Project Descriptions: Language Acquisition
Effects of variable input on word learning and word recognition in infants
Collaborative Research Centre (SFB 1287): Limits of Variability in Language: Cognitive, Grammatical, and Social Aspects
Language is highly variable. Individuals can utter quite diverse linguistic structures and are able to assign different meanings to them. However, variability has its limits. It is exactly these limits that the Collaborative Research Centre "Limits of Variability in Language: Cognitive, Grammatical, and Social Aspects" will investigate. The notion variability is conceived of as a space of potential – partly unconscious – linguistic decisions, which are available to an individual or a speaker community. Limits surface in cases when specific linguistic behaviour occurs relatively consistently, even across languages and language communities. The activities of the SFB will gain new insights into the structure of the language system.
Project coordination: Isabell Wartenburger
Principal investigators: Barbara Höhle, Adamantios Gafos (project C03)
Funding source:German Research Foundation, DFG
Funding period: 2017 – 2025
Project website: www.uni-potsdam.de/sfb1287
The sensitive period for associative learning of non-adjacent dependencies in verbal and non-verbal material
Research Unit 2253: Crossing the borders: The interplay of language, cognition, and the brain in early human development
To be able to effortlessly learn their native language within just a few years, young children must be equipped with remarkable language learning abilities. The ability to extract and generalize abstract rules between non-adjacent elements in predictive sequences is present very early in life. Already 3- to 4-month-old infants can discriminate grammatical and ungrammatical dependencies following only brief exposure. In contrast, adults only showed grammar learning when they performed an explicit grammaticality judgment task, but not under passive listening. This leads to the question of the differences between infant and adult learning. It has been proposed that the delayed maturation of the prefrontal cortex, supporting cognitive control in the adult brain but not yet fully functional in early development, is a major determinant of infant compared to adult learning. Thus, in infants, associative learning rooted in temporal cortices may work, unsupervised by cognitive control, more effectively than in adults.
We will determine when during children’s first three years of life the switch from associative to more controlled learning occurs. Moreover, we will reveal whether the learning of non-adjacent dependencies follows the same trajectories in the linguistic (Italian as non-native language) and non-linguistic (tone sequences) domain. Parallel findings in both domains as a function of age would suggest a domain-general change of the learning mechanism during development.
Project coordination: Barbara Höhle
Principal investigators: Barbara Höhle, Angela Friederici (MPI Leipzig) (project P1)
Funding source:German Research Foundation, DFG
Funding period: 2015 – 2022
Project website:www.crossing-project.de
Perceptual narrowing in speech and face recognition in infants
Research Unit 2253: Crossing the borders: The interplay of language, cognition, and the brain in early human development
Perceptual narrowing is characterized by a fast attunement of discriminatory abilities to specific sensory input that infants encounter in their daily life. This process corresponds to declining discrimination for stimuli not present or relevant in the environment of the infant. Perceptual narrowing has been studied especially for face and speech discrimination and indicated similar developmental trajectories. However, infants' face and speech processing has almost been studied separately. Therefore, the aim of the project is to investigate the perceptual narrowing during the first year of life in an interdisciplinary approach regarding the processing of visual and auditory modalities. Central research questions are whether the mechanisms of face and speech discrimination rely on a domain-general or on a domain-specific processing, and whether there are differences in conditions of modifying perceptual narrowing in speech and face recognition at an age in which perceptual narrowing seems to be set. Specially, we focus on the recognition of own-race vs. other-race faces, the discrimination of speech sounds, and the face and voice matches. Developmental changes will be measured with eye-tracking and ERPs to gain insights into whether the same mechanisms are involved in the processing of information in the different domains. To investigate these mechanisms we conduct two series of studies. The first series will focus on the timing and strength of perceptual narrowing of face and speech recognition in a longitudinal and cross-sectional study with infants between the ages of 6 and 9 months. The second series will focus on the feasibility of modifying the perceptual narrowing and its conditions at a later age (9 and 12 months).
Project coordination: Barbara Höhle
Principal investigators: Barbara Höhle, Gudrun Schwarzer (Gießen) (project P6)
Funding source:German Research Foundation, DFG
Funding period: 2015 – 2022
Project website:www.crossing-project.de