Kimberly Wright Cassidy

Clauses Are Perceptual Units For Young Infants

Abstract Most theories of language acquisition implicitly assume that the language learner is able to arrive at a segmentation of speech into clausal units. The present studies employed a preference procedure to examine the sensitivity of 7-10-month-old infants to acoustic correlates of clausal units in English. From a recording of a mother speaking to her child, matched samples were constructed by inserting pauses either at clause boundaries or at within-clause locations. The infants oriented longer to the samples segmented at the clause boundary. A second experiment confirmed that these preferences depended on where the pauses were inserted in the samples. These findings have important implications for understanding how language is learnable. The prelinguistic infant apparently possesses the means to detect important units such as clauses, within which grammatical rules apply.

I Know, You Know: Epistemic Egocentrism in Children and Adults

This article reviews the evidence and theory pertaining to a form of perspective-taking failure—a difficulty in setting aside the privileged information that one knows to be unavailable to another party. The authors argue that this bias (epistemic egocentrism, or EE) is a general feature of human cognition and has been tapped by 2 independent and largely uncommunicating research traditions: the theory-of-mind tradition in developmental psychology and, with more sensitive probes, the “heuristics and biases” tradition in the psychology of human judgment. This article sets the stage for facilitating communication between these traditions as well as for the recognition of EEs breadth and potential interdisciplinary significance: The authors propose a life-span account and a tentative taxonomy of EE; and they highlight the interdisciplinary significance of EE by discussing its implications for normative ethics.

Phonological information for grammatical category assignments

Abstract During language acquisition, children must learn how to classify words into the appropriate grammatical category, such as noun or verb. Adults must also assign words to grammatical categories quickly and accurately. Most theories of this task focus on strategies that exploit semantic and/or syntactic correlates of grammatical class. This paper examines a relatively neglected source of information for grammatical category: phonology. Study one demonstrates that English verbs contain fewer syllables than English nouns, a difference that appears strongly in both adult-adult language and parental speech to children. Studies three and four provide evidence that adults and children are sensitive to this difference. Study three reports that adults use pseudowords more often in sentences as verbs if their syllable number is small, whereas they use pseudowords as nouns more often if their syllable number is large. Study four reports that 4-year old children associate pseudowords with actions (the prototypical verb meaning) more often than objects (the prototypical noun meaning) if the pseudowords contain one rather than three syllables. The relevance of the noun-verb syllable difference for connectionist models of linguistic knowledge is discussed. In addition, possible causes of the syllable number difference between nouns and verbs are proposed and evaluated in study two.

Inferring gender from name phonology.

English male and female names have different phonological properties. This article examines 3 questions about this phenomenon: How informative is phonology about gender? Have English speakers learned this information? Does this knowledge affect name usage? Results from a connectionist model indicate that English phonology predicts name gender quite well. Experiments found that English speakers have learned these cues. For example, names were classified as male or female more quickly and accurately when they had phonologically typical properties. Further studies demonstrated that the evolution of names in this century was affected by how male or female they sounded and that knowledge of phonological cues to gender influences the perception and structure of brand names. Implications for stereotyping, individual differences, and language research are discussed.

Children's use of phonology to infer grammatical class in vocabulary learning.

Prior studies of the relationship between phonological information and grammatical category assignment have focused on whether these relationships exist and whether people have learned them. This study investigates whether these relationships affect preschool children’s vocabulary acquisition in a laboratory setting. Child participants learned 12 vocabulary words (6 nouns and 6 verbs) under three conditions, in which, (1) the syllable number/grammatical category relationship matched English, (2) the syllable number/grammatical category relationship was opposite to English, or (3) there was no relationship between syllable number and grammatical category. In the initial presentation of the words, children assumed that the novel words matched the pattern found in English. When the syllable number/grammatical category pattern matched that of English, the children learned more of the words. Phonological information also predicted error patterns. These results suggest that any account of vocabulary acquisition should consider the role of phonological information.

Theory of Mind Concepts in Children's Literature.

This study examined whether books that are typically read to preschool children contain theory of mind concepts. The parents of 47 preschool children recorded books read by or to their child over a one-week period. The books were analyzed for theory of mind content. It was found that 78% of the books contained internal state language, 34% contained false beliefs, and 43% contained personality descriptors. Thus, theory of mind concepts appear to be an integral part of the literature read to preschool children. These results are discussed in light of recent work on individual differences in theory of mind development.

Three- and four-year-old children's ability to use desire- and belief- based reasoning

Recently, several researchers have claimed that young 3-year-old children rely on desire when making behavioral predictions and that this causes poor performance on standard measures of false-belief understanding. This study investigates this claim. Results suggest that young children may, in fact, be using desire to predict behavior in these standard paradigms. Importantly, it is the desires of the agent, not the childs own desires that are used to make the prediction. Further, older preschool children also have some difficulty coordinating both belief and desire when processing demands are increased.

The role of social-cognitive abilities in preschoolers' aggressive behaviour

This study investigated the relationship between preschool childrens social-cognitive abilities (theory of mind and social information processing; SIP) and their observed physical and relational aggressive behaviour. Children with more advanced social-cognitive abilities engaged in fewer acts of physical aggression; however, much of the ability of the social-cognitive variables to predict physical aggression was shared with language ability. In addition, social-cognitive understanding moderated the connection between language ability and physical aggression. Exploratory examination of gender differences in patterns of association between physical aggression and the social cognitive understanding variables revealed that the relationships were only true for boys. Relational aggression was not associated with social cognitive ability for either boys or girls, but this is likely due to the low frequency of relationally aggressive behaviour observed in this sample.

Preschoolers' use of desires to solve theory of mind problems in a pretense context

K. Bartsch and H. M. Wellman (1995) have suggested that 3-year-old childrens preference to construe behavior in terms of desire may interfere with their ability to reason according to belief in standard false belief tasks. Other researchers have suggested that young children fail typical measures of theory of mind because they have a reality bias (e.g., P. Mitchell, 1994). Study 1 demonstrates that even young children are able to correctly attribute a false belief to an agent when that belief is about the status of a pretense. Study 2 shows that children find it easier to attribute a false belief when the desires of the agent are eliminated. However, Study 3 suggests that a reality bias also influences childrens ability to consider beliefs. Implications for recent accounts of theory of mind development are discussed. Language: en

The Pedagogical Benefits of Enacting Positive Psychology Practices through a Student-Faculty Partnership Approach to Academic Development.

Abstract Academic development that supports the enactment of positive psychology practices through student–faculty pedagogical partnership can increase faculty confidence and capacity in their first year in a new institution. When student partners practice affirmation and encouragement of strengths-based growth, processes of faculty acclimation and self-authoring can be accelerated. This article presents a student–faculty pedagogical partnership program and positive psychology practices that focus on faculty strengths and capacities as the foundation for reinforcing and revising existing pedagogical strategies and for sustaining energy for continued development. It combines collaborative autoethnographic and comparative case study approaches to investigate the pedagogical benefits of these practices.