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The Emergentist Coalition Model of Word Learning in Children Has Implications for Language in Aging
Abstract
This chapter explores how a combination of influences can lead to observable changes in language comprehension. It speculates about how such an integrated model could help us see atypical development as part of the continuum of typical development and how aging might affect the more normative processes of language learning. It uses one aspect of language development, word learning, as a test case. The chapter is organized in four sections. Firstly, it reviews theories that have been posited to account for word learning. It then describes a theoretical alternative that incorporates the best of the theories in an integrative framework and allows for testable hypotheses about word learning. This alternative is the emergentist coalition model (ECM). Thirdly, it examines the impact of an integrated theory for approaching questions in language development for both normal and atypical children. The ECM provides a richer picture of the factors necessary for language acquisition, and in particular lexical acquisition, to occur. © 2006 by Ellen Bialystok, Fergus I.M. Craik. All rights reserved.
... From a developmental perspective, the responsivity for linguistic information that can be used for prediction, such as prosodic, semantic, or morphosyntactic cues, is assumed to change during childhood (e.g., Brouwer et al., 2019;Golinkoff & Hirsh-Pasek, 2006). For example, while semantic cues may be given greater weight by younger children, they may be gradually supplanted by more valid morphosyntactic cues (Henry, 2015). ...
... That semantic relations between successive words may generally be used to predict the continuation of a linguistic stimulus has been shown in several previous studies (e.g., Borovsky et al., 2013;Cholewa et al., 2019;Dikker et al., 2014) and was confirmed in our study as well. As outlined in the introduction, we started our experiment from the expectation that responsiveness to linguistic information, such as semantic or morphosyntactic cues, change during childhood (Brouwer et al., 2019;Golinkoff & Hirsh-Pasek, 2006); that semantic cues are given greater weight by younger children; and that they are later gradually supplanted by more valid morphosyntactic cues (Henry, 2015). Based on these assumptions, we explored whether only the younger children may either be distracted from gender processing by the presence of a semantic cue or alternatively may need the converging semantic cue as a kind of "bootstrap" to predictive gender processing, in the sense that younger children might be able to check morphosyntactic relations (gender congruency) between linguistic elements more easily if they are already connected on semantic grounds (e.g., Cholewa et al., 2019;Hopp & Lemmerth, 2016;Lemmerth & Hopp, 2017). ...
Purpose
Many models of language comprehension assume that listeners predict the continuation of an incoming linguistic stimulus immediately after its onset, based on only partial linguistic and contextual information. Their related developmental models try to determine which cues (e.g., semantic or morphosyntactic) trigger such prediction, and to which extent, during different periods of language acquisition. One morphosyntactic cue utilized predictively in many languages, inter alia German, is grammatical gender. However, studies of the developmental trajectories of the acquisition of predictive gender processing in German remain a few.
Method
This study attempts to shed light on such processing strategies used in noun phrase decoding among children acquiring German as their first language by examining their eye movements during a language–picture matching task (N = 78, 5–10 years old). Its aim was to confirm whether the eye movements indicated the presence of age-specific differences in the processing of a gender cue, provided either in isolation or in combination with a semantic cue.
Results
The results revealed that German children made use of predictive gender processing strategies from the age of 5 years onward; however, the pace of online gender processing, as well as confidence in the predicted continuation, increased up to the age of 10 years.
Conclusion
Predictive processing of gender cues plays a role in German language comprehension even in children younger than 8 years.
... That is, because words systematically co-occur with different information sources and perceptual events, words can serve as systematic cues for attention (e.g., Huetting and Altmann, 2007). As a general construct, attention and cued attention are widely considered to be important to early word learning (Plunkett, 1997;Hollich et al., 2000;Smith, 2000;Golinkoff and Hirsh-Pasek, 2006;Pruden et al., 2006;Yoshida and Hanania, 2007;Halberda, 2009); and infants show early sensitivity to contextual cues as guides to attention and learning (Tomasello, 1995;Saffran et al., 1996Saffran et al., , 1999Saffran, 2003;Ramscar et al., 2010;Nomikou and Rohlfing, 2011). More specific to the attentional role of speech, research on online speech processing by adults shows strong attentional effects of words cuing attention: words appear to automatically direct looking to the location of a mentioned object (Altmann, 2004;Knoeferle and Crocker, 2007). ...
... If the novelty of C creates a stronger association with Outcome Y, the increase in saliency between the two cues as a result of this novelty might be more of an influential force for younger children than for adults. Previous research has shown that younger children are more sensitive to the saliency of cues (e.g., toys with salient features) in learning objects and over time become more sensitive to other sources of information, such as social cues (e.g., eye gaze; Golinkoff and Hirsh-Pasek, 2006). Thus, the strong association between C and Y may only weakly affect original learning (A·B → X) when given A·C conjunctively, but this C → Y highlighting effect is efficient for forming a prediction that B·C → Y, which suggests competition. ...
What we attend to at any moment determines what we learn at that moment, and this also depends on our past learning. This focused conceptual paper concentrates on a single well-documented attention mechanism – highlighting. This phenomenon – well studied in non-linguistic but not in linguistic contexts – should be highly relevant to language learning because it is a process that (1) specifically protects past learning from being disrupted by new (and potentially spurious) associations in the learning environment, and (2) strongly constrains new learning to new information. Within the language learning context, highlighting may disambiguate ambiguous references and may be related to processes of lexical competition that are known to be critical to on-line sentence comprehension. The main sections of the paper will address (1) the highlighting phenomenon in the literature; (2) its relevancy to language learning; (3) the highlighting effect in children; (4) developmental studies concerning the effect in different contexts; and (5) a developmental mechanism for highlighting in language learning.
... En este sentido, uno de los retos de la investigación del desarrollo del lenguaje sigue siendo identificar los distintos factores y mecanismos relacionados con el aprendizaje de nuevas palabras y por otra parte, encontrar un marco explicativo común (Golinkoff & Hirsh-Pasek, 2006;Waxman & Lidz, 2006;McMurray Horst & Samuelson, 2012;Sloutsky, et al., 2017). ...
En diversas investigaciones se ha observado que los infantes muestran un sesgo hacia la forma al generalizar palabras a nuevos objetos de una categoría. Sin embargo, en estudios con infantes aprendices del idioma español no se ha observado una preferencia en tareas en las que se contrastan objetos similares en la forma, la textura y el color. El objetivo de la presente investigación fue comparar la habilidad de dos grupos de infantes hispanohablantes de 24 meses de edad para formar nuevas categorías a partir de la forma y color como características definitorias. Se empleó el Paradigma intermodal de Atención Preferencial. Los resultados mostraron que los infantes formaron categorías a partir de la forma, pero no del color. Aunque en estudios anteriores no se ha observado un sesgo, si se induce la formación de categorías, los infantes de lengua hispana muestran una preferencia por la forma como característica definitoria cuando se contrasta con el color, se discute en torno a la relación entre esta habilidad y el sesgo hacia la forma observado en otros estudios.
... From wordless picture books enjoyed by preschool-aged emergent readers in " point and say " 193 www.jiarm.com learning (Jalongo, Dragich, Conrad and Zhang, 2002: 168), to travel brochures, advertisements and signboards, visual embellishment enables children with language proficiency weaknesses to make sense and understand writers " point of views but only after, as some social pragmatists theorise – recognising the salience of their own stance (Golinkoff and Hirsh-Pasek, 2006). As pictorial " linguists " , illustrators can contribute towards developmental objectives of society by applying their ability to transliterate, i.e. decode and encode visual messages and symbols (Segun, 1988:1). ...
As the focus on developing and enhancing children " s learning increases, a notable growth trend has been seen in the field of commercially-published children illustrated books (CIB). This paper presents key insights on the improvement of child literacy with the aid of illustrated books designed for the children market. An overview of classical children literary publications is provided, with perspectives drawn on established research and theories on visual thinking as a form of spatial intelligence, and its role in literacy development such as reading skills and knowledge construction. The aims and functions of visual-based thinking in children literature are discussed and explored, and its use as a means to augment school-based pedagogy will be considered. As this form of interactive learning medium gains acceptance, issues affecting the publication of CIB including quality, stimulating graphics and its value in education, will be further explored. With quality CIB gradually being sought after by a discerning market, this paper argues for greater recognition and appreciation of the credible efforts by stakeholders such as publishers, agents, illustrators and writers. The potential of collaborative CIB projects is also examined, and case studies will be provided to demonstrate why CIB collaborations are an effective way to raise industry talent, improve creativity of publications and produce new intertextual and cultural texts, resulting in high-calibre, sophisticated visual communication ideas and themes emerging in the market. The paper presents case examples of publications while discussing the collaborative processes by illustrators and writers in jointly conveying themes through visual communication. This paper concludes with strategies to reach an increasingly discerning market, and how intertextual new media applications can be utilised to steer development of this field.
... After aspects of verb learning having come to the fore, Gentner & Boroditsky (2001) and Snedeker & Gleitman (2004) proposed that the noun-verb distinction is not a distinction between the noun or verb category but between concrete concepts and abstract concepts. For example, nouns such as shoe, car and verbs such as kiss, eat can be viewed easier than nouns such as passenger and verbs such as believe, imagine (Hirsh-Pasek & Golinkoff, 2006). This assumption also argues that visible actions and concrete objects are ought to be acquired first. ...
The primary accounts for early lexical differences can be broken down into two distinct theoretical positions that either defend early noun acquisition or provide evidence that challenges this account. This work is trying to bring a computational perspective to the problem of early lexical acquisition of words. It is a preliminary investigation to see if the underlying mechanism relates to computational complexity by which short, frequent and unambiguous words are supposed to be acquired first; and long, ambiguous or infrequent words (including nouns) are predicted not to be acquired early. Our database consists a longitudinal data of three Turkish children between 8 months and 36 months. We conducted three analyses to test this; (1) in frequency analysis, we compared the type token ratios and the number of types and tokens of nouns and verbs in both child directed speech and child speech; (2) in ambiguity analysis, we examined the role of social and attentional cues on word learning; and (3) in phonological analysis, we measured the effect of word length on learning of words. Results revealed that most frequent words did not prove any noun predominance; in place of this, the usage rates of verbs was close to nouns and sometimes much more than that. Furthermore, caretakers did not have any bias to nouns or object names on the contrary there was a preference to verbs at some parts. The high rate of verbs in child speech also challenged the noun-first view. Ambiguity analysis showed that social and attentional cues in the natural language’s context were important factors for word learning. Therefore, disambiguated words in the context were the most frequent words in child speech. Phonological complexity analysis indicated that word length affected the infant’s ability of word learning. Thus, short words were more advantageous when compared to long words.
... The authors found that 9-to 15-month-old infants did not just prefer looking at objects that were presented in a synchronous word-object condition; in this condition, they also demonstrated a better comprehension of the word. Whereas the synchrony as a form of "perceptual structure" (Zukow-Goldring 1996: 195) seems to be important for young children up to the age of 15 months, between 15 and 19 months, children demonstrate the use of other social (rather than perceptual) cues to develop the meaning of a referent (Gogate et al. 2000;Golinkoff & Hirsh-Pasek 2006), and the role of temporal synchrony fades (Gogate et al. 2000). ...
Research findings indicate that synchrony between events in two different modalities is a key concept in early social learning. Our pilot study with 14 mother–child dyads is the first to support the idea that synchrony between action and language as a form of responsive behaviour in mothers relates to later language acquisition in their children. We conducted a fine-grained coding of multimodal behaviour within the dyad during an everyday diapering activity when the children were three and six months old. When the children attained 24 months, their mothers completed language surveys; this data was then related to the dyadic measures in early interaction. We propose a ‘switching-roles’ model according to which it is important for three-month-olds to be exposed to multimodal input for a great deal of time, whereas for six-month-old infants, the mother should respond to the infant’s attention and provide multimodal input when her child is gazing at her.
Music has played a role as the media in modern society. It is used not only to be listened to accompany in doing activities but also as the media to inform people about what is happening around them. This study aims to investigate the most frequent occurrence of mood system and adjunct of each lyric and describe the modality realized in the lyric of Energy of Asia’s album of the 2018 Asian Games, to find the transitivity processes, and to find the textual meaning (theme) of the song lyrics. In this descriptive qualitative research, three song lyrics from the "Energy of Asia" music album released in 2018 were selected, including nonpolitical Asian dance, unbeatable, and dance tonight. The analysis of the data involved some activities, including listening to the songs, finding the printed lyrics of the songs, analyzing the clauses based on the mood residue elements, describing the most frequent used-mood types, seeing the modality finite and mood adjunct, finding the transitivity process, and the textual meaning occurred on the song lyrics and making a conclusion. This paper attempts to reveal how the perspective of Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) is employed to analyze song lyrics. The result of this study showed that the message in the lyrics is mostly about the pride of being Indonesian people in celebrating the Asian Games and motivating the players to be the winner in this event.
This paper revisits quantifier-induced intervention effects in a Chinese alternative question type, the A-not-A question. I present new data, which show that the ability for quantifiers to induce intervention hinges upon their monotonicity and their ability to be interpreted as topics. I then develop a semantic account that correlates topicality with monotone properties. Furthermore, I propose that the A-not-A question is an idiosyncratic yes-no question that expresses a yes-no function over propositions but simultaneously requires the yes-no function to take a VP scope. Combining the semantic idiosyncrasies of the A-not-A question with the theory of topicality, I conclude that my account explains a wide range of intervention phenomena in terms of interpretation failure.
Que connaît le bébé francophone de son biberon ? Quelles informations attache-t-il aux représentations de ses mots familiers ou nouvellement acquis dans son lexique débutant ? En reconnaît-il les consonnes et les voyelles, et favorise-t-il leur position ? Se montre-t-il subtil dans cette identification, et presque aussi rapide que l'adulte ? L'ensemble de ces questionnements alimentent ce travail examinant la nature, le degré de détail, la mise en place, ou encore la vitesse d'accès des représentations phonologiques précoces en français. À des fins d'exploration plus systématique, cette recherche s'insère dans un cadre presque qualifiable de « contexte sous contrôle ». Sans prétendre évidemment maîtriser chaque facteur ä potentiel d'influence, elle contribue cependant à grandement clarifier le poids respectif de plusieurs variables déterminantes, comme la complexité de la tâche, la familiarité du stimulus, l'âge, la langue, la procédure facilitatrice, ou la mesure employée. Au travers de cinq études, elle présente les résultats d'enfants âgés de 14 à 22 mois. En examinant les mots familiers au moyen du paradigme de regard préférentiel intermodal, les trois premières recherches ont révélé que dès 14 mois les bébés francophones possèdent des représentations détaillées des mots connus, avec d'une part une attention particulière sur la dernière syllabe de ceux-ci, et d'autre part un robuste biais en faveur de leurs consonnes, leur permettant même de subtilement détecter des modifications graduelles de ces dernières lorsqu'on leur facilite l'accès aux mots. Cette spécificité et ce biais ne s'arrêtent pas lä, ils apparaissent rapidement dans l'acquisition de nouveaux mots ä 18 mois comme l'a démontré la quatrième étude usant du même paradigme après familiarisation. Enfin, la dernière investigua ces compétences à 14 mois et ä l'âge adulte au moyen cette fois de l'enregistrement des potentiels évoqués. Ses résultats indiquèrent une détection précoce de modifications subtiles des mots familiers attendus, ainsi qu'une asymétrie dans les processus phonologiques dépendante de la direction du changement opéré (ici voisement ou dévoisement), partagée par les enfants et les adultes. Les données de cette thèse sont discutées par chapitre respectif, avant d'être intégrées dans un chapitre final de synthèse et de remise en contexte plus globale suggérant le rôle manifeste de ce dernier dans le développement et l'expression des aptitudes phonologiques chez le tout jeune enfant.
Mots-clés : spécificité phonologique, acquisition lexicale, biais consonantique, contexte, regard préférentiel intermodal, potentiels évoqués
What does the French-learning baby know about his biberon? What kind of information does he store about his familiar or brand new words in his emerging lexicon? Does he recognise their consonants and their vowels, and does he favour their position within the word? Does he subtly identify them, and process them quite as fast as adults do? This dissertation addresses these questions by examining the nature, the accuracy, the development, or the processing speed of early phonological representations in French. In order to explore these issues with a greater systematic validity, this work is integrated into a more global framework attempting what we could qualify as some kind of “context control”. Without pretending to handle all potential influent factors, it contributes nevertheless to clarify the respective weight of several important variables, such as the complexity of the task, the stimulus familiarity, the age, the language, the facilitating procedure, or the measurement used. Through five studies, it presents data from infants aged 14 to 22 months. The first three concerned familiar words and used the intermodal preferential looking paradigm. They showed that as early as 14-month-olds, French-learning babies possess detailed representations of their known words, and privilege their last syllable. Moreover they display a strong bias in favor of consonants, and when engaged in a facilitating context-based task, detect with even more subtlety some gradual consonantal changes. The fourth study confirmed the fast emergence of this bias when acquiring new words. After only a short familiarization phase, 18-month-olds demonstrate fine-grained phonological representations of their newly learned forms only in regards to their consonants. Finally, the last study investigated these abilities with 14-month-old infants and adults by means of event-related potentials recordings. The results showed an early detection of subtle changes from expected familiar words, as well as an asymmetry in phonological processing depending on the direction of the change (voicing or devoicing) that is shared by infants and adults. Each data are discussed in their respective chapter, before being combined into a final chapter which summarizes and brings into perspective the prominent-appearing role of the context in phonological developing skills.
Key-words: phonological specificity, lexical acquisition, consonantal bias, context, intermodal preferential looking, event-related potentials
The number of children growing up in dual language environments is increasing in the United States. Despite the apparent benefits of speaking two languages, children learning English as a second language (ESL) often face struggles, as they may experience poverty and impoverished language input at home. Early exposure to a rich language environment is crucial for ESL children’s academic success. This article explores how six evidence-based principles of language learning can be used to provide support for ESL children.
For the most part, researchers in cognitive development investigate the emergence of cognitive abilities from birth until about ten or twelve years old, and researchers in cognitive aging confine their inquiries to adults beyond the age of about sixty years. In both cases, although more so in cognitive aging, comparisons are also made with the performance of high-functioning young adults, usually university undergraduates, from whom deviations in performance are measured. The related notions of plasticity, adaptation, and compensation are central to understanding lifespan changes in cognitive processing. The pattern of development and decline of cognitive abilities depends on the observation perspective one takes and the size of the lens through which one peers. These differences are illustrated by describing the evidence from three perspectives that progressively narrow the lens and sharpen the focus: context and performance, differentiation-dedifferentiation, and representation and control. In each case, this chapter considers whether there is evidence for developmental growth and decline; and if so, whether the rise and fall are symmetrical and whether the patterns of change can be traced to the same underlying mechanisms. © 2006 by Ellen Bialystok, Fergus I.M. Craik. All rights reserved.
Children tend to choose an unfamiliar object rather than a familiar one when asked to find the referent of a novel name. This response has been taken as evidence for the operation of certain lexical constraints in children's inferences of word meanings. The present studies test an alternative-pragmatic-explanation of this phenomenon among 3-year-olds. In Study 1 children responded to a request for the referent of a novel label in the same way that they responded to a request for the referent of a novel fact. Study 2 intimated that children assume that labels are common knowledge among members of the same language community. Study 3 demonstrated that shared knowledge between a speaker and listener plays a decisive role in how children interpret a speaker's request. The findings suggest that 3-year-olds' avoidance of lexical overlap is not unique to naming and may derive from children's sensitivity to speakers' communicative intentions.
Four word learning studies with 24-mo-old children are reported. In Studies 1 and 2, an adult used a novel word to announce her intention to perform an action or to find an object. It was found that a knowledge of what action or object was impending, established through scripted events before the word's introduction, was not necessary for children to learn the words. Studies 3 and 4 focused on what word learning cues children might be using in these contexts. In Study 3, it was found that children learned a novel verb for an intentional and not an accidental action. In Study 4, it was found that children learned a novel noun for an object the adult was searching for, not ones she had rejected while searching. Because none of the best-known constraints on lexical acquisition could have helped them in these contexts, it was concluded that children were relying on social pragmatic cues to learn the new words. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
In 2 experiments, adults and children were tested in an object-selection task that examined whether Ss would (1) map a novel word onto a previously unnamed object and (2) extend the newly learned word to another exemplar. Exp 3 was a control study. Ss overwhelmingly selected the novel object as the referent for the novel term, even though the new label was never explicitly linked to the novel object. Ss also extended the new term and allowed it to preempt yet another novel label from applying to the just-named object. The existence of several lexical principles and the power of indirect word learning is supported. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Examined the use of elderspeak, a speech register targeted at older listeners. 32 18–24 yr olds and 32 64–84 yr olds participated in this study. A simulation paradigm was used: The participants were asked to provide a set of instructions for navigating a route drawn on a map and they were given photographs and short biographical descriptions of listeners who were described either as healthy, active adults living independently or as older adults who were experiencing cognitive problems including memory lapses, disorientation, and failing to recognize family members. The fluency, prosody, grammatical complexity, semantic content, and discourse style of the instructions were compared. The participants were also asked to rate the appropriateness of various speech accommodations, such as using long sentences, exaggerated intonation, and repetition, for the listeners. Results indicated that both young and older Ss rated the speech accommodations as appropriate for use with cognitively impaired older adults. The young Ss actually used such speech accommodations in response to the referential communication task whereas the older Ss adopted a more limited range of speech accommodations for the impaired listeners. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA )
Universally, object names make up the largest proportion of any word type found in children's early lexicons. Here we present and critically evaluate a set of six lexical principles (some previously proposed and some new) for making object label learning a manageable task. Overall, the principles have the effect of reducing the amount of information that language-learning children must consider for what a new word might mean. These principles are constructed by children in a two-tiered developmental sequence, as a function of their sensitivity to linguistic input, contextual information, and social-interactional cues. Thus, the process of lexical acquisition changes as a result of the particular principles a given child has at his or her disposal. For children who have only the principles of the first tier (reference, extendibility, and object scope), word learning has a deliberate and laborious look. The principles of the second tier (categorical scope, novel name-nameless category' or N3C, and conventionality) enable the child to acquire many new labels rapidly. The present unified account is argued to have a number of advantages over treating such principles separately and non-developmentally. Further, the explicit recognition that the acquisition and operation of these principles is influenced by the child's interpretation of both linguistic and non-linguistic input is seen as an advance.
Spatial competence is a central aspect of human adaptation. To understand human cognitive functioning, we must understand how people code the locations of things, how they navigate in the world, and how they represent and mentally manipulate spatial information. Until recently three approaches have dominated thinking about spatial development. Followers of Piaget claim that infants are born without knowledge of space or a conception of permanent objects that occupy space. They develop such knowledge through experience and manipulation of their environment. Nativists suggest that the essential aspects of spatial understanding are innate and that biological maturation of specific brain areas can account for whatever aspects of spatial development are not accounted for at birth. The Vygotskan approach emphasizes the cultural transmission of spatial skills.
Nora Newcombe and Janellen Huttenlocher argue for an interactionist approach to spatial development that incorporates and integrates essential insights of the classic three approaches. They show how biological preparedness interacts with the spatial environment that infants encounter after birth to create spatial development and mature spatial competence. Topics covered include spatial coding during infancy and childhood; the early origins of coding distance in continuous space, of coding location with respect to distal external landmarks, and of hierarchical combination of information; the mental processes that operate on stored spatial information; spatial information as encoded in models and maps; and spatial information as encoded in language. In conclusion, the authors discuss their account of spatial development in relation to various approaches to cognitive development in other domains, including quantitative development, theory of mind, and language acquisition.
Bradford Books imprint
Cambridge Core - Developmental Psychology - First Language Acquisition - by Eve V. Clark
This chapter discusses word learning in the context of the whole child. It states that Lois Bloom stresses how word learning forms a part of language development and how language emerges out of a nexus of other developments in emotion, cognition, and social connectedness. It adds that Bloom presents her views as an antidote to the MIT perspective, which highlights a language acquisition device instead of a real child. It discusses that Bloom consistently argues that language development must not be studied in isolation as the acquisition of a formal system.
How do children learn that the word "dog" refers not to all four-legged animals, and not just to Ralph, but to all members of a particular species? How do they learn the meanings of verbs like "think," adjectives like "good," and words for abstract entities such as "mortgage" and "story"? The acquisition of word meaning is one of the fundamental issues in the study of mind.
According to Paul Bloom, children learn words through sophisticated cognitive abilities that exist for other purposes. These include the ability to infer others' intentions, the ability to acquire concepts, an appreciation of syntactic structure, and certain general learning and memory abilities. Although other researchers have associated word learning with some of these capacities, Bloom is the first to show how a complete explanation requires all of them. The acquisition of even simple nouns requires rich conceptual, social, and linguistic capacities interacting in complex ways.
This book requires no background in psychology or linguistics and is written in a clear, engaging style. Topics include the effects of language on spatial reasoning, the origin of essentialist beliefs, and the young child's understanding of representational art. The book should appeal to general readers interested in language and cognition as well as to researchers in the field.
Bradford Books imprint
In this chapter, we undertake to bring together and to integrate significant changes in the ecological model of human development that have been introduced since the most recent integrative effort, which was published in the preceding edition of this Handbook, now well over a decade ago (Bronfenbrenner & Crouter, 1983). Two considerations dictate the need for a new integration. First, the main focus of that chapter was on the empirical and theoretical roots of a model already in use that centered on the role of the environment in shaping development. By contrast, the present chapter is oriented toward the future, and data from the future are not yet available. Second, and we hope of greater consequence, the present model introduces major theoretical innovations both in form and content. The purpose of the present chapter, however, is better served by presenting the model in its current, albeit still-evolving form, now called the bioecological model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Examined whether early lexical acquisition depends on temporal contiguity between word and referent. In 2 studies (noun and verb learning) involving 48 2 yr olds, nonverbal scripts of playing with novel objects/actions in particular ways were established. Next, Ss heard an experimenter announce her intention to either find an object or perform an action. In the referent condition Ss then saw the intended referent (object or action) immediately after hearing the language model. Ss in the absent referent condition experienced the same nonverbal scripts and language models, but never saw the referent after hearing the language model. Comparisons with 2 control conditions indicated that Ss were able to learn words for a novel object and a novel action in both the referent and absent referent conditions and that learning was equivalent in these 2 conditions. Thus, Ss did not need a perceptual pairing of word and object to learn a new word. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Toddlers' acquisition of the Novel Name–Nameless Category (N3C) principle was examined to investigate the developmental lexical principles framework and the applicability of the specificity hypothesis to relations involving lexical principles. In Study 1, we assessed the ability of 32 children between the ages of 16 and 20 months to use the N3C principle (operationally defined as the ability to fast map). As predicted, only some of the children could fast map. This finding provided evidence for a crucial tenet of the developmental lexical principles framewor: Some lexical principles are not available at the start of language acquisition. Children who had acquired the N3C principle also had significantly larger vocabularies and were significantly more likely to demonstrate 2-category exhaustive sorting abilities than children who had not acquired the principle. The 2 groups of children did not differ in either age or object permanence abilities. The 16 children who could not fast map were followed longitudinally until they attained a vocabulary spurt; at that time, their ability to fast map was retested (Study 2). Results provided a longitudinal replication of the findings of Study 1. Implications of these findings for both the developmental lexical principles framework and the specificity hypothesis are discussed.
Two general types of accounts have been offered to explain the smartness of young children's word learning. One account postulates that children enter the word-learning task with specific knowledge about how words link to categories. The second account puts the source of children's smart word learning in knowledge about the pragmatics of communication and social interactions. The present experiment tested a third idea: that children's seemingly smart word learning derives from general, indeed mundane, cognitive processes. Forty-eight children from 18 to 28 months of age participated in a task designed to test our alternative explanation as applied to Akhtar, Carpenter, and Tomasello's (1996) finding that children use knowledge of the communicative intents of others to interpret a novel noun. Specifically, we suggest that children's attention to the proper referent was guided by the general effects of a contextual shift on memory and attention. The procedure in the present study was identical to that of Akhtar et al. except that we differentiated the target through a nonsocial context shift. Findings similar to that of Akhtar et al. emerged under the present procedures. These results strongly suggest that general attentional and memorial processes, and not knowledge about the communicative intents of others, may guide young children's word learning. These findings provide one demonstration of how smart word learning may emerge from more ordinary (and dumb) cognitive processes.
A major problem in language learning is to figure out the meaning of a word given the enormous number of possible meanings for any particular word. This problem is exacerbated for children because they often find thematic relations between objects to be more salient than the objects' taxonomic category. Yet most single nouns refer to object categories and not to thematic relations. How do children learn words referring to categories when they find thematic relations so salient? We propose that children limit the possible meanings of nouns to refer mainly to categorical relations. This hypothesis was tested in four studies. In each study, preschool children saw a series of target objects (e.g., dog), each followed by a thematic associate (e.g., bone) and a taxonomic associate (e.g., cat). When children were told to choose another object that was similar to the target (“See this? Find another one.”), they as usual often selected the thematic associate. In contrast, when the instructions included an unknown word for the target (“See this fep? Find another fep.”), children now preferred the taxonomic associate. This finding held up for 2- and 3-year-olds at the basic level of categorization, for 4- and 5-year-olds at the superordinate level of categorization, and 4- and 5-year-olds who were taught new taxonomic and new thematic relations for unfamiliar objects. In each case, children constrained the meaning of new nouns to refer mainly to categorical relations. By limiting the hypotheses that children need to consider, this constraint tremendously simplifies the problem of language learning.
Working memory capacity determines how well individuals can use context to both comprehend and produce words. When required to comprehend an unfamiliar word such as spaneria, individuals with small working memories were less able to construct the meaning “scarcity of men” from cues provided by the verbal context. Working momory was assessed by the reading span test that taxes the processing and storage functions of working memory during sentence comprehension. The theory proposes that individuals with small spans devote so many resources to reading processes that they have less residual capacity for retaining the relevant contextual cues in working memory. When required to access their lexical knowledge and produce a context-appropriate replacement for a familiar word such as conflict, individuals with smaller working memories were much slower. However, working memory had to be assessed by the speaking span test that taxes the processing and storage functions of working memory during sentence production, suggesting that the functional capacity of working memory varies with the processing characteristics of the task being performed.
Recent studies that propose constraints on word learning are reviewed. Theoretical implications of constraints hypotheses are examined in the light of data from other prior and current studies of children's word learning at different developmental points. It is concluded that there is no evidence for strong internal constraints on the acquisition of words by young children of the kind proposed. process are suggested as more adequate explanations, based on the full research record.
Research on human infants has begun to shed light on early-developing processes for segmenting perceptual arrays Into objects. Infants appear to perceive objects by analyzing three-dimensional surface arrangements and motions. Their perception does not accord with a general tendency to maximize flgural goodness or to attend to nonaccidental geometric relations in visual arrays. Object perception does accord with principles governing the motions of material bodies: Infants divide perceptual arrays into units that move as connected wholes, that move separately from one another, that tend to maintain their size and shape over motion, and that tend to act upon each other only on contact. These findings suggest that a general representation of object unity and boundaries is interposed between representations of surfaces and representations of objects of familiar kinds. The processes that construct this representation may be related to processes of physical reasoning.
What features of brain processing and neural development support linguistic development in young children? To what extent is the profile and timing of linguistic development in young children determined by a pre-ordained genetic programme? Does the environment play a crucial role in determining the patterns of change observed in children growing up? Recent experimental, neuroimaging and computational studies of developmental change in children promise to contribute to a deeper understanding of how the brain becomes wired up for language. In this review, the muttidisciplinary perspectives of cognitive neuroscience, experimental psycholinguistics and neural network modelling are brought to bear on four distinct areas in the study of language acquisition: early speech perception, word recognition, word learning and the acquisition of grammatical inflections. It is suggested that each area demonstrates how linguistic development can be driven by the interaction of general learning mechanisms, highly sensitive to particular statistical regularities in the input, with a richly structured environment which provides the necessary ingredients for the emergence of linguistic representations that support mature language processing. Similar epigenetic principles, guiding the emergence of linguistic structure, apply to all these domains, offering insights into phenomena ranging from the precocity of young infant's sensitivity to speech contrasts to the complexities of the problem facing the young child learning the arabic plural.
This chapter describes research findings from the social-pragmatic approach. It discusses that Nameera Akhtar and Michael Tomasello's dramatic findings demonstrate how word learning occurs in some fairly complex, nonostensive situations amid the flow of social interaction. It states that current models of word learning, as suggested by Akhtar and Tomasello, undervalue the role of social interaction. It explains that because language has social goals as its ultimate purpose, social interactions are the outcome of word learning.
Abstract. Thesis (Ph. D.)--Temple University, 2002. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 109-121).
The present study tested the predictive validity at 3 years of age of a screening device for the early identification of later cognitive delay. The screening device, administered between 3 and 7 months of age, is based on the infant's differential fixation "to novel" over previously shown pictures. The sample was composed of 62 infants suspected to be at risk for later mental retardation. The prevalence of delayed cognitive development (IQ less than or equal to 70) at 3 years of age was 13%. Novelty preference scores correctly identified six of eight (75%) of the delayed children. The test identified 49 of 54 (91%) of the normal children. Validity for predicting cognitive delay was 55%. Validity for the prediction of normality was 96%. The screening device proved to be equally sensitive, specific, and valid when the sample was divided into infants born at term or born preterm. The results of the present study and of a previous study indicate that detection of cognitive delay based on early novelty preferences is as easily accomplished for infants who will later be mildly delayed (IQ scores 60 to 70) as it is for those who will later be severely delayed (IQ scores less than or equal to 50). Moreover, such results are in contrast to those obtained with conventional tests tapping sensorimotor development.
The tendency of infants to distribute attention selectively to novel and familiar visual stimuli was employed to study infants' recognition memory for a series of visual targets. Infants 5 months of age demonstrated an unequal distribution of visual fixation to novel and familiar stimuli, with more attention to the novel, on both immediate and delayed stimulus-recognition tests for each of three novelty problems administered during a single testing session. The degree of differential fixation to novel targets exhibited no reliable decline from immediate to delayed testing and was not significantly altered by the serial order which the problem occupied during immediate recognition testing.
Toddlers' acquisition of the Novel Name-Nameless Category (N3C) principle was examined to investigate the developmental lexical principles framework and the applicability of the specificity hypothesis to relations involving lexical principles. In Study 1, we assessed the ability of 32 children between the ages of 16 and 20 months to use the N3C principle (operationally defined as the ability to fast map). As predicted, only some of the children could fast map. This finding provided evidence for a crucial tenet of the developmental lexical principles framework: Some lexical principles are not available at the start of language acquisition. Children who had acquired the N3C principle also had significantly larger vocabularies and were significantly more likely to demonstrate 2-category exhaustive sorting abilities than children who had not acquired the principle. The 2 groups of children did not differ in either age or object permanence abilities. The 16 children who could not fast map were followed longitudinally until they attained a vocabulary spurt; at that time, their ability to fast map was retested (Study 2). Results provided a longitudinal replication of the findings of Study 1. Implications of these findings for both the developmental lexical principles framework and the specificity hypothesis are discussed.
This study investigated whether spouses would adopt a specialized speech register when communicating with adults with probable
Alzheimer's disease. A picture description task was used so that the effectiveness of such speech accommodations could be
assessed. The AD subjects did not vary the syntactic complexity, semantic complexity, or content of their descriptions when
they were describing individual pictures versus directing their spouse to choose one of four pictures in a barrier task. The
spouses' picture descriptions were more complex syntactically and semantically than the AD subjects' and included more highly
salient elements. The spouses also varied the complexity and content of their descriptions, reducing syntactic and semantic
complexity and increasing references to highly salient picture elements during the barrier task. These accommodations appeared
to facilitate the AD subjects' performance on the picture description task.
Previous studies have demonstrated that children aged 2;0 can learn new words in a variety of non-ostensive contexts. The current two studies were aimed at seeing if this was also true of children just beginning to learn words at 1;6. In the first study an adult interacted with 48 children. She used a nonce word to announce her intention to find an object ('Let's find the gazzer'), picked up and rejected an object with obvious disappointment, and then gleefully found the target object (using no language). Children learned the new word as well in this condition as in a condition in which the adult found the object immediately. In the second study the adult first played several rounds of a finding game with each of 60 children, in which it was first established that one of several novel objects was always in a very distinctive hiding place (a toy barn). The adult then used a nonce word to announce her intention to find an object ('Let's find the toma') and then proceeded to the barn. In the key condition the barn was mysteriously 'locked'; the child thus never saw the target object after the nonce word was introduced. Children learned the new word as well in this condition as in a condition in which the adult found the object immediately. The results of these two studies suggest that from very early in language acquisition children learn words not through passive, associative processes, but rather through active attempts to understand adult behaviour in a variety of action and discourse contexts.
Two general types of accounts have been offered to explain the smartness of young children's word learning. One account postulates that children enter the word-learning task with specific knowledge about how words link to categories. The second account puts the source of children's smart word learning in knowledge about the pragmatics of communication and social interactions. The present experiment tested a third idea: that children's seemingly smart word learning derives from general, indeed mundane, cognitive processes. Forty-eight children from 18 to 28 months of age participated in a task designed to test our alternative explanation as applied to Akhtar, Carpenter, and Tomasello's (1996) finding that children use knowledge of the communicative intents of others to interpret a novel noun. Specifically, we suggest that children's attention to the proper referent was guided by the general effects of a contextual shift on memory and attention. The procedure in the present study was identical to that of Akhtar et al. except that we differentiated the target through a nonsocial context shift. Findings similar to that of Akhtar et al. emerged under the present procedures. These results strongly suggest that general attentional and memorial processes, and not knowledge about the communicative intents of others, may guide young children's word learning. These findings provide one demonstration of how smart word learning may emerge from more ordinary (and dumb) cognitive processes.