RESUMO

Theories of early development have emphasized the power of caregivers as active agents in infant socialization and learning. However, there is variability, across communities, in the tendency of caregivers to engage with their infants directly. This raises the possibility that infants and children in some communities spend more time engaged in solitary activities than in dyadic or triadic interactions. Here, we focus on one such community (indigenous Wichi living in Argentina's Chaco Forest) to test this possibility. We examine naturally occurring attentional activity involving the mother and child among the Wichi and among Eurodescendant Spanish-speaking families living in Argentina. We engaged 16 families-8 Wichi and 8 Eurodescendant-in an observational study of interactions between caregivers and their 1- to 2-year-olds. A mixed-analytic approach revealed no differences between communities in the proportion of time infants spent alone, or in mother-child interaction. What does differ, however, is how mothers engage in these interactions: Wichi mothers spend a greater proportion of their time observing their infants than do Eurodescendant mothers. Moreover, when infants in both groups are alone, they focus their 'solitary' activities differently: Wichi infants engaged primarily in observation alone, whereas Eurodescendant infants were more focused on the object. Finally, all mother-child pairs engaged in dyadic and triadic (object-infant-caregiver) patterns of attention, but the triadic patterns differed considerably between cultures: Among Wichi, mothers actively "watched" infants as they engaged with objects, whereas Eurodescendant mothers actively engaged with their infants in joint attentional episodes. This work illustrates how attention and socialization, key mechanisms of early development, are culturally organized. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwsOCLXubKQ. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Longitudinal, observational investigation of mother-infant interaction in two distinct Argentine cultural groups (Wichi and Eurodescendants) reveals both commonalities and clear community-based differences in interactions between mothers and their 1- to 2-year-olds. Wichi mother-infant dyads engaged primarily in visual observation of one another, but their Eurodescendant counterparts tended to engage in more verbal or physical interaction. We identify a new form of triadic interaction-lateral joint attention-among the Wichi dyads. This work underscores that attention and socialization, key mechanisms of early development, are culturally organized.

Assuntos

RESUMO

This research brings new evidence on early lexical acquisition in Wichi, an under-studied indigenous language in which verbs occupy a privileged position in the input and in conjunction with nouns are characterized by a complex and rich morphology. Focusing on infants ranging from one- to three-year-olds, we analyzed the parental report of infants' vocabulary (Study 1) and naturalistic speech samples of children and their caregivers (Study 2). Results reveal that: (1) although verbs predominate in the linguistic input, children's lexicons favor nouns over verbs; (2) children's early noun-advantage decreases, coming into closer alignment with the patterns in the linguistic input at a MLU of 1.5; and (3) this early transition is temporally related to children's increasing productive command over the grammatical categories that characterize the morphology of both nouns and verbs. These findings emphasize the early effects of language-specific properties of the input, broadening the vantage point from which to view the lexical acquisition process.

Assuntos

RESUMO

The purpose of this research was to explore the kind of information Spanish-speaking 3-year-old children and adults use when learning adjectives in a joint picturebook reading situation. The impact of two linguistic clues was studied; a morphological clue (adjective suffix) and a semantic clue (descriptive information concerning the property). Results show that for children the description was decisive to map the new adjective with the property; for adults, instead, the presence of the suffix was crucial. These results illustrate a developmental shift in the sort of clues that shapes adjective learning.

Assuntos

RESUMO

El objetivo del trabajo que se informa fue investigar el aprendizaje de adjetivos y sustantivos mediante libros ilustrados en niños de tres años de edad. Se diseñaron dos estudios con una metodología cuasi-experimental en los que se enseñó a los niños un sustantivo o un adjetivo. Luego los participantes debían extender la palabra aprendida primero al objeto representado por la imagen, y luego a un nuevo ejemplar de la misma categoría de objeto (sustantivo) o propiedad de objeto (adjetivo). El Estudio 1 comparó el aprendizaje de sustantivos y adjetivos. Se encontró que los niños aprendieron el sustantivo pero no el adjetivo, lo que indicaría que para ellos aprender adjetivos a través de libros con imágenes es más difícil que aprender sustantivos. El Estudio 2 exploró el impacto de la información descriptiva sobre el aprendizaje de un adjetivo que refería a una propiedad visual (estampado). Esta información destacaba, por un lado, el núcleo del concepto, el estampado, y por otro la intención comunicativa del interlocutor. Se contrastó la ejecución de los niños en función de la información provista por la experimentadora. Los datos obtenidos muestran que si los niños reciben información descriptiva sobre el aspecto de la imagen que debe conectarse con la palabra, logran relacionarlo con la propiedad a la que refiere, aprendiendo el adjetivo. Los resultados de esta investigación aportan información relevante acerca de la relación entre el aprendizaje del léxico y el desarrollo conceptual y subrayan la relevancia del contexto sociopragmático en el aprendizaje de palabras.(AU)

Picture-books reading are a very common practice between children and adults. In these interactions parents assume that their children learn lots of things, especially words. But, is this interaction effective as a word learning device? Is it the same to teach different kind of words? The main question of this research arises in the intersection of two fields: symbolic comprehension of pictures and word learning. Three main ideas guided this research. Symbolic understanding of pictures is a very complex process that involves cognitive and social skills. The socio-pragmatic context has an impact in the cognitive processes involved in word learning. There is a strong relationship between word learning and conceptual development. The aim of this research was to explore 3-year-old children´s learning of nouns and adjectives in a picture-book reading situation. We designed two studies using a cuasi-experimental approach. In Study 1 we compared two groups of children: one learned a noun (category condition) and the other an adjective (property condition).The noun was pompe, a word that does not exist but has a Spanish morphologic structure. The adjective, pompeado, was built based on the word pompe, adding the suffix-ado; suffix marks that the word is an adjective. Toddlers were exposed to the new words during a picture-book reading interaction with the experimenter, then, they had to solve two successive tests. In the first test of the category condition participants had to apply the new noun learned via pictures to the real object. In the second test they had to extend the new noun to a new exemplar, an object with the same shape but different color. In the first test of the property condition, participants had to apply the new adjective learned via pictures to the real object with the property. In the second test they had to extend the adjective to a new exemplar, a new object with the same target-property. The second tests were taken as strong indicators of word learning as they involved some kind of generalization. In the first test both groups, category and property, applied the word to the real object. In the second test, while children in the category condition extended the noun to another exemplar, children in the property condition did not extend the adjective to another exemplar with the same property. In a second study we explored if children need more cues to extend the adjective to another exemplar with the same property, and truly learn the adjective. Study 2 investigated the impact of descriptive information in word learning. We set two groups on the basis of the information provided by the experimenter. One group received descriptive information highlighting the specific aspect of the picture that had to be mapped with the property. The other group did not receive this additional information. We found that only the participants that received descriptive information extended the word pompeado to a new exemplar with the target property. We propose that the descriptive information worked highlighting the communicative intention of the experimenter as well as the core of the concept. Underscoring the perceptual feature allowed much more than making a superficial association, as the descriptive information pointed directly to the heart of the concept. Overall, the results of this research are consistent with previous studies that found that it is more difficult for young children to learn adjectives than nouns. The results also highlight the strong relationship between word learning and conceptual development. This research provides strong evidence concerning the importance of socio the pragmatic context on referential understanding and word learning.(AU)

RESUMO

El objetivo del trabajo que se informa fue investigar el aprendizaje de adjetivos y sustantivos mediante libros ilustrados en niños de tres años de edad. Se diseñaron dos estudios con una metodología cuasi-experimental en los que se enseñó a los niños un sustantivo o un adjetivo. Luego los participantes debían extender la palabra aprendida primero al objeto representado por la imagen, y luego a un nuevo ejemplar de la misma categoría de objeto (sustantivo) o propiedad de objeto (adjetivo). El Estudio 1 comparó el aprendizaje de sustantivos y adjetivos. Se encontró que los niños aprendieron el sustantivo pero no el adjetivo, lo que indicaría que para ellos aprender adjetivos a través de libros con imágenes es más difícil que aprender sustantivos. El Estudio 2 exploró el impacto de la información descriptiva sobre el aprendizaje de un adjetivo que refería a una propiedad visual (estampado). Esta información destacaba, por un lado, el núcleo del concepto, el estampado, y por otro la intención comunicativa del interlocutor. Se contrastó la ejecución de los niños en función de la información provista por la experimentadora. Los datos obtenidos muestran que si los niños reciben información descriptiva sobre el aspecto de la imagen que debe conectarse con la palabra, logran relacionarlo con la propiedad a la que refiere, aprendiendo el adjetivo. Los resultados de esta investigación aportan información relevante acerca de la relación entre el aprendizaje del léxico y el desarrollo conceptual y subrayan la relevancia del contexto sociopragmático en el aprendizaje de palabras.

Picture-books reading are a very common practice between children and adults. In these interactions parents assume that their children learn lots of things, especially words. But, is this interaction effective as a word learning device? Is it the same to teach different kind of words? The main question of this research arises in the intersection of two fields: symbolic comprehension of pictures and word learning. Three main ideas guided this research. Symbolic understanding of pictures is a very complex process that involves cognitive and social skills. The socio-pragmatic context has an impact in the cognitive processes involved in word learning. There is a strong relationship between word learning and conceptual development. The aim of this research was to explore 3-year-old children´s learning of nouns and adjectives in a picture-book reading situation. We designed two studies using a cuasi-experimental approach. In Study 1 we compared two groups of children: one learned a noun (category condition) and the other an adjective (property condition).The noun was pompe, a word that does not exist but has a Spanish morphologic structure. The adjective, pompeado, was built based on the word pompe, adding the suffix-ado; suffix marks that the word is an adjective. Toddlers were exposed to the new words during a picture-book reading interaction with the experimenter, then, they had to solve two successive tests. In the first test of the category condition participants had to apply the new noun learned via pictures to the real object. In the second test they had to extend the new noun to a new exemplar, an object with the same shape but different color. In the first test of the property condition, participants had to apply the new adjective learned via pictures to the real object with the property. In the second test they had to extend the adjective to a new exemplar, a new object with the same target-property. The second tests were taken as strong indicators of word learning as they involved some kind of generalization. In the first test both groups, category and property, applied the word to the real object. In the second test, while children in the category condition extended the noun to another exemplar, children in the property condition did not extend the adjective to another exemplar with the same property. In a second study we explored if children need more cues to extend the adjective to another exemplar with the same property, and truly learn the adjective. Study 2 investigated the impact of descriptive information in word learning. We set two groups on the basis of the information provided by the experimenter. One group received descriptive information highlighting the specific aspect of the picture that had to be mapped with the property. The other group did not receive this additional information. We found that only the participants that received descriptive information extended the word pompeado to a new exemplar with the target property. We propose that the descriptive information worked highlighting the communicative intention of the experimenter as well as the core of the concept. Underscoring the perceptual feature allowed much more than making a superficial association, as the descriptive information pointed directly to the heart of the concept. Overall, the results of this research are consistent with previous studies that found that it is more difficult for young children to learn adjectives than nouns. The results also highlight the strong relationship between word learning and conceptual development. This research provides strong evidence concerning the importance of socio the pragmatic context on referential understanding and word learning.