Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T06:02:55.118Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

How do infants build a semantic system?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2014

Suzy J. Styles  and
Kim Plunkett
Suzy J. Styles*
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
Kim Plunkett
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
*
Correspondence address: Suzy Styles, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1-3UD, UK. E-mail: suzy.styles@psy.ox.ac.uk.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Do infants learn their early words in semantic isolation? Or do they integrate new words into an inter-connected semantic system? In an infant-friendly adaptation of the adult lexical priming paradigm, infants at 18 and 24 months-of-age heard two words in quick succession. The noun-pairs were either related or unrelated. Following the onset of the target word, two pictures were presented, one of which depicted the target. Eye movements revealed that both age groups comprehended the target word. In addition, 24-month-olds demonstrated primed picture looking in two measures of comprehension: Named target pictures preceded by a related word pair took longer to disengage from and attracted more looking overall. The finding of enhanced target recognition demonstrates the emergence of semantic organisation by the end of the second year.

Keywords

lexical primingsemantic networksvocabulary developmentlanguage acquisitionlexical comprehensioninfancy
Type
Research Article
Information
Language and Cognition , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , March 2009 , pp. 1 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © UK Cognitive Linguistics Association 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anderson, John R. 1983. A spreading activation theory of memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 22. 261–295.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Antos, Stephen J. 1979. Processing facilitation in a lexical decision task. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 5. 527–545.Google Scholar
Aslin, Richard. 2007. What's in a look? Developmental Science 10. 48–53.Google Scholar
Benedict, Helen. 1979. Early lexical development: Comprehension and production. Journal of Child Language 6. 183–200.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bloom, Paul. 2002. How children learn the meanings of words. Cambridge, MA & London, UK: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Bretherton, Inge, McNew, Sandra, Snyder, Lynn & Bates, Elizabeth. 1983. Individual differences at 20 months: Analytic and holistic strategies in language acquisition. Journal of Child Language 10. 293–320.Google Scholar
Canfield, Richard L., Smith, Elliott G., Brezsnyak, Michael P. & Snow, Kyle L.. 1997. Information processing through the first year of life: A longitudinal study using the visual expectation paradigm. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 62. 1–170.Google Scholar
Collins, Allan M. & Loftus, Elizabeth F.. 1975. A spreading–activation theory of semantic processing. Psychological Review 82. 407–428.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cree, George S. & McRae, Ken. 2003. Analyzing the factors underlying the structure and computation of the meaning of chipmunk, cherry, chisel, cheese and cello (and many other such concrete nouns). Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 132. 163–201.Google Scholar
Federmeier, Kara D. & Kutas, Marta. 1999. A rose by any other name: Long-term memory structure and sentence processing. Journal of Memory and Language 41. 469–495.Google Scholar
Fenson, Larry, Dale, Philip S., Reznick, J. Stephen, Bates, Elizabeth, Thal, Donna J. & Pethick, Stephen J.. 1994. Variability in early communicative development. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 59. 1–173.Google Scholar
Fernald, Anne, Pinto, John P., Weinberg, Amy & McRoberts, Gerald. 1998. Rapid gains in speed of verbal processing by infants in the 2nd year. Psychological Science 9. 228–231.Google Scholar
Fernald, Anne, Swingley, Daniel & Pinto, John P.. 2001. When halfa word is enough: Infants can recognize spoken words using partial phonetic information. Child Development 72. 1003–1015.Google Scholar
Friedrich, Manuela & Friederici, Angela D.. 2004. N400–like semantic incongruity efect in 19-month-olds: Processing known words in picture contexts. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 16. 1465–1477.Google Scholar
Friedrich, Manuela & Friederici, Angela D.. 2005a. Lexical priming and semantic integration reflected in the event–related potential of 14-month-olds. Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology 16. 653–656.Google Scholar
Friedrich, Manuela & Friederici, Angela D.. 2005b. Semantic sentence processing reflected in the event-related potentials of one- and two-year-old children. Neuroreport 16. 1801–1804.Google Scholar
Golinkoff, Roberta Michnick, Hirsh-Pasek, Kathryn, Cauley, Kathleen M. & Gordon, Laura. 1987. The eyes have it: Lexical and syntactic comprehension in a new paradigm. Journal of Child Language 14. 23–45.Google Scholar
Halberda, Justin. 2003. The development of a word-learning strategy. Cognition 87. B23–B34.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hamilton, Antonia, Plunkett, Kim & Schafer, Graham. 2000. Infant vocabulary development assessed with a British communicative development inventory. Journal of Child Language 27. 689–705.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hashimoto, Naomi, McGregor, Karla K. & Graham, Anne. 2007. Conceptual organisation at 6 and 8 years of age: Evidence from the semantic priming of object decisions. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 50. 161–176.Google Scholar
Heinze, Hans-Jochen, Muente, Thomas-Frank & Kutas, Marta. 1998. Context effects in a category verification task as assessed by event-related brain potential (ERP) measures. Biological Psychology 47. 121–135.Google Scholar
Hills, Thomas, Maouene, Maunir, Maouene, Josita, Sheya, Adam & Smith, Linda B.. 2008. Is there preferential attachment in the growth of early semantic networks. In Love, B. C., McRae, K. & Sloutsky, V. M. (eds.), Proceedings of the 30th annual conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 155–160. Washington, DC: Cognitive Science Society.Google Scholar
Huettig, Falk & Altmann, Gerry T. M.. 2005. Word meaning and the control of eye fixation: Semantic competitor effects and the visual world paradigm. Cognition 96. B23–B32.Google Scholar
Huettig, Falk & McQueen, James M.. 2007. The tug of war between phonological, semantic and shape information in language-mediated visual search. Journal of Memory and Language 57. 460–482.Google Scholar
Kamide, Yuki, Altmann, Gerry T. M. & Haywood, Sarah L.. 2001. The time-course of prediction in incremental sentence processing: Evidence from anticipatory eye movements. Journal of Memory and Language 40. 133–156.Google Scholar
Krackow, Elisa & Gordon, Peter. 1998. Are lions and tigers substitutes or associates? Evidence against the slot filler accounts of children's early categorization. Child Development 69. 347–354.Google Scholar
Kutas, Marta & Hillyard, Steven A.. 1980. Event-related brain potentials to semantically inappropriate and surprisingly large words. Biological Psychology 11. 99–116.Google Scholar
Mani, Nivedita & Plunkett, Kim. 2007. Phonological specificity of consonants and vowels in early lexical representations. Journal of Memory and Language 57. 252–272.Google Scholar
Markman, Ellen M. 1989. Categorization and naming in children. Cambridge: MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
McCauley, Charley, Weil, Carolyne M. & Sperber, Richard D.. 1976. The development of memory structure as reflected by semantic-priming effects. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 22. 511–518.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McNamara, Timothy P. 2005. Semantic priming: Perspectives from memory and word recognition. London: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
McRae, Ken, de Sa, Virginia R. & Seidenberg, Mark S.. 1997. On the nature and scope of featural representations of word meaning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 126. 99–130.Google Scholar
Meints, Kerstin, Plunkett, Kim & Harris, Paul. 1999. When does an ostrich become a bird? The role of typicality in early word comprehension. Developmental Psychology 35. 1072–1078.Google Scholar
Merriman, William E. & Bowman, Laura L.. 1989. The mutual exclusivity bias in children's word learning. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 54. 1–132.Google Scholar
Meyer, D. E. & Schvaneveldt, R. W.. 1971. Facilitation in recognising pairs of words: Evidence of a dependence between retrieval operations. Journal of Experimental Psychology 90. 227–234.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Miller, George A. 1995. WordNet: An on–line lexical database. International Journal of Lexicography 3.Google Scholar
Moss, Helen E., McCormick, Samantha F. & Tyler, Lorraine K.. 1997. The time course of activation of semantic information during spoken word recognition. Language and Cognitive Processes 12. 695–731.Google Scholar
Moss, Helen E. & Older, Lianne. 1996. Birkbeck Word Association Norms. Hove, UK: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Moss, Helen E., Ostrin, Ruth K., Tyler, Lorraine K. & Marslen-Wilson, William D.. 1995. Accessing diferent types of lexical semantic information: Evidence from priming. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition 21. 863–883.Google Scholar
Nation, Kate & Snowling, Margaret J.. 1999. Developmental differences in sensitivity to semantic relations among good and poor comprehenders: Evidence from semantic priming. Cognition 70. B1–B13.Google Scholar
Nelson, Douglas L., McEvoy, Cathy L. & Schreiber, Thomas A.. 1998. The University of South Florida word association, rhyme, and word fragment norms. http://www.usf.edu/FreeAssociation/.Google Scholar
Raajmakers, Jeroen G. W. 2003. A further look at the “Language-as-a-fixed-effect Fallacy”. Canadian Journal of Psychology 57. 141–151.Google Scholar
Raajmakers, Jeroen G. W., Schrijnemakers, Joseph M. C. & Gremmen, Frans. 1999. How to deal with the “Language-as-a-fixed-effect fallacy”: Common misconceptions and alternative solutions. Journal of Memory and Language 41. 416–426.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Radeau, Monique. 1983. Semantic priming between spoken words in adults and children. Canadian Journal of Psychology 4. 547–556.Google Scholar
Reznick, J. Stephen. 1990. Visual preference as a test of infant word comprehension. Applied Psycholinguistics 11. 145–166.Google Scholar
Roget, Peter Mark. 1991. Roget's thesaurus of English words and phrases. Project Guttenberg, MICRA Inc.Google Scholar
Schafer, Graham & Plunkett, Kim. 1998. Rapid word learning by 15-month-olds under tightly controlled conditions. Child Development 69. 309–320.Google Scholar
Schvaneveldt, R. W., Ackerman, Brian P. & Semlear, Teddy. 1977. The effect of semantic context on children's word recognition. Child Development 48. 612–616.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steyvers, Mark & Tenenbaum, Joshua B.. 2005. The large-scale structure of semantic networks: Statistical analyses and a model of semantic growth. Cognitive Science 29. 41–78.Google Scholar
Styles, Suzy J., Arias-Trejo, Natalia & Plunkett, Kim. 2008. Priming and lexical interference in infancy. In Love, B. C., McRae, K., and Sloutsky, V. M. (eds.), Proceedings of the 30th annual conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 651–656. Washington, DC: Cognitive Science Society.Google Scholar
Styles, Suzy J. & Plunkett, Kim. In Press. What is ‘word understanding’ for the parent of a 1-year-old? Matching the difficulty of lexical comprehension tasks to parental CDI report. Journal of Child Language.Google Scholar
Swingley, Daniel & Aslin, Richard. 2007. Lexical competition in young children's word learning. Cognitive Psychology 54. 99–132.Google Scholar
Swingley, Daniel, Pinto, John P. & Fernald, Anne. 1999. Continuous processing in word recognition at 24 months. Cognition 71. 73–108.Google Scholar
Swinney, David A. 1979. Lexical access during sentence comprehension: (Re)consideration of context effects. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behaviour 18. 645–659.Google Scholar
Tomasello, Michael & Mervis, Carolyn B.. 1994. The instrument is great, but measuring comprehension is still a problem. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 59. 174–179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Torkildsen, Jan van Koss, Syversen, Gro, Simonsen, Hanne Gram, Moen, Inger & Lindgren, Magnus. 2007. Electrophysiological correlates of auditory semantic priming in 24-month-olds. Journal of Neurolinguistics 20. 332–351.Google Scholar
White, Katherine S. & Morgan, James L.. 2008. Sub-segmental detail in early lexical representation. Journal of Memory and Language 59, 114–132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar