20 research outputs found
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Expression of Affect and the Emergence of Language
The relation between infant affect expression and the emergence of language was studied in 6 girls and 6 boys, from 9 months to 2 years of age. First words (FW) and vocabulary spurt (VS) were identified in the infants' transition from prespeech vocalizing to the emergence of language. Their expressions of affect were coded for the gradient properties of valence (positive, negative, neutral, mixed, equivocal) and intensity. Frequency of nonneutral affect expression at FW and VS was positively correlated with age at FW and VS (p < .02), meaning that the more frequently the children expressed emotion, the older the age of language achievements. Time spent in neutral affect at FW and VS was negatively correlated with age at FW and VS (p < .02); the more time spent in neutral affect, the younger the age of language achievements. In addition, the measures of affect at VS predicted the eventual transition to multiword speech, with more time spent in neutral affect expression at VS negatively correlated with earlier age in the use of sentences. We propose that neutral affect supports the early transition to language by allowing the reflective stance required for language learning, and has its antecedents in the quiet alert states which support the cognitive activity of early infancy
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Underlying process in the socialization of emotion
The focus in this research was on what and how children learn about emotion from input they receive in the moments when mothers respond to their emotional expressions. The database for the study consisted of video-recorded observations of 12 first-born children (6 boys, 6 girls) at 9, 13, 17, and 21 months, in a laboratory playroom with their mothers during free play with toys and a snack. The children’s affect expressions were coded continuously according to gradient properties of valence and intensity. Mothers responded to the majority (80%) of their children's positive and negative emotional expressions. Although children’s negative expressions were relatively infrequent, mothers responded more frequently to negative (88%) than to positive expressions (72%). The relative frequency of mothers' responses remained stable over time and across gender and language ability. However, as the children acquired language, mothers were more likely to use language themselves, and correspondingly less likely to express affect in response to their children's emotional expressions. As expected, they responded primarily to facilitate positive affect and discourage negative affect. The most frequent form of mothers’ response (66%) was action-related, as they acted and/or encouraged a child to act in a goal-directed way, and this form of responding did not change from 9 to 21 months. Mothers talked about their children's goals and/or the situations in which their emotions occurred, and about their own actions as they either acted themselves or encouraged their children to act in order to achieve their goals
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Sources of meaning in the acquisition of complex syntax: the sample case of causality.
The study reported here is concerned with how children acquire complex sentences for expressing their beliefs about causally related events, in the transition in language development from simple to complex syntax. Subjects were three girls and four boys, observed longitudinally from 26 to 38 months of age in their homes. Data analysis began with those observations in which each child began to produce causally related propositions without syntactic connectives, and continued until the children were about 3 years old. Two broad categories of causal meaning were expressed in the children's causal statements. Objective meaning concerned means-end and consequence relations that were evidential and fixed in the physical world. Subjective meaning expressed causal connections concerned with personal, affective, or sociocultural beliefs. While most of the children's statements expressed subjective meaning overall, the acquisition of syntactic connectives was associated with objective meaning. These results are discussed in terms of (a) the development of these children's understanding of causality and (b) the acquisition of increasingly complex language
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Developments in the Expression of Affect by Later and Earlier Word Learners
The present study is a report of the developmental trends in infants' affect expression from 9 to 21 months, a period that coincided with certain achievements in their language development. Two groups of infants, early and later word learners, were identified according to when they began to say words. At 9 months of age, the two groups did not differ in their frequency of emotional expression nor in the relative amount of time they spent in neutral and positive expression. All of the infants increased their expressivity. However, one group of infants increased their frequency of expression by learning to say words relatively early, whereas the other group increased their frequency of emotional expression and did not learn to say words at the same time
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Expression through Affect and Words in the Transition from Infancy to Language
The emergence of language at the end of infancy has a profound effect on the individual’s development throughout the lifespan. In this chapter, we suggest a model to explain why and how infants acquire language, and present data from a research study demonstrating the usefulness of the methodology derived from that model. In our theory, we propose that children acquire the forms of speech for expressing the contents of states of mind. In our methodology, we use attributions of the contents of states of mind underlying children's expressions for understanding how the one system of expression already available to infants, affect, is related to the acquisition of words as a new system for expressing meaning. Both affect and words expressed desires more often than beliefs, and desires for events that involved the child as actor more often than other persons. Whereas affect was the predominant form of expression to begin with, by the time of a vocabulary spurt toward the end of the single-word period, words expressed the majority of propositions in every category except one; the category of beliefs that involved other persons and their actions toward the child continued to be expressed more often with affect than with words