Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-21T23:28:56.654Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The eyes have it: lexical and syntactic comprehension in a new paradigm*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Roberta Michnick Golinkoff ,
Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek ,
Kathleen M. Cauley  and
Laura Gordon
Roberta Michnick Golinkoff*
Affiliation:
University of Delaware
Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek
Affiliation:
Haverford College
Kathleen M. Cauley
Affiliation:
Virginia Commonwealth University
Laura Gordon
Affiliation:
University of Delaware
*
Department of Educational Studies, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716, USA.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A new method to assess language comprehension in infants and young children is introduced in three experiments which test separately for the comprehension of nouns, verbs, and word order. This method requires a minimum of motor movement, no speech production, and relies on the differential visual fixation of two simultaneously presented video events accompanied by a single linguistic stimulus. The linguistic stimulus matches only one of the video events. In all three experiments patterns of visual fixation favour the screen which matches the linguistic stimulus. This new method may provide insight into the child's emerging linguistic capabilities and help resolve longstanding controversies concerning language production versus language comprehension.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , February 1987 , pp. 23 - 45
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

This research was supported by NICHHD Grant No. Roi-HD-15964 to the first two authors and by a University of Delaware Biomedical Research Grant to R. M. Golinkoff. From its inception this research has been a completely collaborative effort on the part of the first two authors. We thank Deborah Sardo, Lori Soden and Mary Beth Meyers, for their able assistance in the operation of our laboratory and the Mid-Atlantic Language Union (MLU) for their insightful comments on a draft of the manuscript. These data were presented at the International Conference on Infant Studies and at the Boston Child Language Meeting.

References

REFERENCES

Bates, E., MacWhinney, B., Caselli, C., Devescovi, A., Natale, F. & Venza, V. (1984) A cross-linguistic study of the development of sentence interpretation strategies. Child Development 55. 341–54.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Benedict, H. (1979) Early lexical development: comprehension and production. Journal of Child Language 6. 183–200.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bloom, L. (1978) The semantics of verbs in child language. Address given at the Eastern Psychological Association Meeting.Google Scholar
Bloom, L. & Lahey, M. (1978) Language development and language disorders. New York: John Wiley.Google Scholar
Brown, R. (1973) A first language: the early stages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University PressCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chapman, R. (1977) Comprehension strategies in children. In Kavanaugh, J. F. & Strange, W. (eds), Speech and language in the lab school and clinic. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Chapman, R. S., & Kohn, L. L. (1978) Comprehension in two- and three-year olds: animate agents or probable events. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 21. 746–61.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chapman, R. S. & Miller, J. F. (1975) Word order in early two- and three-word utterances: does production precede comprehension? Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 18. 355–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cocking, R. R. & McHale, S. (1981) A comparative study of the use of pictures and objects in assessing children's receptive and productive language. Journal of Child Language 8. 1–13.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
de Villiers, J. G. & de Villiers, P. A. (1973) Development of the use of word order in comprehension. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 2. 331–42.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fraser, C., Bellugi, U. & Brown, R. (1963) Control of grammar in imitation, comprehension, and production. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behaviour 2. 121–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedman, S. & Stevenson, M. (1975) Developmental changes in the understanding of implied motion in two-dimensional pictures. Child Development 46. 773–8.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gentner, D. (1982) Why nouns are learned before verbs: linguistic relativity versus natural positioning. In Kuczaj, S. A. (ed.), Language development, Vol. 2. Language, thought and culture. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Gleitman, L. & Wanner, E. (1982) Language acquisition: the state of the art. In Gleitman, L. & Wanner, E. (eds), Language acquisition: the state of the art. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Goldin-Meadow, S., Seligman, M. & Gelman, R. (1976) Language in the two-year-old. Cognition 4. 189–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Golinkoff, R. M. & Markessini, J. (1980) ‘Mommy sock’: the child's understanding of possession as expressed in two-noun phrases. Journal of Child Language 7. 119–35.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hirsh-Pasek, K., Golinkoff, R. M., deGaspe Beaubien, F., Fletcher, A. & Cauley, K. (1985) In the beginning: one-word speakers comprehend word order. Paper given at Boston Child Language Conference.Google Scholar
Huttenlocher, J. (1974) The origins of language comprehension. In Solso, R. L. (ed.), Theories in cognitive psychology: the Loyola Symposium. Potomac, MD: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Huttenlocher, J., Smiley, P. & Charney, R. (1983) Emergence of action categories in the child: evidence from verb meanings. Psychological Review 90. 72–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lempert, H. (1978) Extrasyntactic factors affecting passive sentence comprehension by young children. Child Development 49. 694–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leonard, L. B. (1983) Production before comprehension: some methodological issues. Paper presented to the Society for Research in Child Development, Detroit.Google Scholar
Nelson, K. (1973) Structure and strategy in learning to talk. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 38. No. 149.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, K. E. & Bonvillian, J. D. (1978) Early language development: conceptual growth and related processes between 2 and 4½ years of age. In Nelson, K. E. (ed.), Children's language, Vol. 1. New York: Gardner Press.Google Scholar
Rescorla, L. (1985) Identifying language delay at age 2. Paper presented to the Society for Research in Child Development.Google Scholar
Roberts, S. (1983) Comprehension and production of word order in Stage I. Child Development 54. 443–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shatz, M. (1978) On the development of communicative understanding: an early strategy for interpreting and responding to messages. Cognitive Psychology 3. 271–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shipley, E. F., Smith, C. S. & Gleitman, L. R. (1969) A study in the acquisition of language: free responses to commands. Language 45. 322–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spelke, E. (1976) Infants' intermodal perception of events. Cognitive Psychology 8. 553–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spelke, E. (1979) Perceiving bimodally specified events in infancy. Developmental Psychology 15. 626–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Straight, H. S. (in press) The importance and irreducibility of the comprehension/production dialectic. In McGregor, G. (ed.), Language for hearers. Oxford: Pergamon Press.Google Scholar
Strohner, H. & Nelson, K. (1974) The young child's development of sentence comprehension: influences of event probability, nonverbal context, syntactic form and strategies. Child Development 45. 567–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, D. C., Campos, J. J., Shucard, W., Ransay, D. S. & Shucard, J. (1981) Semantic comprehension in infancy: a signal detection analysis. Child Development 52. 798–803.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Walker, A. S. (1982) Intermodal perception of expressive behaviors by human infants. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 33. 514–35.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed