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A Developmental Shift from Similar to Language-Specific Strategies in Verb Acquisition: A Comparison of English, Spanish, and Japanese
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Maguire, Mandy J.; Hirsh-Pasek, Kathy; Golinkoff, Roberta Michnick; Imai, Mutsumi; Haryu, Etsuko; Vanegas, Sandra; Okada, Hiroyuki; Pulverman, Rachel; Sanchez-Davis, Brenda – Cognition, 2010
The world's languages draw on a common set of event components for their verb systems. Yet, these components are differentially distributed across languages. At what age do children begin to use language-specific patterns to narrow possible verb meanings? English-, Japanese-, and Spanish-speaking adults, toddlers, and preschoolers were shown…
Descriptors: Verbs, Toddlers, Language Acquisition, Contrastive Linguistics
Why Do Children Learn To Say "Broke"? A Model of Learning the Past Tense without Feedback.
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Taatgen, Niels A.; Anderson, John R. – Cognition, 2002
Presents a hybrid ACT-R model that shows U-shaped learning of the English past tense without direct feedback, changes in vocabulary, or unrealistically high rates of regular verbs. Illustrates that the model can learn the default rule, even if regular forms are infrequent. Shows that the model can explore the question of why there is a distinction…
Descriptors: Child Language, Children, Cognitive Development, English
What Paradox? A Response to Naigles (2002).
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Tomasello, Michael; Akhtar, Nameera – Cognition, 2003
Presents evidence that the supposed paradox in which infants find abstract patterns in speech-like stimuli whereas even some preschoolers struggle to find abstract syntactic patterns within meaningful language is no paradox. Asserts that all research evidence shows that young children's syntactic constructions become abstract in a piecemeal…
Descriptors: Child Language, Cognitive Development, Comprehension, Developmental Stages
Paradox Lost? No, Paradox Found! Reply to Tomasello and Akhtar (2003).
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Naigles, Letitia R. – Cognition, 2003
Asserts that the posited paradox between infancy and toddlerhood language was not eliminated by Tomasello and Akhtar's appeal to infants' robust statistical learning abilities. Maintains that scrutiny of their studies supports the resolution that abstracting linguistic form is easy for infants and that toddlers find it difficult to integrate…
Descriptors: Child Language, Cognitive Development, Comprehension, Developmental Stages
Early Noun Vocabularies: Do Ontology, Category Structure and Syntax Correspond?
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Samuelson, Larissa K.; Smith, Linda B. – Cognition, 1999
Two experiments examined toddlers' noun vocabularies and interpretations of names for solid and non-solid items. Results indicated that one side of the solidity-syntax-category organization mapping was favored. Seventeen- to 33-month olds do not systematically generalize names for solid things by shape similarity until they already know many…
Descriptors: Age Differences, Child Development, Child Language, Classification
The Kindergarten-Path Effect: Studying On-Line Sentence Processing in Young Children.
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Trueswell, John C.; Sekerina, Irina; Hill, Nicole M.; Logrip, Marian L. – Cognition, 1999
Used head-mounted eye-tracking system to study kindergartners' and adults' moment-by-moment language processing ability as they responded to spoken instructions. Found that 5-year-olds did not take into account relevant discourse/pragmatic principles when resolving temporary syntactic ambiguities and showed little/no ability to revise initial…
Descriptors: Adults, Age Differences, Child Language, Cognitive Development