Version 4.2

Lecture: Linking Dutch infants‘ speed of processing to vocabulary size at 18 months

Visual reaction times during looking-while-listening paradigms have been used as an indicator of infants’ lexical speed of processing (SoP), which has been linked to future language development. For example, Fernald and Marchman (2012) measured the visual reaction times of 18-month-old children learning American English and showed a link between the SoP and the productive vocabulary reported by parents at subsequent ages. However, some studies do not find this link (Fernald, Perfors & Marchman, 2006). Additionally, most evidence on SoP predicting language development stems from infants learning American English and the generalizability of this relation has not yet been tested.
We tested 60 18-month-old infants learning Dutch in an LWL paradigm. In the standard paradigm, the infant has to look at a distractor while the target is being named in order to be able to measure visual reaction times. This means that usually half the trials cannot yield reaction times as the infant was already fixating the target. To provide more reliable SoP measures we developed a gaze-triggered paradigm. This paradigm improves this state of affairs by naming the object the infant is not fixating in a specific time window.
Using both the standard LWL and the gaze-triggered paradigm within the same participants, we measure infants’ SoP and link it to their CDI production score. Our data shows that with this manipulation the number of trials measuring SoP increases significantly. Furthermore, the results reveal a correlation between SoP and vocabulary size in Dutch infants, similar to their American English learning peers.

Info

Day: 2019-05-25
Start time: 17:30
Duration: 00:30
Room: 100 / Hörsaal V
Track: Neuro and Psycholinguistics
Language: en

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