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Biomedical subjects

R M Golinkoff

Publications and source records attributed to R M Golinkoff.

13 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1996

Electrophysiological correlates of noun-verb processing in adults.

Auditory event related potentials (ERPs) were recorded to a series of nouns and verbs while 16 adults watched videotaped scenes. The scenes depicted an individual using objects or performing actions that were either labeled or not named by the auditorily presented nouns or verbs. Electrodes were placed over the left and right hemisphere frontal, temporal, and parietal regions of the scalp. Analyses compared ERPs elicited by words that matched or failed to match the scenes. Marked changes were noted in the ERPs recorded from electrode placements across the two hemispheres in response to words that served two different syntactic functions. This procedure is viewed as a useful technique for use with younger subject populations.

Adult↗
PubMed1996

Lexical principles may underlie the learning of verbs.

To examine whether children (mean age 34 months) can fast map and extend novel action labels to actions for which they do not already have names, the comprehension of familiar and novel verbs was tested using colored drawings of Sesame Street characters performing both familiar and unfamiliar actions. Children were asked to point to the character "verbing," from among sets of 4 drawings. With familiar words and actions, children made correct choices 97% of the time. With novel action words, children performed at levels mostly significantly above chance, selecting a previously unlabeled action or another token of a just-names action. In a second, control experiment children were asked to select an action from among the same sets of 4 drawings, but they were not given a novel action name. Here children mainly demonstrated performance at levels not significantly different from chance, showing that the results from the main experiment were attributable to the presence of a word in the request. Results of these studies are interpreted as support for the availability of principles to ease verb acquisition.

Child Development↗
PubMed1995

Infant-directed speech facilitates lexical learning in adults hearing Chinese: implications for language acquisition.

Experiments 1 and 2 examined the effects of infant-directed (ID) speech on adults' ability to learn an individual target word in sentences in an unfamiliar, non-Western language (Chinese). English-speaking adults heard pairs of sentences read by a female, native Chinese speaker in either ID or adult-directed (AD) speech. The pairs of sentences described slides of 10 common objects. The Chinese name for the object (the target word) was placed in an utterance-final position in experiment 1 (n = 61) and in a medial position in experiment 2 (n = 79). At test, each Chinese target word was presented in isolation in AD speech in a recognition task. Only subjects who heard ID speech with the target word in utterance-final position demonstrated learning of the target words. The results support assertions that ID speech, which tends to put target words in sentence-final position, may assist infants in segmenting and remembering portions of the linguistic stream. In experiment 3 (n = 23), subjects judged whether each of the ID and AD speech samples prepared for experiments 1 and 2 were directed to an adult or to an infant. Judgements were above chance for two types of sentence: ID speech with the target word in the final position and AD speech with the target word in a medial position. In addition to indirectly confirming the results of experiments 1 and 2, these findings suggest that at least some of the prosodic features which comprise ID speech in Chinese and English must overlap.

Adult↗
PubMed1994

Early object labels: the case for a developmental lexical principles framework.

Universally, object names make up the largest proportion of any word type found in children's early lexicons. Here we present and critically evaluate a set of six lexical principles (some previously proposed and some new) for making object label learning a manageable task. Overall, the principles have the effect of reducing the amount of information that language-learning children must consider for what a new word might mean. These principles are constructed by children in a two-tiered developmental sequence, as a function of their sensitivity to linguistic input, contextual information, and social-interactional cues. Thus, the process of lexical acquisition changes as a result of the particular principles a given child has at his or her disposal. For children who have only the principles of the first tier (reference, extendibility, and object scope), word learning has a deliberate and laborious look. The principles of the second tier (categorical scope, novel name-nameless category' or N3C, and conventionality) enable the child to acquire many new labels rapidly. The present unified account is argued to have a number of advantages over treating such principles separately and non-developmentally. Further, the explicit recognition that the acquisition and operation of these principles is influenced by the child's interpretation of both linguistic and non-linguistic input is seen as an advance.

Child Language↗
PubMed1994

Two-year-olds readily learn multiple labels for the same basic-level category.

2 basic frameworks for lexical principles have been proposed (Golinkoff, Mervis, & Hirsh-Pasek; Markman). In many types of situations, these frameworks make the same predictions regarding 2-year-olds' interpretation of novel terms. However, the predictions diverge in some cases. 3 experiments were conducted to address 1 such situation: the case in which the child hears a novel term but already knows a label for each of the objects present. Results of all 3 studies converged on the same outcome: The new term was most likely to be treated as a second basic-level name for the category to which the object belonged. Analyses of individual patterns of responding revealed that, of the 58 subjects, 50 made more basic-level responses than part responses, 1 made equal numbers of basic-level and part responses, and 7 made more part responses than basic-level responses. Implications of these findings for models of early lexical development are discussed.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1993

When is communication a meeting of minds?

Do infants and young children (two-year-olds) possess an implicit theory of mind which is revealed through their communicative interactions or are they simply treating their interlocutors as objects to manipulate in service to their own material ends? Shatz & O'Reilly (1990) criticized a paper by Golinkoff (1986) for claiming that infants were attempting to communicate as opposed to simply manipulate their listeners. This paper takes exception to that argument. It reviews additional evidence which indicates that infants in the second year of life are capable of communicating for the sake of the 'meeting of minds'. The alternative--treating young children's communications as only the firing off of conversational routines for the purpose of attaining material ends--seriously underestimates infants' knowledge of the communicative process.

Child Language↗
PubMed1989

Revealing hidden competencies: a new method for studying language comprehension in children with motor impairments.

Pilot work on a new method to assess language comprehension in children with motor impairments was presented. The paradigm is based on the premise that children will prefer to watch a video event that matches a linguistic stimulus rather than an event that does not match the linguistic stimulus. Two experiments, one on noun comprehension and one on verb comprehension, were conducted on young children having cerebral palsy and other neurological pathology associated with motor deficits. The potential advantages of this method over existing methods to assess language comprehension in handicapped as well as nonhandicapped populations were described.

Aptitude↗
PubMed1979

A comparison of fathers' and mothers' speech with their young chidren.

The verbal interaction of 12 mothers and 12 fathers with their 19-month-old girls and boys in 2 situations was assessed. In 1 situation, all 3 family members were together, while in the other, each parent was alone with the child. Analyses indicated that when all 3 family members were together, fathers spoke less and took fewer conversational turns than mothers. Other than these significant differences, fathers' speech to their children was not different from mothers' speech on a range of quantitative and qualitative measures.

Animals↗
PubMed1979

The origins of intentional vocalizations in prelinguistic infants.

The development of the intention to communicate was examined by attempting to identify the point at which prelinguistic vocalizations are used by infants as a means of communication. This achievement was related to the infants' cognitive development. It was hypothesized that Piagetian stage 5 in the development of causality may be a prerequisite for the intentional use of vocalizations. 46 infants (X age = 10.7 months, range: 8 months--14.3 months) and their mothers were videotaped in a structured, naturalistic setting. 2 "frustration" episodes were devised to encourage communication, and the infants' vocalizations as well as other behaviors were coded by 2 observers. 2 Piagetian tasks were selected to assess the causal developmental level of the child. A significant relationship between causal developmental level and the occurrence of intentional vocalizations was found. The results support the hypothesis that stage 5 causal development may be a prerequisite to the use of intentional vocalizations.

Cognition↗