伍珍

时间: 2015-01-15 08:00 - 10:00

地点: 永利集团王克祯楼11层1113室

How do infants transition from prelinguistic to linguistic communication? Previous studies have focused on the influence of just caregivers’ responses or just infants’ capabilities on language development. However, caregiver-infant interactions are bidirectional and dynamic. Infants actively explore and influence the environment, while the environment provides support and feedback that influence infants’ learning. How do the moment-to-moment dynamic interactions influence infants’ language development? In this talk, I will present three lines of research that attempts to address this question: (1) by 12 months old, infants modify their vocal production relative to caregivers’ attention and responses. This indicates that infants work actively to establish joint reference with caregivers; furthermore, this effort was positively related to infants' language outcomes measured at 15 months. (2) Infants' different behaviors elicit variable social feedback from social partners. Infants’ pointing gestures were more reliable in eliciting label responses compared to vocalizations. In addition, mothers labelled more than fathers did, and fathers were less differential in their verbal responsiveness to infants’ points and vocalizations. (3) Infants’ own production of gestures during the social interactions contributes to their language development. Specifically, infants learned word-object associations better when a pointing gesture rather than a look was used to elicit the label. Therefore, my work suggests that infants actively share their attention and interest, which elicits timely responses from the environment, and together the dynamic interactions between infants and environment help infants move from prelinguistic to linguistic communication.

2015-01-15


2015-01-15