, or searching for the person in question. The majority of 16-month-olds were also able to reveal comprehension of the reference to the absent person after a 16-min delay, and they were able to respond to the name of an unfamiliar person as well. The 13-month-olds had more difficulty responding after the delay and to the name of a less familiar person. Thus, in the early phases of absent reference comprehension, infants' ability to respond to displaced speech can vary as a function of the temporal gap between the verbal reference and the last appearance of the referent, and of how strong their representation of the referent is. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).Developmental Psychology 09/2012; · 3.21 Impact Factor -
Article: When Familiar Is Not Better: 12-Month-Old Infants Respond to Talk About Absent Objects.
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ABSTRACT: Three experiments that demonstrate a novel constraint on infants' language skills are described. Across the experiments it is shown that as babies near their 1st birthday, their ability to respond to talk about an absent object is influenced by a referent's spatiotemporal history: familiarizing infants with an object in 1 or several nontest locations before the study interferes with their ability to respond to talk about the object when it is out of view. Familiarity with an object may not always strengthen infants' object representations and therefore facilitate their ability to appropriately react to the mention of absent objects. On the contrary, early in development, irrelevant information about prior location may be bound to representations of familiar objects and thus interfere with infants' ability to respond to talk about absent things. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).Developmental Psychology 03/2012; · 3.21 Impact Factor -
Article: Four- and six-year-olds use pragmatic competence to guide word learning.
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ABSTRACT: ABSTRACTThe present study investigates whether four- and six-year-old children use pragmatic competence as a criterion for learning from someone else. Specifically, we ask whether children use others' adherence to Gricean maxims to determine whether they will offer valid labels for novel objects. Six-year-olds recognized adherence to the maxims of quality and relation and subsequently trusted the labels provided by a maxim adherer. Four-year-olds displayed this pattern when judging adherence to quality but not relation. A linear regression revealed that children's ability to identify maxim adherers predicted their ability to choose the correct object during word-learning trials. This research demonstrates that children use others' pragmatic history when judging the reliability of the information they offer.Journal of Child Language 01/2012; · 1.41 Impact Factor -
Article: What's mine is mine: twelve-month-olds use possessive pronouns to identify referents.
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ABSTRACT: This research investigated 12-month-olds' ability to use person-specific language to determine to which of several absent things a person is referring. Infants were introduced to two experimenters who played separately with a different ball. One researcher asked infants to retrieve her object when both balls were hidden. Infants selected the correct object when researchers used the pronoun my, but failed to do so when the was used. The present research provides the first evidence of 12-month-olds' comprehension of possessive pronouns and indicates that infants use person-specific language to resolve reference.Developmental Science 07/2011; 14(4):859-64. · 3.89 Impact Factor
