2-114 - Individual differences in language: The role of in-the-moment processes

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Individual differences in early language are predictive of later language, as well as other cognitive and social abilities. Although these predictive relations are well established, less is known about the pathways through which these relations emerge. Because language acquisition results from many individual learning instances, this symposium looks at online mechanisms that influence multiple cognitive domains to understand how language skills have such far-reaching effects on developmental outcomes.

The first talk examines how words affect visual processing, showing that it depends on how strongly semantic representations are linked to words; children with larger vocabularies process visual information more quickly if they are provided with a linguistic cue, which is not true for children with smaller vocabularies. The second talk looks at the ability to disengage attention from one stimulus to the next, showing that children who can quickly disengage from a visual stimulus are faster at orienting to the referent of a word; in ASD children, this relationship further predicts vocabulary size. The third talk examines multiple time-scales of word learning, providing evidence that children with language delays have difficulties with online processing: they show larger deficits on tasks that require in-the-moment integration of information.

Taken together, these talks underscore the importance of understanding the online mechanisms that give rise to individual differences in language, and how those have cascading consequences affecting later outcomes. The discussant, an expert on both online processing and language learning, will discuss the implications of these results to understand typical and atypical language acquisition.

Sub Unit

• Attention, Learning, Memory

Chair

• Catarina Vales, Carnegie Mellon University

Discussant

• Amy M Lieberman, Boston University

Individual Presentations

• The words they know: Individual differences in how language affects visual processing - Presenting Author: Catarina Vales, Carnegie Mellon University; Linda Smith, Indiana University

• Visual Disengagement Relates to Familiar Word Recognition in Children with and without Autism - Presenting Author: Courtney E Venker, University of Wisconsin–Madison

• Timescales of word learning in children with language delays - Presenting Author: Sarah Kucker, The University of Wisconsin Oshkosh