This project will examine how children develop the ability to rapidly interpret speech as it is being heard. To accomplish this research objective, a free-head eyetracking system will be used to monitor the eye movements of children (ages 4 years and up) as they respond to spoken instructions. By examining which objects a child considers as he or she is listening to speech, certain inferences can be made about the on-going processes that underlie language comprehension. Of particular interest is how the child interprets sentences that contain uncertainties or ambiguities regarding the grammatical relationships between words and phrases. Prior research has found that adults rapidly commit to a single interpretation of an ambiguous phrase by coordinating several key sources of information, including detailed knowledge of individual words, information from the prosody (""""""""melody"""""""") of speech, and information from the situation or context. The current research examines how a child develops this rapid and relatively interactive processing system. By testing the child's ability to take advantage of these potentially useful sources of information, we can gain a better understanding of how language is represented, organized, and processed by the normally developing child. Answering questions about children's language processing abilities has long eluded researchers, primarily because of technical limitations on tests suitable to use with children. The free-head eyetracking technology provides a new window into on-going language interpretation, supplying insights into normal development that have potential applications to the treatment of language-developmental delays and pathologies.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
1R01HD037507-01
Application #
2872864
Study Section
Human Development and Aging Subcommittee 3 (HUD)
Program Officer
Mccardle, Peggy D
Project Start
1999-01-01
Project End
2002-12-31
Budget Start
1999-01-01
Budget End
1999-12-31
Support Year
1
Fiscal Year
1999
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Pennsylvania
Department
Psychology
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
042250712
City
Philadelphia
State
PA
Country
United States
Zip Code
19104
Stevens, Jon Scott; Gleitman, Lila R; Trueswell, John C et al. (2017) The Pursuit of Word Meanings. Cogn Sci 41 Suppl 4:638-676
Trueswell, John C; Lin, Yi; Armstrong 3rd, Benjamin et al. (2016) Perceiving referential intent: Dynamics of reference in natural parent-child interactions. Cognition 148:117-35
Woodard, Kristina; Pozzan, Lucia; Trueswell, John C (2016) Taking your own path: Individual differences in executive function and language processing skills in child learners. J Exp Child Psychol 141:187-209
Pozzan, Lucia; Gleitman, Lila R; Trueswell, John C (2016) Semantic ambiguity and syntactic bootstrapping: The case of conjoined-subject intransitive sentences. Lang Learn Dev 12:14-41
Woodard, Kristina; Gleitman, Lila R; Trueswell, John C (2016) Two- and three-year-olds track a single meaning during word learning: Evidence for Propose-but-verify. Lang Learn Dev 12:252-261
Pozzan, Lucia; Trueswell, John C (2016) Second language processing and revision of garden-path sentences: a visual word study. Biling (Camb Engl) 19:636-643
Pozzan, Lucia; Trueswell, John C (2015) Revise and resubmit: how real-time parsing limitations influence grammar acquisition. Cogn Psychol 80:73-108
Cartmill, Erica A; Armstrong 3rd, Benjamin F; Gleitman, Lila R et al. (2013) Quality of early parent input predicts child vocabulary 3 years later. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 110:11278-83
Trueswell, John C; Medina, Tamara Nicol; Hafri, Alon et al. (2013) Propose but verify: fast mapping meets cross-situational word learning. Cogn Psychol 66:126-56
Sekerina, Irina A; Trueswell, John C (2012) Interactive processing of contrastive expressions by Russian children. First Lang 32:63-87

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