Adults and children predict in complex and variable referential contexts

Reuter, Tracy; Dalawella, Kavindya; Lew‐Williams, Casey

doi:10.1080/23273798.2020.1839665

Cited by 16 publications

(10 citation statements)

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“…Another important extension of this research would be to investigate the effects of lexical processing development on even more naturalistic listening environments, such as those with a visual scene that is less constrained than the 4-picture paradigm (e.g., complex visual scene used in Reuter et al, 2021). Additionally, future research can investigate whether developmental differences in lexical processing impacts use of other types of informative sentence context (e.g., number agreement; Lukyanenko & Fisher, 2016), including whether these other types of topdown information are used to both facilitate access of predicted words and suppress locally consistent but contextually incongruent words in sentence processing.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The development of spoken word recognition in informative and uninformative sentence contexts

Blomquist

Newman

Edwards

2023

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The development of spoken word recognition in informative and uninformative sentence contexts

Blomquist

Newman

Edwards

2023

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

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“…To evaluate children's language processing abilities, we used cluster‐based permutation analyses and a mixed‐effects logistic regression model, detailed below. Cluster‐based permutation methods are typically used for neurophysiological data analyses (Maris & Oostenveld, 2007), but this non‐parametric approach is valuable for visualizing temporal effects from eye‐gaze data as well (Borovsky, 2017; Chan et al, 2018; Dautriche et al, 2015; Hahn et al, 2015; Reuter et al, 2021; Wittenberg et al, 2017). Mixed‐effects models are commonly used for eye‐gaze analyses (Barr, 2008; Barr et al, 2013; Huettig et al, 2011).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Empirical evidence suggests prediction supports language processing and learning for NT children, including the ability to predict upcoming words in sentences (Borovsky et al, 2012; Fernald et al, 2008; Lew‐Williams & Fernald, 2007; Mani & Huettig, 2012, 2014; Reuter et al, 2019; Reuter et al, 2021). For example, Mani and Huettig (2012) found 2‐year‐old children could use informative verbs to predict upcoming nouns in sentences like “The boy will eat the cake,” as evident from anticipatory eye movements in an eye‐tracking task (Altmann & Kamide, 1999).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Predictive language processing in young autistic children

et al. 2022

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Recent theories propose that domain‐general deficits in prediction (i.e., the ability to anticipate upcoming information) underlie the behavioral characteristics associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). If these theories are correct, autistic children might be expected to demonstrate difficulties on linguistic tasks that rely on predictive processing. Previous research has largely focused on older autistic children and adolescents with average language and cognition. The present study used an eye‐gaze task to evaluate predictive language processing among 3‐ to 4‐year‐old autistic children (n = 34) and 1.5‐ to 3‐year‐old, language‐matched neurotypical (NT) children (n = 34). Children viewed images (e.g., a cake and a ball) and heard sentences with informative verbs (e.g., Eat the cake) or neutral verbs (e.g., Find the cake). Analyses of children's looking behaviors indicated that young autistic children, like their language‐matched NT peers, engaged in predictive language processing. Regression results revealed a significant effect of diagnostic group, when statistically controlling for age differences. The NT group displayed larger difference scores between the informative and neutral verb conditions (in looks to target nouns) compared to the ASD group. Receptive language measures were predictive of looking behavior across time for both groups, such that children with stronger language skills were more efficient in making use of informative verbs to process upcoming information. Taken together, these results suggest that young autistic children can engage in predictive processing though further research is warranted to explore the developmental trajectory relative to NT development. Lay Summary This study found that 3‐ to 4‐year‐old autistic children and younger, language‐matched neurotypical (NT) children both used verbs to predict upcoming nouns in sentences like “Eat the cake.” For both autistic and NT children, those with stronger language skills were able to predict upcoming nouns more quickly.

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“…By requiring that infants look at, or even point to, something to demonstrate understanding, standard behavioral measures may be insufficient to capture infants' emerging representations of words that may not have direct visual associates (Wojcik et al, under review). When presenting only two-dimensional images, or even videos (e.g., Syrnyk & Meints, 2017) of intended referents, highly-controlled lab-based experiments generally lack the richness and diversity of infants' real-world language environments (Nastase et al, 2020;Reuter et al, 2021;Tamis-LeMonda et al, 2017) and may therefore eliminate connections to socio-emotional, pragmatic, or contextual information and other cues that are useful for word recognition. The low-dimensionality of common lab-based measures may be especially problematic for everyday words, which by their routine-based nature may be tied to less-visible situational factors, such as affective state (e.g., uh-oh is likely to be produced under more dramatic circumstances than many concrete nouns, Ponari et al, 2018) or event timing (e.g., uh-oh is likely to coincide with salient event transitions, such as when the child falls, hi is likely to occur when a new interaction begins, which creates opportunities for learning during moments of heightened attention, Kosie & Baldwin, 2019) Furthermore, early word knowledge may be highly idiosyncratic, as evidenced by the cross-household variability observed in our study, making it difficult to capture early comprehension with one standard set of stimuli.…”

Section: Limitations Of Lab-based Measures Of Word Comprehensionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Moving beyond "nouns in the lab": Using naturalistic data to understand why infants' first words include uh-oh and hi

Casey¹,

Potter²,

Lew‐Williams³

et al. 2021

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Why do infants learn some words earlier than others? To explain how and when words are learned, existing theories of word learning prioritize visual information and draw mainly on lab-based studies of noun-to-object mapping. However, words that are more abstract than object nouns, such as uh-oh, hi, more, up, and all-gone, are typically among the first to appear in infants' vocabularies. We combined a behavioral experiment with naturalistic observational research to explore how infants learn and represent this understudied category of high-frequency, routine-based non-nouns, which we term ‘everyday words’. In Study 1, we found that conventional eye-tracking measures of comprehension were insufficient to capture 10- to 16-month-old infants' emerging understanding of everyday words. In Study 2, we analyzed the visual and social scenes surrounding caregivers' and infants' use of everyday words in a naturalistic video corpus. This ecologically-motivated research revealed that everyday words rarely co-occurred with consistent visual referents, making their early learnability difficult to reconcile with dominant word learning theories. Our findings instead point to complex patterns in the types of situations associated with everyday words that could contribute to their early representation in infants’ vocabularies. By leveraging both experimental and observational methods, this investigation underscores the value of using naturalistic data to broaden theories of early learning.

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Adults and children predict in complex and variable referential contexts

Cited by 16 publications

References 58 publications

The development of spoken word recognition in informative and uninformative sentence contexts

The development of spoken word recognition in informative and uninformative sentence contexts

Predictive language processing in young autistic children

Moving beyond "nouns in the lab": Using naturalistic data to understand why infants' first words include uh-oh and hi

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