Origins and development of representational systems in early childhood

It is argued in Chapters 1 to 4 that in cognitive psychology in general, and in the disciplines of language acquisition and cognitive development in particular, there is substantial benefit to be derived from distinguishing between two representational systems, one system being deployed in long-established or highly-practiced functions, and the second deployed in novel tasks, or where difficulties interrupt the first system. It is also argued that the proper subject of cognitive development is the second of these systems. Chapters 5 and 6 are concerned in different ways with the origins of language in the individual, in particular with the question of what innate knowledge of language might be justified. It is concluded that many questions regarding innate knowledge remain open, and that a source in human evolution for knowledge of language is no more likely than sources in individual or social development. In Chapter 7 it is argued that representational drawing emerges late in the 4th year of life, and some new techniques are described for studying early representational drawing. Following these treatments of external systems of representation, Chapter 8 offers a general developmental theory of forms of representation, extending Piaget's insight that mental representation is co-extensive with thought, and that the main axis of cognitive development is the content of thought and representation. Chapters 9 to 12 apply this theory to the representation of belief and desire, and of extrinsic and intrinsic qualities of objects, by 11/2 to 4 year-old children. Chapter 13 introduces a new method for analyzing the free classification task, a task sometimes used to assess children's ability to think about intrinsic qualities, and applies this method to various data sets. Chapter 14 applies these insights and results to the problem of characterizing concepts and concept development and favourably discusses the idea that more precise knowledge of this aspect of development may help to explain certain features of early language acquisition

Working memory and children's mathematical skills

Previous studies which examined the relationship between working memory (WM) ability and children's mathematics performance typically measured mathematics ability as a general skill (e.g. Gathercole & Pickering, 2000a) or mental arithmetic ability (e.g. Adams & Hitch, 1997), used number- or digit-based WM assessments and did not control for individual differences in a child's general ability (e.g. intelligence). The aim of this thesis was to extend this research to investigate the associations between the components of the tripartite WM model (e.g. Baddeley, 1986) and a range of mathematical skills in 7-/8- and 9-/10-year-olds using non-digit- based WM assessments, controlling for a measure of general ability. The relationship between WM ability and children's curriculum-based mathematics performance was investigated using a correlational design in Chapters 3 and 4. Assessments, developed in Chapter 2, were used to measure four mathematical skills outlined in the National Curriculum for England. The results indicated that central executive and visuo-spatial sketchpad, but not phonological loop, scores predicted unique variance in performance across all four mathematical skills, even when controlling for NVIQ. Furthermore, both WM abilities were found to predict Key Stage 2 mathematics achievement one year after initial testing (Chapter 8).The same methodology was used in Chapters 6 and 7 to explore the relationship between WM ability and children's performance-related mathematics abilities (see chapter 5). All three components of WM predicted unique variance in these mathematical skills, but a markedly distinct pattern of associations was revealed between the two age groups. In particular, the data implicated a stronger role for the visuo-spatial sketchpad in the younger children's mathematics. The role of visuo-spatial WM in children's mathematics was explored further in Chapter 9 where a discrepancy definition was applied to identify children with poor mathematics or poor visuo-spatial abilities. The data provided an initial indication that normal visuo-spatial sketchpad development may be important for normal mathematics development. The overarching conclusion is that WM, and the central executive and visuo- spatial sketchpad in particular, may support the development of early mathematical ability. The practical and theoretical implications of these findings are considered

Directional adposition use in English, Swedish and Finnish

Directional adpositions such as to the left of describe where a Figure is in relation to a Ground. English and Swedish directional adpositions refer to the location of a Figure in relation to a Ground, whether both are static or in motion. In contrast, the Finnish directional adpositions edellä (in front of) and jäljessä (behind) solely describe the location of a moving Figure in relation to a moving Ground (Nikanne, 2003). When using directional adpositions, a frame of reference must be assumed for interpreting the meaning of directional adpositions. For example, the meaning of to the left of in English can be based on a relative (speaker or listener based) reference frame or an intrinsic (object based) reference frame (Levinson, 1996). When a Figure and a Ground are both in motion, it is possible for a Figure to be described as being behind or in front of the Ground, even if neither have intrinsic features. As shown by Walker (in preparation), there are good reasons to assume that in the latter case a motion based reference frame is involved. This means that if Finnish speakers would use edellä (in front of) and jäljessä (behind) more frequently in situations where both the Figure and Ground are in motion, a difference in reference frame use between Finnish on one hand and English and Swedish on the other could be expected. We asked native English, Swedish and Finnish speakers’ to select adpositions from a language specific list to describe the location of a Figure relative to a Ground when both were shown to be moving on a computer screen. We were interested in any differences between Finnish, English and Swedish speakers. All languages showed a predominant use of directional spatial adpositions referring to the lexical concepts TO THE LEFT OF, TO THE RIGHT OF, ABOVE and BELOW. There were no differences between the languages in directional adpositions use or reference frame use, including reference frame use based on motion. We conclude that despite differences in the grammars of the languages involved, and potential differences in reference frame system use, the three languages investigated encode Figure location in relation to Ground location in a similar way when both are in motion. Levinson, S. C. (1996). Frames of reference and Molyneux’s question: Crosslingiuistic evidence. In P. Bloom, M.A. Peterson, L. Nadel & M.F. Garrett (Eds.) Language and Space (pp.109-170). Massachusetts: MIT Press. Nikanne, U. (2003). How Finnish postpositions see the axis system. In E. van der Zee & J. Slack (Eds.), Representing direction in language and space. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Walker, C. (in preparation). Motion encoding in language, the use of spatial locatives in a motion context. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Lincoln, Lincoln. United Kingdo

Learning Functional Prepositions

In first language acquisition, what does it mean for a grammatical category to have been acquired, and what are the mechanisms by which children learn functional categories in general? In the context of prepositions (Ps), if the lexical/functional divide cuts through the P category, as has been suggested in the theoretical literature, then constructivist accounts of language acquisition would predict that children develop adult-like competence with the more abstract units, functional Ps, at a slower rate compared to their acquisition of lexical Ps. Nativists instead assume that the features of functional P are made available by Universal Grammar (UG), and are mapped as quickly, if not faster, than the semantic features of their lexical counterparts. Conversely, if Ps are either all lexical or all functional, on both accounts of acquisition we should observe few differences in learning. Three empirical studies of the development of P were conducted via computer analysis of the English and Spanish sub-corpora of the CHILDES database. Study 1 analyzed errors in child usage of Ps, finding almost no errors in commission in either language, but that the English learners lag in their production of functional Ps relative to lexical Ps. That no such delay was found in the Spanish data suggests that the English pattern is not universal. Studies 2 and 3 applied novel measures of phrasal (P head + nominal complement) productivity to the data. Study 2 examined prepositional phrases (PPs) whose head-complement pairs appeared in both child and adult speech, while Study 3 considered PPs produced by children that never occurred in adult speech. In both studies the productivity of Ps for English children developed faster than that of lexical Ps. In Spanish there were few differences, suggesting that children had already mastered both orders of Ps early in acquisition. These empirical results suggest that at least in English P is indeed a split category, and that children acquire the syntax of the functional subset very quickly, committing almost no errors. The UG position is thus supported. Next, the dissertation investigates a \u27soft nativist\u27 acquisition strategy that composes the distributional analysis of input, minimal a priori knowledge of the possible co-occurrence of morphosyntactic features associated with functional elements, and linguistic knowledge that is presumably acquired via the experience of pragmatic, communicative situations. The output of the analysis consists in a mapping of morphemes to the feature bundles of nominative pronouns for English and Spanish, plus specific claims about the sort of knowledge required from experience. The acquisition model is then extended to adpositions, to examine what, if anything, distributional analysis can tell us about the functional sequences of PPs. The results confirm the theoretical position according to which spatiotemporal Ps are lexical in character, rooting their own extended projections, and that functional Ps express an aspectual sequence in the functional superstructure of the PP

Language acquisition and universal grammar : a survey of recent research

openDipartimento di discipline linguistiche, comunicative e dello spettacoloCONSULTABILE PRESSO IL DIPARTIMENT

The development of representation in children with Down's Syndrome : coherence and stability

This thesis examines the development of representation in typically developing children and in young children with Down's Syndrome. The focus on representation allows us to adopt a general approach to development in infancy spanning domains such as motor development, language, object permanence, imitation, and symbolic play. Theoretical approaches to children with Down's Syndrome have been dominated by the `delay versus difference' controversy. This perspective suggests that development in children with Down's Syndrome should proceed with a sequence and structure similar to that observed in typically developing children. In this thesis it is argued, in contrast, that children with Down's Syndrome present a number of challenges to the organisational perspective. This thesis examines the strengths and weaknesses in the development of children with Down's Syndrome and attempts to identify the structural links between domains which are threatened by such a profile. These results of empirical studies detailed in this thesis suggest that development across domains such as language, motor development and object permanence appears to be relatively coherent. However, children with Down's Syndrome show subtle differences in their performance on object permanence and symbolic play tasks which suggests deviation from the typical pattern of structural coherence. Specifically, children with Down's Syndrome appear to adopt a more imitative strategy in solving object permanence tasks and in their symbolic play. The prevalence of imitation as a strategy may be indicative of a shallow level of processing. Alternatively, it may also be argued that children with Down's Syndrome adopt a different representational style in performing tasks. These subtle difference in the style with which children approach task suggest that the learning and consolidation process may differ between children with Down's Syndrome and the typically developing population. Such findings may have important consequences for intervention