One of the central issues in the study of cognition and its development concerns the impact of language on cognition and the nature of such effects. A variety of effects have been proposed ranging from facilitation of learning and memory to changing the ways we perceive and interpret events. In addition, the spoken word may affect the very core of human intelligence--the ability to generalize and take knowledge from known to novel situations, including the ability of infants and young children to learn general categories and use this knowledge for future learning. Despite the central importance of the problem, much remains unknown. Most importantly, it is not known how language affects the developing cognition and how these effects change in the course of development. Do words function as teaching signals for the developing cognition from early in development? Or do they become teaching signals as a result of development? The primary goal of this 3-year-long project is to answer these questions by using a combination of behavior experimentation and eye tracking analyses, with computational modeling and model selection. In the initial study, multiple category learning experiments with 8-to-24-month-olds will be conducted, in which words or other sounds will accompany categories of different structure. In a second study, two classes of computational models will be used to simulate the data, one, in which words are considered part of the input, and another in which words are considered a teaching signal. Formal model selection procedures will help determine which mechanism underlying the effects of words is more consistent with the entire body of data.
Results of this research will advance our understanding of how language affects cognition early in development, thus contributing to better understanding of typical cognitive development. The proposed research will also contribute to the methodological toolkit of developmental research. The investigator will disseminate the work via conference presentations and journal articles. The researchers will also undertake outreach and education activities with children and teachers, involving high school students and lab activities, and an exposition for children at the Columbus Museum of Science and Industry.
