Sandra Waxman | Northwestern University (original) (raw)
Papers by Sandra Waxman
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research
Purpose: This study examines online speech processing in typically developing and late-talking 2-... more 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 an...
Child Development
Labeling promotes infants' object categorization even when labels are rare. By 2 years, i... more Labeling promotes infants' object categorization even when labels are rare. By 2 years, infants engage in “semi‐supervised learning” (SSL), integrating labeled and unlabeled exemplars to learn categories. However, everyday learning contexts pose substantial challenges for infants' SSL. Here, two studies (n = 74, 51% female, 62% non‐Hispanic White, 18% multiracial, 8% Asian, 6% Black, M age = 27.3 months, collected 2018–2020) implemented a familiarization‐novelty preference paradigm assessing 2‐year‐olds' SSL when (i) exemplars from the target category are interspersed with other objects (Study 1, d = .67) and (ii) multiple categories are learned simultaneously (Study 2, d = .74). The findings indicate 2‐year‐olds' SSL is robust enough to support object categorization despite substantial challenges posed by everyday learning contexts.
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2017
After 18 months of age, infants’ lexical representations are sufficiently flexible to recognize a... more After 18 months of age, infants’ lexical representations are sufficiently flexible to recognize acoustically unfamiliar productions as variants of familiar words (Best et al., 2009; Mulak et al., 2013). For novel words, 24-month-olds still have trouble generalizing from native to non-native pronunciations, although exposure to the accent improves recognition (Schmale et al., 2011, 2012; White & Aslin, 2011). In the present study, we tested how quickly 24-month-olds could use exposure and familiar words to learn the meanings of novel words, on-line, when listening to Spanish-accented speech. In the exposure phase, twenty-four-month-olds heard a novel word embedded in a dialogue that either contained linguistic cues to the referent’s animacy (The vep is eating) or was uninformative (The vep is right here). Infants then saw two pictures at test, one animate and one inanimate, and were asked to find the vep. Looking time to the two potential referents here was compared to performance wi...
Perspectives on Language and Thought
4. Convergences between semantic and conceptual organization in the preschool years SANDRA R. WAX... more 4. Convergences between semantic and conceptual organization in the preschool years SANDRA R. WAXMAN The gentleman who is discriminating about his wine... can consistently apply nouns to the different fluids of a class and he can apply adjectives to the differences between the ...
Developmental Psychology, 2013
By 14 months, infants have become exquisite observers of others&a... more By 14 months, infants have become exquisite observers of others' behavior and successful word learners. But do they coordinate their early observational and language capacities to gain insight into the intentions of others? Building upon Gergely, Bekkering, and Király's (2002) classic head-touch phenomenon, we consider the contribution of language to 14-month-old infants' imitation of an unconventional behavior (turning on a light with one's forehead, rather than hand). Providing a novel word ("I'm going to blick the light!") prompted infants to imitate; simply drawing attention to the action ("Look at this!"; "Look at what I'm doing!") did not. Thus, by 14 months, infants gain insight into the intentions of others by considering not only what we do but also what we say.
Human Development, 2007
It is with great pleasure that I enter the role of Editor of Human Development . It is an honor t... more It is with great pleasure that I enter the role of Editor of Human Development . It is an honor to be following Geoff Saxe, and his predecessors in that role. Human Development is a gem among journals in our field, and I hope to maintain the high standard set by Geoff and his Associate Editor, Melanie Killen. Unlike other major journals that are venues for empirical research reports, Human Development features contributions that are conceptual in nature. The emphasis of the journal is upon cutting issues of theory, reconsiderations of accepted paradigms and perspectives, and integrations of findings from different disciplines. Empirical observations and findings are reported for illustrative purposes, to raise theoretical issues, and to flesh out interesting and powerful ideas and constructs. The conceptual orientation of the journal is critical to a field of study that is inherently interdisciplinary, and in which basic questions of how to approach development and how to interpret evidence differ widely by theoretical, disciplinary, and methodological commitments. We are, for example, in the midst of a revolution in the biological sciences that will undoubtedly affect our views of developmental processes. During his tenure, Geoff has set a high standard working skillfully with authors, reviewers, his Advisory Board, and the staff at Karger. He and his predecessor, Barbara Rogoff, established a format for the journal that has allowed the conceptual nature of Human Development to flourish. I will continue with that basic format of a lead article, followed by commentaries, and reviews of important new books. I will also provide space each year for at least one special issue with conceptual articles around a cutting edge theme. Like Geoff and the prior Editors, I will have the good fortune of working with Karger Publishers. Karger has been a family-owned company since 1890. I have had the pleasure of meeting with Steven Karger, the current CEO, and look forward to the prospect of editing a journal operated by individuals committed to science and knowledge. Karger has been quick to embrace new technologies that provide even greater access to an expanding research community. I will continue to support these innovations throughout my term as Geoff Saxe has done during his tenure as Editor. One thing we will initiate is a new Web-based system for manuscript submissions and reviews. All new submissions will be made online.
Sociocultural Explorations of Science Education, 2023
Human language permits us to call to mind objects, events, and ideas that we cannot witness direc... more Human language permits us to call to mind objects, events, and ideas that we cannot witness directly, either because they are absent or because they have no physical form (e.g., people we have not met, concepts like ‘justice’). What enables language to transmit such knowledge? We propose that a referential link between words, referents, and mental representations of those referents is key. This link enables us to form, access, and modify mental representations even when the referents themselves are absent (‘absent reference’). In this review we consider the developmental and evolutionary origins of absent reference, integrating previously disparate literatures on absent reference in language and gesture in very young humans and gesture in non-human primates. We first evaluate when and how infants acquire absent reference during the process of language acquisition. With this as a foundation, we consider the evidence for absent reference in gesture in infants and in non-human primates...
Frontiers in Psychology, May 26, 2022
Human language permits us to call to mind objects, events, and ideas that we cannot witness direc... more Human language permits us to call to mind objects, events, and ideas that we cannot witness directly. This capacity requires that one links words not only to their referents, but to mental representations of those referents. Together with the recognition that words are used intentionally for communication, this link constitutes ‘verbal reference.’ Although the development of verbal reference is a pivotal achievement, questions concerning its origins remain. To address this gap, we investigate infants’ ability to establish a representation of an object that is hidden from view based on language input and to learn its name.
From the ambient auditory environment, infants identify which communicative signals are linked to... more From the ambient auditory environment, infants identify which communicative signals are linked to cognition. By 3 to 4 months of age, they have already begun to establish this link: listening to their native language and to non-human primate vocalizations supports infants' core cognitive capacities, including object categorization. This study aims to shed light on the specific acoustic properties in these vocalizations which enable their links to cognition. We constructed a series of supervised machine-learning models to classify those vocalizations that support cognition from those that do not, based on classes of acoustic features derived from a collection of human language and non-human vocalization samples. The models highlight a potential role for spectral envelope and rhythmic features from both human languages and non-human vocalizations. Results implicate a potential role of underlying perceptual mechanisms relevant to spectral envelope and rhythmic features in infants&#...
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research
Purpose: This study examines online speech processing in typically developing and late-talking 2-... more 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 an...
Child Development
Labeling promotes infants' object categorization even when labels are rare. By 2 years, i... more Labeling promotes infants' object categorization even when labels are rare. By 2 years, infants engage in “semi‐supervised learning” (SSL), integrating labeled and unlabeled exemplars to learn categories. However, everyday learning contexts pose substantial challenges for infants' SSL. Here, two studies (n = 74, 51% female, 62% non‐Hispanic White, 18% multiracial, 8% Asian, 6% Black, M age = 27.3 months, collected 2018–2020) implemented a familiarization‐novelty preference paradigm assessing 2‐year‐olds' SSL when (i) exemplars from the target category are interspersed with other objects (Study 1, d = .67) and (ii) multiple categories are learned simultaneously (Study 2, d = .74). The findings indicate 2‐year‐olds' SSL is robust enough to support object categorization despite substantial challenges posed by everyday learning contexts.
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2017
After 18 months of age, infants’ lexical representations are sufficiently flexible to recognize a... more After 18 months of age, infants’ lexical representations are sufficiently flexible to recognize acoustically unfamiliar productions as variants of familiar words (Best et al., 2009; Mulak et al., 2013). For novel words, 24-month-olds still have trouble generalizing from native to non-native pronunciations, although exposure to the accent improves recognition (Schmale et al., 2011, 2012; White & Aslin, 2011). In the present study, we tested how quickly 24-month-olds could use exposure and familiar words to learn the meanings of novel words, on-line, when listening to Spanish-accented speech. In the exposure phase, twenty-four-month-olds heard a novel word embedded in a dialogue that either contained linguistic cues to the referent’s animacy (The vep is eating) or was uninformative (The vep is right here). Infants then saw two pictures at test, one animate and one inanimate, and were asked to find the vep. Looking time to the two potential referents here was compared to performance wi...
Perspectives on Language and Thought
4. Convergences between semantic and conceptual organization in the preschool years SANDRA R. WAX... more 4. Convergences between semantic and conceptual organization in the preschool years SANDRA R. WAXMAN The gentleman who is discriminating about his wine... can consistently apply nouns to the different fluids of a class and he can apply adjectives to the differences between the ...
Developmental Psychology, 2013
By 14 months, infants have become exquisite observers of others&a... more By 14 months, infants have become exquisite observers of others' behavior and successful word learners. But do they coordinate their early observational and language capacities to gain insight into the intentions of others? Building upon Gergely, Bekkering, and Király's (2002) classic head-touch phenomenon, we consider the contribution of language to 14-month-old infants' imitation of an unconventional behavior (turning on a light with one's forehead, rather than hand). Providing a novel word ("I'm going to blick the light!") prompted infants to imitate; simply drawing attention to the action ("Look at this!"; "Look at what I'm doing!") did not. Thus, by 14 months, infants gain insight into the intentions of others by considering not only what we do but also what we say.
Human Development, 2007
It is with great pleasure that I enter the role of Editor of Human Development . It is an honor t... more It is with great pleasure that I enter the role of Editor of Human Development . It is an honor to be following Geoff Saxe, and his predecessors in that role. Human Development is a gem among journals in our field, and I hope to maintain the high standard set by Geoff and his Associate Editor, Melanie Killen. Unlike other major journals that are venues for empirical research reports, Human Development features contributions that are conceptual in nature. The emphasis of the journal is upon cutting issues of theory, reconsiderations of accepted paradigms and perspectives, and integrations of findings from different disciplines. Empirical observations and findings are reported for illustrative purposes, to raise theoretical issues, and to flesh out interesting and powerful ideas and constructs. The conceptual orientation of the journal is critical to a field of study that is inherently interdisciplinary, and in which basic questions of how to approach development and how to interpret evidence differ widely by theoretical, disciplinary, and methodological commitments. We are, for example, in the midst of a revolution in the biological sciences that will undoubtedly affect our views of developmental processes. During his tenure, Geoff has set a high standard working skillfully with authors, reviewers, his Advisory Board, and the staff at Karger. He and his predecessor, Barbara Rogoff, established a format for the journal that has allowed the conceptual nature of Human Development to flourish. I will continue with that basic format of a lead article, followed by commentaries, and reviews of important new books. I will also provide space each year for at least one special issue with conceptual articles around a cutting edge theme. Like Geoff and the prior Editors, I will have the good fortune of working with Karger Publishers. Karger has been a family-owned company since 1890. I have had the pleasure of meeting with Steven Karger, the current CEO, and look forward to the prospect of editing a journal operated by individuals committed to science and knowledge. Karger has been quick to embrace new technologies that provide even greater access to an expanding research community. I will continue to support these innovations throughout my term as Geoff Saxe has done during his tenure as Editor. One thing we will initiate is a new Web-based system for manuscript submissions and reviews. All new submissions will be made online.
Sociocultural Explorations of Science Education, 2023
Human language permits us to call to mind objects, events, and ideas that we cannot witness direc... more Human language permits us to call to mind objects, events, and ideas that we cannot witness directly, either because they are absent or because they have no physical form (e.g., people we have not met, concepts like ‘justice’). What enables language to transmit such knowledge? We propose that a referential link between words, referents, and mental representations of those referents is key. This link enables us to form, access, and modify mental representations even when the referents themselves are absent (‘absent reference’). In this review we consider the developmental and evolutionary origins of absent reference, integrating previously disparate literatures on absent reference in language and gesture in very young humans and gesture in non-human primates. We first evaluate when and how infants acquire absent reference during the process of language acquisition. With this as a foundation, we consider the evidence for absent reference in gesture in infants and in non-human primates...
Frontiers in Psychology, May 26, 2022
Human language permits us to call to mind objects, events, and ideas that we cannot witness direc... more Human language permits us to call to mind objects, events, and ideas that we cannot witness directly. This capacity requires that one links words not only to their referents, but to mental representations of those referents. Together with the recognition that words are used intentionally for communication, this link constitutes ‘verbal reference.’ Although the development of verbal reference is a pivotal achievement, questions concerning its origins remain. To address this gap, we investigate infants’ ability to establish a representation of an object that is hidden from view based on language input and to learn its name.
From the ambient auditory environment, infants identify which communicative signals are linked to... more From the ambient auditory environment, infants identify which communicative signals are linked to cognition. By 3 to 4 months of age, they have already begun to establish this link: listening to their native language and to non-human primate vocalizations supports infants' core cognitive capacities, including object categorization. This study aims to shed light on the specific acoustic properties in these vocalizations which enable their links to cognition. We constructed a series of supervised machine-learning models to classify those vocalizations that support cognition from those that do not, based on classes of acoustic features derived from a collection of human language and non-human vocalization samples. The models highlight a potential role for spectral envelope and rhythmic features from both human languages and non-human vocalizations. Results implicate a potential role of underlying perceptual mechanisms relevant to spectral envelope and rhythmic features in infants&#...