George J. Suci

The validity of pause as an index of units in language

Four experiments were carried out to assess the validity of pause in speech as an index of unit boundaries in language. The criterion for the existence of a unit was resistance to fracturing. Verbal stimulus material learned by the Ss was fractured into parts in two different ways: at points where the Ss paused, and at points where there was no pause. The parts thus obtained were placed in a random order forming two new sets of verbal material which the Ss were required to learn. It was more difficult to learn the material constructed from the nonpause fractures. The same result was found for both narrative and for non-narrative material which was minimally syntactically organized. The result persisted when the nonpause material for one S was another Ss pause-fractured material. This latter result indicates that pause is sensitive to individual differences in how verbal material is organized.

Attentional priority of the agent in the acquisition of word reference.

The role of agent priority in event perception in word acquisition was investigated using 24 infants at the one-word stage of language production. Nonsense words were presented in narrations referring to agent, recipient or stationary nonsense puppet-actors in filmed events. The nonsense stimuli along with a sense word referring to a sense puppet were presented in a habituation series. Word acquisition was measured by the extent of response recovery to an incorrect pairing of a nonsense word with a sense referent, and by the number of infants accurately choosing named puppets. Both measures were significantly greater for puppets in agent roles than for other puppets. A speech modification condition (exaggerated intonation with repetition) held attention longer but did not facilitate acquisition.

Facilitation of semantic comprehension at the one-word stage of language development

Early in the development of language, children must learn to relate the language they hear to objects and events in their immediate perceptual environment. Gilmore (1977) found that infants at the two-word stage of language production and, under certain conditions, some infants at the one-word stage as well, seemed to map a simple sentence (e.g. The bunny hugs the kitty ) onto a visual event (which, for example, showed a puppet rabbit hugging a puppet cat). In Gilmores experiment, a habituation series of trials, presenting either appropriate pairings of a variety of sentences with visual events (as in the above example), or inappropriate pairings (e.g. The kitty hugs the bunny , when, in fact, the reverse was true) were presented repeatedly until subjects habituated. A test series of trials followed with an inappropriate/appropriate pairing, whichever was not used during habituation. Two-word subjects seemed to discriminate between the test and habituation pairings in either case. One-word subjects seemed to discrimi- nate only when they received the appropriate pairing during habituation and the inappropriate during the test.