Infants' Visual Experiences During Noun and Verb Learning

• In Event: Poster Session 07
  In Poster Session: PS 07 Topic - Attention, Learning, Memory

Abstract

Nouns and verbs enter the early lexicon differently and are learned at different rates in the early stage of language development (Gentner 1982). Specifically, nouns are learned more in the vocabulary growth spurt at 19 months while verbs are learned significantly around 20-24 months (Ferguson, Graf, Waxman 2014; Waxman, Liaz, Braun, Lavin 2009). The potential differences in the nature of noun learning and verb learning have been proposed, and the major explanations include how noun acquisition is perceptually and linguistically different (Gentner 1982; Gentner 2001; Gogate and Maganti 2017; Gogate and Holich 2016, Horvath and Arunachalam 2019). However, the underlying processes relevant to the difference in noun and verb learning are not fully understood. In the present study, we used head cameras on infants and parents to document the way in which nouns and verbs are introduced to a child during social interactions with an adult.
Twenty-two infant-parent dyads (4.0-18.3 mos, High/Medium SES English monolinguals) participated in the present study. In the observational parent-infant play situation, parents were asked to engage their infant in a series of 40-second play trials with a set of 8 toys. Infants and parents wear a head-mounted eye-tracker that records the participant’s momentary head direction and eye gaze within that scene. A wall-mounted camera records the task scene and the parent’s voice. Videos were recorded in sync and later merged into a single file for manual annotation. To study perceptual experiences during name learning, we followed head-camera studies that showed in social-object-play, objects are shown in a way to create an optimal view of one object and parents actively name objects at those moments (Yoshida and Burling 2013). We counted these optimal visual naming moments (OVNM), and other play behaviors relevant to word learning such as object holding, sustained attention, joint attention, and target noun and verb use.
The results suggest that infants look at objects in the optimal viewing framework and have joint attention experience with the parent significantly more in the noun learning context whereas parents hold objects significantly more frequently in the verb learning context. Also, the results further indicate the infant’s age effect on the parents’ object holding behaviors. The parent’s object holding decreases overtime as their infants learn to better manipulate the toy objects. The results confirmed potentially different learning experiences supporting different word learning processes for nouns and verbs.
The perceptual perspective hypotheses were the most likely explanation for the differences in OVNM while the social context was linked to the joint attention difference and the linguistic context was correlated to the number of target words spoken during the play session (Gentner 1982; Gentner 2001; Gogate and Maganti 2017; Gogate and Holich 2016). The increased hand-holding in the verb trial provides a possible different function for object holding. The present talk focuses on long post-birth developmental periods, specifically in the context of infant-parent interaction and the role of parents’ object play in infant’s early word learning experiences.

Authors

• Nikita Yashodhan Gidh, University of Houston
  Presenting Author

• Hanako Yoshida, University of Houston
  Non-Presenting Author

• Lichao Sun, University of Houston
  Non-Presenting Author

• Giang Le, University of Houston
  Non-Presenting Author