Intersensory origins of word comprehension: An ecological-dynamic systems view (original) (raw)
Related papers
Infants' Learning about Words and Sounds in Relation to Objects
Child Development, 1999
In acquiring language, babies learn not only that people can communicate about objects and events, but also that they typically use a particular kind of act as the communicative signal. The current studies asked whether 1-year-olds' learning of names during joint attention is guided by the expectation that names will be in the form of spoken words. In the first study, 13-month-olds were introduced to either a novel word or a novel sound-producing action (using a small noisemaker). Both the word and the sound were produced by a researcher as she showed the baby a new toy during a joint attention episode. The baby's memory for the link between the word or sound and the object was tested in a multiple choice procedure. Thirteen-month-olds learned both the word-object and sound-object correspondences, as evidenced by their choosing the target reliably in response to hearing the word or sound on test trials, but not on control trials when no word or sound was present. In the second study, 13-month-olds, but not 20-month-olds, learned a new sound-object correspondence. These results indicate that infants initially accept a broad range of signals in communicative contexts and narrow the range with development.
The Limits of Infants’ Early Word Learning
Language Learning and Development, 2019
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. Infants begin to solve the puzzle of language learning from a very young age. Even before the onset of speech, in the second half of the first year, the young language learner is equipped with crucial phonetic/phonological abilities, such as fine-tuning to language-specific phonological contrasts (Werker & Tees, 1984), the ability to segment words in fluent speech contexts (Jusczyk & Aslin, 1995) and sensitivity to the prosodic and phonotactic characteristics of their native language (Mattys & Jusczyk, 2001). These fundamental abilities allow infants to take on the challenge of learning word-object associations well before the onset of full-fledged productive language skills (Gershkoff
Developmental change in infants' use of cues to word meaning
… , Catholic University of …, 2003
Infants' rapid vocabulary acquisition suggests that they are equipped with a range of strategies for learning the meanings of new words from a very young age. This research investigates 15-and 18-month-olds' ability to use two different types of cues to discover the meanings of words in ambiguous situations. A series of studies use the intermodal preferential looking paradigm to explore whether, when two potential referents are available, infants will preferentially attach a new label to (a) a moving referent versus a stationary referent, (b) the referent towards which an adult gazes, (c) a moving referent towards which an adult also gazes, and (d) a gazed-upon versus a moving referent. Results suggest that by 15 months infants are highly sensitive to the gaze direction cue, even in the presence of a conflicting movement cue. Use of the movement cue is not robust, however, until infants reach 18 months of age.
Infants' Reliance on a Social Criterion for Establishing Word-Object Relations
Child Development, 1996
The language children hear presents them with a multitude of co-occurrences between words and things in the world, and they must repeatedly determine which among these manifold co-occurrences is relevant. Social factorssuch as cues regarding the speaker's referential intent-might serve as one guide to whether word-object covariation should be registered. In 2 studies, infants (15-20 months and 18-20 months in Studies 1 and 2, respectively) heard novel labels at a time when they were investigating a single novel object; in one case the label was uttered by a speaker seated within the infant's view and displaying concurrent attention to the novel toy (coupled condition), whereas in the other case the label emanated from a speaker seated out ofthe infant's view (decoupled condition). In both studies, subsequent comprehension questions indicated that infants of 18-20 months registered a stable link between label and object in the coupled condition, but not in the decoupled condition, despite the fact that covariation between label and object was equivalent in the 2 conditions. Thus, by 18-20 months children are inclined to establish a mapping between word and object only when a speaker displays signs of referring to that object.
Infant speech perception bootstraps word learning
Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2005
By their first birthday, infants can understand many spoken words. Research in cognitive development has long focused on the conceptual changes that accompany word learning, but learning new words also entails perceptual sophistication. Several developmental steps are required as infants learn to segment, identify and represent the phonetic forms of spoken words, and map those word forms to different concepts. We review recent research on how infants' perceptual systems unfold in the service of word learning, from initial sensitivity for speech to the learning of languagespecific sound patterns. Building on a recent theoretical framework and emerging new methodologies, we show how speech perception is crucial for word learning, and suggest that it bootstraps the development of a separate but parallel phonological system that links sound to meaning.
1998
This study investigated 7-month-old infants' ability to relate vowel sounds with objects when intersensory redundancy was present versus absent. Infants (N = 48) were habituated to two alternating video-films of vowel-object pairs in one of three conditions. In the moving-synchronous condition, where redundancy was present, the movement of one object was temporally coordinated with the spoken vowel Ial and that of the other with Ii!, simulating showing and naming the objects to the infant. In the still and in the movingasynchronous conditions, where redundancy was absent, infants saw static objects, and objects moving out of synchrony with the vowel sounds, respectively. The results indicated that infants detected a mismatch in the vowel-object pairs in the movingsynchronous condition but not in the still or the moving-asynchronous condition. These findings demonstrate that temporal synchrony between vocalizations and the motions of an object facilitates learning of arbitrary speech-object relations, an important precursor to the development of lexical comprehension in infancy.
How Infant Speech Perception Contributes to Language Acquisition
Language and Linguistics Compass, 2008
Perceiving the acoustic signal as a sequence of meaningful linguistic representations is a challenging task, which infants seem to accomplish effortlessly, despite the fact that they do not have a fully developed knowledge of language. The present article takes an integrative approach to infant speech perception, emphasizing how young learners' perception of speech helps them acquire abstract structural properties of language. We introduce what is known about infants' perception of language at birth. Then, we will discuss how perception develops during the first 2 years of life and describe some general perceptual mechanisms whose importance for speech perception and language acquisition has recently been established. To conclude, we discuss the implications of these empirical findings for language acquisition.
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 1998
This study investigated 7-month-old infants' ability to relate vowel sounds with objects when intersensory redundancy was present versus absent. Infants (N = 48) were habituated to two alternating video-films of vowel-object pairs in one of three conditions. In the moving-synchronous condition, where redundancy was present, the movement of one object was temporally coordinated with the spoken vowel Ial and that of the other with Ii!, simulating showing and naming the objects to the infant. In the still and in the movingasynchronous conditions, where redundancy was absent, infants saw static objects, and objects moving out of synchrony with the vowel sounds, respectively. The results indicated that infants detected a mismatch in the vowel-object pairs in the movingsynchronous condition but not in the still or the moving-asynchronous condition. These findings demonstrate that temporal synchrony between vocalizations and the motions of an object facilitates learning of arbitrary speech-object relations, an important precursor to the development of lexical comprehension in infancy.