The Utility of Cognitive Plausibility in Language Acquisition Modeling: Evidence From Word Segmentation

Research has suggested that Danish-learning children lag behind in early language acquisition. The phenomenon has been attributed to the opaque phonetic structure of Danish, which features an unusually large number of non-consonantal sounds (i.e., vowels and semivowels/glides). The large amount of vocalic sounds in speech is thought to provide fewer cues to word segmentation and to make language processing harder, thus hindering the acquisition process. In this study, we explored whether the presence of vocalic sounds at word boundaries impedes real-time speech processing in 24-month-old Danish-learning children, compared to word boundaries that are marked by consonantal sounds. Using eye-tracking, we tested children’s real-time comprehension of known consonant-initial and vowel-initial words, when presented in either a consonant-final carrier phrase or in a vowel-final carrier phrase, thus resulting in the four boundary types C#C, C#V, V#C, and V#V. Our results showed that the presence of vocalic sounds around a word boundary—especially before—impedes processing of Danish child-directed sentences.

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How Does Early Brain Organization Promote Language Acquisition in Humans?

European Review ◽

10.1017/s1062798708000513 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 16 (4) ◽

pp. 399-411 ◽

Cited By ~ 16

Author(s):

G. Dehaene-Lambertz ◽

L. Hertz-Pannier ◽

J. Dubois ◽

S. Dehaene

Keyword(s):

Language Acquisition ◽

Language Learning ◽

Speech Processing ◽

Functional Organization ◽

Word Segmentation ◽

First Year ◽

Brain Organization ◽

Verbal Stimuli ◽

Neuro Imaging ◽

First Year Of Life

Speech processing in adults relies on precise and specialized networks, located primarily in the left hemisphere. Behavioural studies in infants indicate that a considerable amount of language learning already takes place in the first year of life in the domains of phonology, prosody, and word segmentation. Thanks to the progress of neuro-imaging, we can move beyond behavioural methods and examine how the infant’s brain processes verbal stimuli before learning. These studies reveal a structural and functional organization close to what is described in adults and suggest a strong bias for speech processing in these regions that might guide infants in the discovery of the properties of their native language, although no evidence can be provided as yet for speech specificity of such networks.

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Natural Infant-Directed Speech Facilitates Neural Tracking of Prosody

10.31234/osf.io/dnkg2 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Katharina Menn ◽

Christine Michel ◽

Lars Meyer ◽

Stefanie Hoehl ◽

Claudia Männel

Keyword(s):

Language Acquisition ◽

Frequency Band ◽

Low Frequency ◽

Word Segmentation ◽

Stress Rate ◽

Continuous Speech ◽

Novel Objects ◽

Speech Envelope ◽

Natural Interactions ◽

As If

Infants prefer to be addressed with infant-directed speech (IDS). IDS benefits language acquisition through amplified low-frequency amplitude modulations. It has been reported that this amplification increases electrophysiological tracking of IDS compared to adult-directed speech (ADS). It is still unknown which particular frequency band triggers this effect. Here, we compare tracking at the rates of syllables and prosodic stress, which are both critical to word segmentation and recognition. In mother-infant dyads (n=30), mothers described novel objects to their 9-month-olds while infants' EEG was recorded. For IDS, mothers were instructed to speak to their children as they typically do, while for ADS, mothers described the objects as if speaking with an adult. Phonetic analyses confirmed that pitch features were more prototypically infant-directed in the IDS-condition compared to the ADS-condition. Neural tracking of speech was assessed by speech-brain coherence, which measures the synchronization between speech envelope and EEG. Results revealed significant speech-brain coherence at both syllabic and prosodic stress rates, indicating that infants track speech in IDS and ADS at both rates. We found significantly higher speech-brain coherence for IDS compared to ADS in the prosodic stress rate but not the syllabic rate. This indicates that the IDS benefit arises primarily from enhanced prosodic stress. Thus, neural tracking is sensitive to parents’ speech adaptations during natural interactions, possibly facilitating higher-level inferential processes such as word segmentation from continuous speech.

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Offline segmentation and online language processing units

Written Language & Literacy ◽

10.1075/wll.15.2.03vel ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 15 (2) ◽

pp. 165-184 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Dorina Veldhuis ◽

Jeanne Kurvers

Keyword(s):

Language Acquisition ◽

Language Processing ◽

Significant Influence ◽

Primary Schools ◽

Word Segmentation ◽

Metalinguistic Awareness ◽

Clear Cut ◽

Developmental Psycholinguistics ◽

Linguistic Units ◽

Opening Up

Although metalinguistic (‘offline’) awareness of words as linguistic units has been related to literacy, it is still uncertain whether literacy also affects the units of language that people process unconsciously (‘online’). In this contribution, we first discuss the characteristics of offline and online tasks, opening up the perspective that such tasks vary in nature along a continuum ranging from more offline to more online. Subsequently, we present a study employing three relatively more offline and two more online tasks which we conducted among 83 preliterate and 121 literate children at Dutch primary schools. The results of the more offline tasks reveal a significant influence of literacy on segmentation along word-boundaries, while the results from the relatively more online tasks are less clear-cut with respect to the way in which literacy affects language processing. Keywords: literacy; language acquisition; metalinguistic awareness; online and offline task; word-segmentation; language processing; developmental psycholinguistics; Dutch

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Modeling the contribution of phonotactic cues to the problem of word segmentation

Journal of Child Language ◽

10.1017/s030500090999050x ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 37 (3) ◽

pp. 487-511 ◽

Cited By ~ 16

Author(s):

DANIEL BLANCHARD ◽

JEFFREY HEINZ ◽

ROBERTA GOLINKOFF

Keyword(s):

Language Acquisition ◽

Computational Model ◽

Experimental Research ◽

Computational Models ◽

Word Segmentation ◽

Experimental Results ◽

Speech Segmentation ◽

Advantages And Disadvantages ◽

Language Universal ◽

Segmentation Models

ABSTRACTHow do infants find the words in the speech stream? Computational models help us understand this feat by revealing the advantages and disadvantages of different strategies that infants might use. Here, we outline a computational model of word segmentation that aims both to incorporate cues proposed by language acquisition researchers and to establish the contributions different cues can make to word segmentation. We present experimental results from modified versions of Venkataraman's (2001) segmentation model that examine the utility of: (1) language-universal phonotactic cues; (2) language-specific phonotactic cues which must be learned while segmenting utterances; and (3) their combination. We show that the language-specific cue improves segmentation performance overall, but the language-universal phonotactic cue does not, and that their combination results in the most improvement. Not only does this suggest that language-specific constraints can be learned simultaneously with speech segmentation, but it is also consistent with experimental research that shows that there are multiple phonotactic cues helpful to segmentation (e.g. Mattys, Jusczyk, Luce & Morgan, 1999; Mattys & Jusczyk, 2001). This result also compares favorably to other segmentation models (e.g. Brent, 1999; Fleck, 2008; Goldwater, 2007; Johnson & Goldwater, 2009; Venkataraman, 2001) and has implications for how infants learn to segment.

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When Too Many Vowels Impede Language Processing: An Eye-Tracking Study of Danish-Learning Children

Language and Speech ◽

10.1177/0023830919893390 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 63 (4) ◽

pp. 898-918

Author(s):

Fabio Trecca ◽

Dorthe Bleses ◽

Anders Højen ◽

Thomas O Madsen ◽

Morten H Christiansen

Keyword(s):

Language Acquisition ◽

Eye Tracking ◽

Real Time ◽

Language Processing ◽

Speech Processing ◽

Word Segmentation ◽

Word Boundary ◽

Early Language ◽

Acquisition Process ◽

Word Boundaries

Research has suggested that Danish-learning children lag behind in early language acquisition. The phenomenon has been attributed to the opaque phonetic structure of Danish, which features an unusually large number of non-consonantal sounds (i.e., vowels and semivowels/glides). The large number of vocalic sounds in speech is thought to provide fewer cues to word segmentation and to make language processing harder, thus hindering the acquisition process. In this study, we explored whether the presence of vocalic sounds at word boundaries impedes real-time speech processing in 24-month-old Danish-learning children, compared to word boundaries that are marked by consonantal sounds. Using eye-tracking, we tested children’s real-time comprehension of known consonant-initial and vowel-initial words when presented in either a consonant-final carrier phrase or in a vowel-final carrier phrase, thus resulting in the four boundary types C#C, C#V, V#C, and V#V. Our results showed that the presence of vocalic sounds around a word boundary—especially before—impedes processing of Danish child-directed sentences.

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The traceback method in child language acquisition research: identifying patterns in early speech

Language and Cognition ◽

10.1017/langcog.2021.1 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-27

Author(s):

STEFAN HARTMANN ◽

NIKOLAS KOCH ◽

ANTJE ENDESFELDER QUICK

Keyword(s):

Language Acquisition ◽

Language Learning ◽

Child Language ◽

First Language ◽

First Language Acquisition ◽

Test Corpus ◽

Child Language Acquisition ◽

Early Speech ◽

Cognitive Plausibility

abstract This paper discusses the traceback method, which has been the basis of some influential papers on first language acquisition. The method sets out to demonstrate that many or even all utterances in a test corpus (usually the last two sessions of recording) can be accounted for with the help of recurrent fixed strings (like What’s that?) or frame-and-slot patterns (like [What’s X?]) that can also be identified in the remaining dataset (i.e., the previous sessions of recording). This is taken as evidence that language learning is much more item-based than previously assumed. In the present paper we sketch the development of the method over the last two decades, and discuss its relation to usage-based theory, as well as the cognitive plausibility of its components, and we highlight both its potential and its limitations.

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Is there a bilingual disadvantage for word segmentation? A computational modeling approach

Journal of Child Language ◽

10.1017/s0305000921000568 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-28

Author(s):

Laia FIBLA ◽

Nuria SEBASTIAN-GALLES ◽

Alejandrina CRISTIA

Keyword(s):

Language Acquisition ◽

Young Children ◽

Computational Modeling ◽

Word Segmentation ◽

Computational Results ◽

Modeling Approaches ◽

Modeling Approach ◽

Segmentation Algorithms ◽

Language Effects ◽

Bilingual Corpora

Abstract Since there are no systematic pauses delimiting words in speech, the problem of word segmentation is formidable even for monolingual infants. We use computational modeling to assess whether word segmentation is substantially harder in a bilingual than a monolingual setting. Seven algorithms representing different cognitive approaches to segmentation are applied to transcriptions of naturalistic input to young children, carefully processed to generate perfectly matched monolingual and bilingual corpora. We vary the overlap in phonology and lexicon experienced by modeling exposure to languages that are more similar (Catalan and Spanish) or more different (English and Spanish). We find that the greatest variation in performance is due to different segmentation algorithms and the second greatest to language, with bilingualism having effects that are smaller than both algorithm and language effects. Implications of these computational results for experimental and modeling approaches to language acquisition are discussed.

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When too many vowels impede language processing: An eye-tracking study of Danish-learning children

10.31234/osf.io/qhnyj ◽

2019 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Fabio Trecca ◽

Dorthe Bleses ◽

Anders Højen ◽

Thomas O. Madsen ◽

Morten H. Christiansen

Keyword(s):

Language Acquisition ◽

Eye Tracking ◽

Real Time ◽

Language Processing ◽

Speech Processing ◽

Word Segmentation ◽

Word Boundary ◽

Early Language ◽

Acquisition Process ◽

Word Boundaries

Research has suggested that Danish-learning children lag behind in early language acquisition. The phenomenon has been attributed to the opaque phonetic structure of Danish, which features an unusually large number of non-consonantal sounds (i.e., vowels and semivowels/glides). The large amount of vocalic sounds in speech is thought to provide fewer cues to word segmentation and to make language processing harder, thus hindering the acquisition process. In this study, we explored whether the presence of vocalic sounds at word boundaries impedes real-time speech processing in 24-month-old Danish-learning children, compared to word boundaries that are marked by consonantal sounds. Using eye-tracking, we tested children’s real-time comprehension of known consonant-initial and vowel-initial words, when presented in either a consonant-final carrier phrase or in a vowel-final carrier phrase, thus resulting in the four boundary types C#C, C#V, V#C, and V#V. Our results showed that the presence of vocalic sounds around a word boundary—especially before—impedes processing of Danish child-directed sentences.

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The bottleneck may be the solution, not the problem

Behavioral and Brain Sciences ◽

10.1017/s0140525x15000886 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 39 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Arnon Lotem ◽

Oren Kolodny ◽

Joseph Y. Halpern ◽

Luca Onnis ◽

Shimon Edelman

Keyword(s):

Working Memory ◽

Language Acquisition ◽

Recent Theory ◽

Cognitive Mechanisms ◽

Selection Pressures ◽

Biological Trait ◽

Memory Bottleneck

AbstractAs a highly consequential biological trait, a memory “bottleneck” cannot escape selection pressures. It must therefore co-evolve with other cognitive mechanisms rather than act as an independent constraint. Recent theory and an implemented model of language acquisition suggest that a limit on working memory may evolve to help learning. Furthermore, it need not hamper the use of language for communication.

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