Language development beyond the here‐and‐now: Iconicity and displacement in child‐directed communication

Most language use is displaced, referring to past, future, or hypothetical events, posing the challenge of how children learn what words refer to when the referent is not physically available. One possibility is that iconic cues that imagistically evoke properties of absent referents support learning when referents are displaced. In an audio‐visual corpus of caregiver–child dyads, English‐speaking caregivers interacted with their children (N = 71, 24–58 months) in contexts in which the objects talked about were either familiar or unfamiliar to the child, and either physically present or displaced. The analysis of the range of vocal, manual, and looking behaviors caregivers produced suggests that caregivers used iconic cues especially in displaced contexts and for unfamiliar objects, using other cues when objects were present

Language and Culture Interact in Moral Decision-Making

A growing body of research indicates that moral decision-making is influenced by language status. Across studies and language combinations, participants make more utilitarian judgements when responding to moral dilemmas in a foreign (L2), compared to a native (L1) language. One explanation for the Foreign Language Effect is a reduced access to social norms in L2, since normative knowledge is acquired early in life in the native language. To test this account, we provided Chinese-English late bilinguals with “temporary social norms”: Upon dilemma presentation, response percentages of alleged previous participants were shown, representing either a deontological or utilitarian majority. We found that in English, participants conformed to utilitarian and deontological majority information, highlighting the malleability of moral decisions in an L2 context. In Chinese, participants only conformed to the utilitarian majority, potentially reflecting the influence of collectivist values. Our findings highlight the complex interplay between language, culture, and social norms in moral cognition

Do you hear how BIG it is? Iconic Prosody in Child Directed Language Supports Language Acquisition

Child directed language has been characterized by exaggerated prosody which can serve multiple functions including highlighting properties of meaning via iconicity. Iconic prosody may help language acquisition by bringing properties of displaced or unknown referents to the language learner’s “mind’s eye” or facilitating the acquisition of abstract features such as “direction”, or “speed”. We investigate iconic prosody in semi-naturalistic caregiver-child interactions. 50 caregivers were asked to talk to their child (2-4 years) about a set of toys either known or unknown to the child, and either present or absent from the interaction. In a first analysis, we included instances of iconic prosody as subjectively coded. In a second analysis, we looked at acoustic modulations for a set of seed words. In both analyses, we found that caregivers made use of iconic prosody more when talking about unknown or displaced objects, pointing to a neglected role for prosody in word learning

Do you hear how BIG it is? Iconic Prosody in Child Directed Language Supports Language Acquisition

Child directed language has been characterized by exaggerated prosody which can serve multiple functions including highlighting properties of meaning via iconicity. Iconic prosody may help language acquisition by bringing properties of displaced or unknown referents to the language learner’s “mind’s eye” or facilitating the acquisition of abstract features such as “direction”, or “speed”. We investigate iconic prosody in semi-naturalistic caregiver-child interactions. 50 caregivers were asked to talk to their child (2-4 years) about a set of toys either known or unknown to the child, and either present or absent from the interaction. In a first analysis, we included instances of iconic prosody as subjectively coded. In a second analysis, we looked at acoustic modulations for a set of seed words. In both analyses, we found that caregivers made use of iconic prosody more when talking about unknown or displaced objects, pointing to a neglected role for prosody in word learning

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

Language development beyond the here-and-now: iconicity and displacement in child-directed communication

Most language use is displaced, referring to past, future or hypothetical events. Displacement poses an important challenge for language learning. How can children learn what words refer to when the referent is not physically available? We suggest that caregivers provide children with iconic vocal and gestural cues that imagistically evoke properties of absent referents to support displaced learning. We collected an audio-visual corpus of English-speaking caregiver-child interactions (N = 71, 24-58 months, 37 female) and annotated the range of vocal and manual behaviours caregivers produced. We found that caregivers used iconic cues especially in displaced contexts, using other cues when objects were present. Thus, we map caregivers’ non-linguistic behaviours, showing that they provide iconic cues to support displaced language learning and processing

Multimodal cues in child-directed communication

Project looking at multimodal cues (onomatopoeia, gesture, points, object manipulation, eye gaze) in caregivers' communication to their English-speaking toddlers