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Many of our studies have addressed questions regarding how children acquire new words. One way we do this is by teaching children made-up names for familiar or unfamiliar toys. By altering the situation in which the child is presented with new labels we can evaluate what kind of information is important during word learning. For example, one of our current research questions asks to what extent children and adults monitor how frequently particular labels are produced in the presence of particular objects in the environment and use the probability that a particular word co-occurs with a particular object to determine which words label which objects.  Another study explores whether children can use tone of voice to determine the meanings of new words.  For example, if a new word is produced in a slow, loud voice, are children more likely to assume that it refers to a big object than a small one?

Our research has also focused on other types of symbol learning. Aside from words, children can also use “baby signs”, non-verbal sounds, and pictures to represent an object. One intriguing finding in this area is that children go through a developmental period around 2 years old during which they become less flexible about what they will accept as a representation for a toy. For example, children at 24-26 mos. are less likely than children at 17-19 mos. to learn a hand gesture as a name for a toy. Interestingly, children around two years are also increasing their language ability by leaps and bounds!   Our current research is exploring children’s understanding of printed visual symbols at two years of age, because understanding that printed symbols are meaningful is an important insight for children to achieve other pre-reading milestones such as starting to recognize individual letters.

We have also recently begun research looking at Video Learning. To learn more visit the lab's website!

Children this age are beginning to form complex categories of objects. For example, they may have learned that apples and oranges are types of fruit. One way that children learn about categories is by comparing different instances of a category with one another and discovering what is common among them, such as that apples and oranges are both round, edible, and grow on trees. This helps children identify additional, less familiar category members such as mangoes. We are currently studying the circumstances under which comparison is most beneficial to children when they are learning about categories.

To do this we play a game with four year olds using picture cards. Children are shown two pictures from a single category (e.g., apple and orange) under a variety of conditions and are asked to find another member of the category from a choice of three other pictures.

Some words sound like what they mean.  For example, the word “prickly” just sounds more spiky than the word “smooth”.  Adults appear to be sensitive to these correspondences between sound and meaning.  How aware are children of these cues to meaning, and does this depend on the age and language proficiency of the child?  To investigate this, we are introducing children to words from foreign languages that adults have reported either do or don’t sound like what they mean.  We then ask children to guess which picture from an array depicts the word’s meaning.

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