Josita Maouene

Longitudinal Analysis of Early Semantic Networks Preferential Attachment or Preferential Acquisition

Analyses of adult semantic networks suggest a learning mechanism involving preferential attachment: A word is more likely to enter the lexicon the more connected the known words to which it is related. We introduce and test two alternative growth principles: preferential acquisition—words enter the lexicon not because they are related to well-connected words, but because they connect well to other words in the learning environment—and the lure of the associates—new words are favored in proportion to their connections with known words. We tested these alternative principles using longitudinal analyses of developing networks of 130 nouns children learn prior to the age of 30 months. We tested both networks with links between words represented by features and networks with links represented by associations. The feature networks did not predict age of acquisition using any growth model. The associative networks grew by preferential acquisition, with the best model incorporating word frequency, number of phonological neighbors, and connectedness of the new word to words in the learning environment, as operationalized by connectedness to words typically acquired by the age of 30 months.

Auditory Verb Perception Recruits Motor Systems in the Developing Brain: An fMRI Investigation

This study investigated neural activation patterns during verb processing in children, using fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging). Preschool children (aged 4-6) passively listened to lists of verbs and adjectives while neural activation was measured. Findings indicated that verbs were processed differently than adjectives, as the verbs recruited motor systems in the frontal cortex during auditory perception, but the adjectives did not. Further evidence suggested that different types of verbs activated different regions in the motor cortex. The results demonstrate that the motor system is recruited during verb perception in the developing brain, reflecting the embodied nature of language learning and processing.

Body Parts and Early-Learned Verbs.

This article reports the structure of associations among 101 common verbs and body parts. The verbs are those typically learned by children learning English prior to 3 years of age. In a free association task, 50 adults were asked to provide the single body part that came to mind when they thought of each verb. Analyses reveal highly systematic and structured patterns of associations that are also related to the normative age of acquisition of the verbs showing a progression from verbs associated with actions by the mouth, to verbs strongly associated with actions by hand and arm, to verbs not so strongly associated with any one body part. The results have implications for proposals about embodied verb meaning and also for processes of early verb learning.

Categorical Structure Among Shared Features in Networks of Early-Learned Nouns

The shared features that characterize the noun categories that young children learn first are a formative basis of the human category system. To investigate the potential categorical information contained in the features of early-learned nouns, we examine the graph-theoretic properties of noun-feature networks. The networks are built from the overlap of words normatively acquired by children prior to 2(1/2) years of age and perceptual and conceptual (functional) features acquired from adult feature generation norms. The resulting networks have small-world structure, indicative of a high degree of feature overlap in local clusters. However, perceptual features--due to their abundance and redundancy--generate networks more robust to feature omissions, while conceptual features are more discriminating and, per feature, offer more categorical information than perceptual features. Using a network specific cluster identification algorithm (the clique percolation method) we also show that shared features among these early-learned nouns create higher-order groupings common to adult taxonomic designations. Again, perceptual and conceptual features play distinct roles among different categories, typically with perceptual features being more inclusive and conceptual features being more exclusive of category memberships. The results offer new and testable hypotheses about the role of shared features in human category knowledge.

Object associations of early-learned light and heavy English verbs

Many of the verbs that young children learn early have been characterized as ‘light.’ However, there is no agreed upon definition of ‘lightness’ and no useable metric that could be applied to a wide array of verbs. This article provides evidence for one metric by which the ‘lightness’ of early-learned verbs might be measured: the number of objects with which they are associated (in adult judgment) or co-occur (in speech to and by children). The results suggest that early-learned light verbs and heavy verbs differ in the breadth of the objects they are associated with: light verbs have weak associations with specific objects, whereas heavy verbs are strongly associated with specific objects. However, there is an indication that verbs have narrower associations to objects in speech to children. The methodological usefulness of this metric is discussed as are the implications of the patterns of distributions for children’s learning of common verbs.

Attention to body-parts varies with visual preference and verb–effector associations

Theories of embodied conceptual meaning suggest fundamental relations between others’ actions, language, and our own actions and visual attention processes. Prior studies have found that when people view an image of a neutral body in a scene they first look toward, in order, the head, torso, hands, and legs. Other studies show associations between action verbs and the body-effectors used in performing the action (e.g., “jump” with feet/legs; “talk” with face/head). In the present experiment, the visual attention of participants was recorded with a remote eye-tracking system while they viewed an image of an actor pantomiming an action and heard a concrete action verb. Participants manually responded whether or not the action image was a good example of the verb they heard. The eye-tracking results confirmed that participants looked at the head most, followed by the hands, and the feet least of all; however, visual attention to each of the body-parts also varied as a function of the effector associated with the spoken verb on image/verb congruent trials, particularly for verbs associated with the legs. Overall, these results suggest that language influences some perceptual processes; however, hearing auditory verbs did not alter the previously reported fundamental hierarchical sequence of directed attention, and fixations on specific body-effectors may not be essential for verb comprehension as peripheral visual cues may be sufficient to perform the task.

Body-part categories of early-learned verbs: Different granularities at different points in development

This paper builds on our previous finding that early verbs are strongly related to body parts. One evidence for this relation is the strong word associations among adults between common verbs and body parts. Although many common verbs are related to body parts, the prior evidence suggests that some verbs are strongly related to highly specific body regions (e.g., fingers) and others to larger or more diffuse regions (e.g., hand and arm). Here we ask whether this granularity or specificity in associations is related to age of acquisition. We examine the structure of adult associations of common verbs to body parts as a function of age of acquisition for a 101 verbs normatively acquired between 16 to 30 months. And we propose a new analysis to look at the development of granularity over a short time period: 16 months and for a small number of verbs: 101. We generated verb clusters based on body parts features, and analysed how these body-partsbased clusters account for variance of age of acquisition (AoA) of verbs. By applying this analysis from the 50 earliest learned verbs to the 50 latest learned ones, we found several clusters relevant to AoA in different granularity of body parts. The results fit with growing behavioural and neuro-imaging results on the role of the body - and sensory-motor interactions in the world - in verb processing.

Distribution of object types of “light” and “heavy” early-learned English verbs

In the developmental psycholinguistic literature, it is common to distinguish verbs that are semantically light from those that are not. One important reason is that the light verbs (take, get, make, do, go, etc.) — excellent substitutes for specific verbs and very frequent in adult speech to children — are thought to help children learn the verb system. Although quantitative and qualitative criteria (e.g., frequency, grammaticalization, semantic generality, high transitivity) have been proposed for distinguishing light and heavy verbs, some puzzling questions remain: how good are criteria that define heavy verbs as nonlight ones? Are verbs bimodally distributed? Do childrens light and heavy verbs align with adult ones? This paper proposes a new candidate — using the number of objects (free associations and co-occurrences) a verb has as an indicator of its semantic generality — and applies it to 80 early-learned English verbs. The results suggest that early-learned light and heavy verbs differ in the breadth of the objects they are associated with: light verbs have weak associations with specific objects, whereas heavy verbs are strongly associated with specific objects. There is also a hint that some verbs have narrower associations with objects in speech from and to children.