3-236 - Linguistic and Cognitive Representations of Information Access

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Children can access information through different experiences (e.g., visual perception, communication, inference) that themselves vary in reliability. Furthermore, children are exposed to human languages that encode information access through different devices (e.g., in some languages, through verbs such as look/see, tell/hear, figure out; in others, through evidential morphemes that encode related kinds of meaning). This symposium brings together researchers who study how the linguistic means to encode information access are learned, and how the non-linguistic understanding of knowledge, its sources and reliability develops. This approach creates a unique opportunity to integrate traditionally separate strands of cognitive and linguistic research, and to draw new connections between an abstract epistemic aspect of language and cognition.

Paper 1 examines cross-linguistic patterns in how information access is morphologically encoded, finding that those types of access that are most consistently encoded across languages are also the easiest to learn in artificial language learning studies. Paper 2 explores how children understand the meaning of perception verbs such as look and see if used by a blind person. Paper 3 probes children’s understanding that communicators can be more or less credible introducing a novel individual-differences perspective. Taken together, these studies present creative approaches to the study of the processes that guide the conceptualization of information access and credibility and shape language acquisition. The discussion will be led by an expert in the study of how evidence and information access connect to the child’s developing language and theory of mind.

Sub Unit

• Language, Communication

Chair

• Anna Papafragou, University of Delaware

Discussant

• Jill de Villiers, Smith College

Individual Presentations

• Acquiring Evidential Systems: Evidence From an Artificial Language Learning Experiment - Presenting Author: Dionysia Saratsli, University of Delaware; Non-Presenting Author: Stefan Bartell, University of Delaware; Non-Presenting Author: Anna Papafragou, University of Delaware

• How do Young Children Think the Blind See? - Presenting Author: Giulia V. Elli, Johns Hopkins University; Non-Presenting Author: Marina Bedny, Johns Hopkins University; Non-Presenting Author: Barbara Landau, Johns Hopkins University

• Inferring What Others Know: The Role of a Speaker’s Epistemic Credentials - Presenting Author: Katherine Ridge, University of Minnesota; Non-Presenting Author: Fred Rogosch, University of Rochester; Non-Presenting Author: Dante Cicchetti, University of Minnesota; Non-Presenting Author: Melissa A Koenig, Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota