UNDERSTANDING THE PERCEPTUAL AND COGNITIVE PRECURSORS TO THE ACQUISITION OF LANGUAGE: AN EXAMINATION OF INFANTS? PERCEPTION AND USE OF MANUAL GESTURES AND SIGNS

Steven S. Robertson Barbara C. Lust Marianella CasasolaSeveral perceptual and cognitive abilities have been argued to guide language development and in particular, early word learning. This dissertation sought to determine whether these abilities extend to a signed language, like American Sign Language (ASL). A series of habituation-dishabituation experiments were conducted examining infants' ability to (1) discriminate between the visual contrasts of ASL signs and (2) form associations between words, gestures, or both paired with objects. Chapter 2 describes an experiment examining ASL-naive 6- and 10-month-olds' abilities to discriminate between the contrasts (i.e., handshape, movement, location, and facial expression) of 2-handed signs. Infants were habituated to a 2-handed sign and tested with additional 2-handed signs that varied in only one parameter. Infants detected location and facial expression changes, but did not demonstrate detection of handshape and movement changes. Similarly, Chapter 3 describes two experiments examining ASL-naive infants' abilities to discriminate between the contrasts of 1-handed ASL signs on the face. In Experiment 1, 6- and 10-month-olds' were habituated to a 1-handed sign and tested with additional 1-handed signs that varied in only one parameter. In Experiment 2, 6-month-olds were also habituated to a 1-handed sign, but were tested with 1-handed signs that varied in one or more parameters. Across both experiments, infants detected handshape and movement changes, but did not demonstrate detection of location changes. Chapter 4 describes two experiments examining 12- and 14-month-olds' ability to form associations between objects and words, gestures, or both. In Experiment 1, infants were habituated to either gesture-object or word-object pairings. In Experiment 2, infants viewed words and gestures simultaneously paired with objects. Infants were tested with a trial that maintained a pairing and a trial that violated a pairing. Fourteen-month-olds only demonstrated the ability to form associations between words and objects. Twelve-month-olds only demonstrated the ability to form associations between words and gestures simultaneously paired with objects. These findings reveal two prevalent themes. First, infants' possess general perceptual sensitivities that they can recruit for early word/sign learning tasks. Second, experience with a particular type of input (e.g., words) fine-tunes these sensitivities and abilities in a more specialized way.Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship - National Academy of Science

Bilingual Exposure Affects Face Recognition in 9-Month-Old Infants Raised in a Multi-Ethnic City

Young infants can discriminate a wide range of stimuli. Over the first year of life, this ability becomes restricted to frequently experienced stimuli through the process of perceptual narrowing. In face perception, this is reflected in the emergence of the Other-race-effect (ORE) at 9 months, a difficulty to recognise faces from unfamiliar racial groups. This can be avoided through other-race face exposure. Interestingly, wider language exposure has been suggested to have a similar – cross-domain – effect, as narrowing in bilinguals’ speech perception is postponed and protracted. We tested 9-month-old monolingual and bilingual infants from London on a face recognition task with own- and other-race faces. Detailed information on infants’ everyday language and face exposure were gathered. Neither group showed the classic ORE, indicating that growing up in a multi-ethnic city attenuates it. Importantly, bilinguals exhibited higher recognition scores than monolinguals, suggesting a general face recognition advantage in this population

How White American Children Develop Racial Biases in Emotion Reasoning

For decades, affective scientists have examined how adults and children reason about others’ emotions. Yet, our knowledge is limited regarding how emotion reasoning is impacted by race—that is, how individuals reason about emotions displayed by people of other racial groups. In this review, we examine the developmental origins of racial biases in emotion reasoning, focusing on how White Americans reason about emotions displayed by Black faces/people. We highlight how racial biases in emotion reasoning, which emerge as early as infancy, likely contribute to miscommunications, inaccurate social perceptions, and negative interracial interactions across the lifespan. We conclude by discussing promising interventions to reduce these biases as well as future research directions, highlighting how affective scientists can decenter Whiteness in their research designs. Together, this review highlights how emotion reasoning is a potentially affective component of racial bias among White Americans