How do infants and young children coordinate information in real time to arrive at sentence meaning from the words and structure of the sentence and from the nonlinguistic context? This volume introduces readers to an emerging field of research, experimental developmental psycholinguistics.
While most first language acquisition research to date has focused on the development of children’s linguistic competence, a number of research teams have also investigated the mechanisms children employ to process sentence-level and word-level information in real time, by applying experimental techniques familiar from the adult processing literature to children. This chapter presents an overview of different kinds of behavioral tasks for investigating both morphological and syntactic processing in children focusing on three techniques that we have explored in our own research on children’s on-line language processing: self-paced listening, cross-modal priming, and speeded production.
The present paper gives an overview of our recent research on the neurocognition of language acquisition. Our research aims to gain a more detailed understanding of the developmental stages of the language acquisition process and its underlying brain mechanisms. Here, we utilize the method of event-related brain potentials, which has revealed specific electrophysiological indices for various aspects of language processing in adults. These electrophysiological parameters can serve as templates to define the hallmarks of language acquisition. The research presented demonstrates that the method of event-related brain potentials is a powerful tool to investigate and monitor early stages of language acquisition and provides further insights into the neural correlates of language processing in infants and children.
This chapter describes and evaluates the use of eyetracking methods to study the development of spoken language production and comprehension. The emphasis will be on understanding the chain of inferences, or linking assumptions, researchers commonly make when going from measurements of eye position to conclusions about attention, reference and sentence parsing. It is argued that these assumptions are valid, though care is needed when disentangling developmental changes in visual attention from developmental changes in language processing abilities.
The “looking-while-listening” methodology uses real-time measures of the time course of young children’s gaze patterns in response to speech. This procedure is low in task demands and does not require automated eyetracking technology, similar to “preferential-looking” procedures. However, the looking-whilelistening methodology differs critically from preferential-looking procedures in the methods used for data reduction and analysis, yielding high-resolution measures of speech processing from moment to moment, rather than relying on summary measures of looking preference. Because children’s gaze patterns are time-locked to speech and coded frame-by-frame, each 5-min experiment response latencies can be coded with millisecond precision on multiple trials over multiple items, based on data from thousands of frames in each experiment. The meticulous procedures required in the collection, reduction, and multiple levels of analysis of such detailed data are demanding, but well worth the effort, revealing a dynamic and nuanced picture of young children’s developing skill in finding meaning in spoken language.
How do young children represent the structure of an utterance? Do they employ abstract syntactic categories? Or are their representations more concrete and lexically limited? Our recent work brings together the world-situated eye-gaze paradigm and syntactic priming to explore these questions. We begin by reviewing theories of syntactic development and describing previous studies of syntactic priming during children’s language production. Then we introduce our method for exploring priming during comprehension. Next we present a series of experiments on priming in adults, 4-year-olds and 3-year-olds. In each case the participants’ interpretation is influenced by the structure of prior utterances, even in the absence of lexical overlap. We conclude that young children (and adults) employ abstract syntactic representations during on-line sentence comprehension.
As the title suggests, this final chapter attempts to place the Workshop on On-Line Methods in Children’s Language Processing and the papers in this volume in a historical context. First, there is a brief review of the 40-year history of research in language acquisition, including the late arrival of on-line methodology. Then the chapter emphasizes the questions now being addressed in current on-line research. Finally, the conclusion suggests desiderata with respect to future progress in our understanding of the development of both linguistic competence and linguistic performance.
How do infants and young children coordinate information in real time to arrive at sentence meaning from the words and structure of the sentence and from the nonlinguistic context? This volume introduces readers to an emerging field of research, experimental developmental psycholinguistics.
While most first language acquisition research to date has focused on the development of children’s linguistic competence, a number of research teams have also investigated the mechanisms children employ to process sentence-level and word-level information in real time, by applying experimental techniques familiar from the adult processing literature to children. This chapter presents an overview of different kinds of behavioral tasks for investigating both morphological and syntactic processing in children focusing on three techniques that we have explored in our own research on children’s on-line language processing: self-paced listening, cross-modal priming, and speeded production.
The present paper gives an overview of our recent research on the neurocognition of language acquisition. Our research aims to gain a more detailed understanding of the developmental stages of the language acquisition process and its underlying brain mechanisms. Here, we utilize the method of event-related brain potentials, which has revealed specific electrophysiological indices for various aspects of language processing in adults. These electrophysiological parameters can serve as templates to define the hallmarks of language acquisition. The research presented demonstrates that the method of event-related brain potentials is a powerful tool to investigate and monitor early stages of language acquisition and provides further insights into the neural correlates of language processing in infants and children.
This chapter describes and evaluates the use of eyetracking methods to study the development of spoken language production and comprehension. The emphasis will be on understanding the chain of inferences, or linking assumptions, researchers commonly make when going from measurements of eye position to conclusions about attention, reference and sentence parsing. It is argued that these assumptions are valid, though care is needed when disentangling developmental changes in visual attention from developmental changes in language processing abilities.
The “looking-while-listening” methodology uses real-time measures of the time course of young children’s gaze patterns in response to speech. This procedure is low in task demands and does not require automated eyetracking technology, similar to “preferential-looking” procedures. However, the looking-whilelistening methodology differs critically from preferential-looking procedures in the methods used for data reduction and analysis, yielding high-resolution measures of speech processing from moment to moment, rather than relying on summary measures of looking preference. Because children’s gaze patterns are time-locked to speech and coded frame-by-frame, each 5-min experiment response latencies can be coded with millisecond precision on multiple trials over multiple items, based on data from thousands of frames in each experiment. The meticulous procedures required in the collection, reduction, and multiple levels of analysis of such detailed data are demanding, but well worth the effort, revealing a dynamic and nuanced picture of young children’s developing skill in finding meaning in spoken language.
How do young children represent the structure of an utterance? Do they employ abstract syntactic categories? Or are their representations more concrete and lexically limited? Our recent work brings together the world-situated eye-gaze paradigm and syntactic priming to explore these questions. We begin by reviewing theories of syntactic development and describing previous studies of syntactic priming during children’s language production. Then we introduce our method for exploring priming during comprehension. Next we present a series of experiments on priming in adults, 4-year-olds and 3-year-olds. In each case the participants’ interpretation is influenced by the structure of prior utterances, even in the absence of lexical overlap. We conclude that young children (and adults) employ abstract syntactic representations during on-line sentence comprehension.
As the title suggests, this final chapter attempts to place the Workshop on On-Line Methods in Children’s Language Processing and the papers in this volume in a historical context. First, there is a brief review of the 40-year history of research in language acquisition, including the late arrival of on-line methodology. Then the chapter emphasizes the questions now being addressed in current on-line research. Finally, the conclusion suggests desiderata with respect to future progress in our understanding of the development of both linguistic competence and linguistic performance.
How do infants and young children coordinate information in real time to arrive at sentence meaning from the words and structure of the sentence and from the nonlinguistic context? This volume introduces readers to an emerging field of research, experimental developmental psycholinguistics.
While most first language acquisition research to date has focused on the development of children’s linguistic competence, a number of research teams have also investigated the mechanisms children employ to process sentence-level and word-level information in real time, by applying experimental techniques familiar from the adult processing literature to children. This chapter presents an overview of different kinds of behavioral tasks for investigating both morphological and syntactic processing in children focusing on three techniques that we have explored in our own research on children’s on-line language processing: self-paced listening, cross-modal priming, and speeded production.
The present paper gives an overview of our recent research on the neurocognition of language acquisition. Our research aims to gain a more detailed understanding of the developmental stages of the language acquisition process and its underlying brain mechanisms. Here, we utilize the method of event-related brain potentials, which has revealed specific electrophysiological indices for various aspects of language processing in adults. These electrophysiological parameters can serve as templates to define the hallmarks of language acquisition. The research presented demonstrates that the method of event-related brain potentials is a powerful tool to investigate and monitor early stages of language acquisition and provides further insights into the neural correlates of language processing in infants and children.
This chapter describes and evaluates the use of eyetracking methods to study the development of spoken language production and comprehension. The emphasis will be on understanding the chain of inferences, or linking assumptions, researchers commonly make when going from measurements of eye position to conclusions about attention, reference and sentence parsing. It is argued that these assumptions are valid, though care is needed when disentangling developmental changes in visual attention from developmental changes in language processing abilities.
The “looking-while-listening” methodology uses real-time measures of the time course of young children’s gaze patterns in response to speech. This procedure is low in task demands and does not require automated eyetracking technology, similar to “preferential-looking” procedures. However, the looking-whilelistening methodology differs critically from preferential-looking procedures in the methods used for data reduction and analysis, yielding high-resolution measures of speech processing from moment to moment, rather than relying on summary measures of looking preference. Because children’s gaze patterns are time-locked to speech and coded frame-by-frame, each 5-min experiment response latencies can be coded with millisecond precision on multiple trials over multiple items, based on data from thousands of frames in each experiment. The meticulous procedures required in the collection, reduction, and multiple levels of analysis of such detailed data are demanding, but well worth the effort, revealing a dynamic and nuanced picture of young children’s developing skill in finding meaning in spoken language.
How do young children represent the structure of an utterance? Do they employ abstract syntactic categories? Or are their representations more concrete and lexically limited? Our recent work brings together the world-situated eye-gaze paradigm and syntactic priming to explore these questions. We begin by reviewing theories of syntactic development and describing previous studies of syntactic priming during children’s language production. Then we introduce our method for exploring priming during comprehension. Next we present a series of experiments on priming in adults, 4-year-olds and 3-year-olds. In each case the participants’ interpretation is influenced by the structure of prior utterances, even in the absence of lexical overlap. We conclude that young children (and adults) employ abstract syntactic representations during on-line sentence comprehension.
As the title suggests, this final chapter attempts to place the Workshop on On-Line Methods in Children’s Language Processing and the papers in this volume in a historical context. First, there is a brief review of the 40-year history of research in language acquisition, including the late arrival of on-line methodology. Then the chapter emphasizes the questions now being addressed in current on-line research. Finally, the conclusion suggests desiderata with respect to future progress in our understanding of the development of both linguistic competence and linguistic performance.
How do infants and young children coordinate information in real time to arrive at sentence meaning from the words and structure of the sentence and from the nonlinguistic context? This volume introduces readers to an emerging field of research, experimental developmental psycholinguistics.