Intersubjectivity in communication
We study learning and acquisition, mostly with the help of electrophysiological techniques. We are interested in understanding factors underlying and facilitating acquisition of vocabulary, categories and aspects of grammar. Most of our work is at present focused on normal development but we hope to be able to elucidate some aspects of developmental disorders. We collaborate with other parts of the CCL and with researchers at other universities.
1. Early word learning and conceptual development
This research aims to investigate neural correlates of early word learning and conceptual development in young children, particularly 1- to 2-year-olds who are just beginning to acquire language. Fundamental questions of interest are: What happens in the brain of young children as they are familiarized with novel objects and are taught novel words for these objects? What mechanisms are important for the child’s ability to efficiently establish the necessary associations? We also intend to study how newly learned words are generalized to new instances of the same category. Which aspects of an object do children attend to in order to create a general representation? Are for example local details and global shape differentially weighted, and how do these processes develop with age and maturation of other cognitive abilities? We will also look specifically at the relation between language development and different aspects of object recognition.
2. Electrophysiological aspects on long-term memory in infancy
Behavioral methods such as deferred imitation have been used to describe declarative memory functioning long before children can give verbal responses. The main goal of the planned project is to further study the observed individual variation in early memory through electrophysiological responses reflecting encoding or recall processes. Thus, we plan to measure event-related potentials (ERPs) and deferred imitation at both 9 and 14 months. In addition, data on central background factors or possible covariates will also be collected (e.g., gestural communication, language, and visual recognition). This is a collaboration with researchers at Linköping university.
3. Effects of variation on category learning
This study will investigate electrophysiological effects of exemplar variation and spacing on semantic category learning. Participants will learn novel labels for novel object categories, based on massed or spaced presentations of either identical or different category exemplars. Research on declarative memory indicates that greater familiarity and repetition may lead to suppressed encoding and that both inductive learning and recall are improved by spaced learning. These processes will now be studied in a semantic learning context in adults. The results may have implications for lexical acquisition and conceptual development, and the ambition is to later on use the design to investigate category learning in early childhood.
4. Grammar learning and language impairment.
The project will use ERPs to investigate the dynamics of learning as 5-7-year-old children with SLI and controls acquire grammatical patterns (artificial grammar learning). We also wish to investigate the role of auditory discrimination in grammar learning. This project is a collaboration with researchers in Norway.
Sidansvarig: Eva Sjöstrand Webbansvarig: webmaster
Ansvarig enhet: Språk- och litteraturcentrum
Uppdaterad: 2012-11-06