Publications

Abstract

In spoken languages, children acquire locative terms in a cross-linguistically stable order. Terms similar in meaning to in and on emerge earlier than those similar to front and behind, followed by left and right. This order has been attributed to the complexity of the relations expressed by different locative terms. An additional possibility is that children may be delayed in expressing certain spatial meanings partly due to difficulties in discovering the mappings between locative terms in speech and spatial relation they express. We investigate cognitive and mapping difficulties in the domain of spatial language by comparing how children map spatial meanings onto speech versus visually motivated forms in co-speech gesture across different spatial relations. Twenty-four 8-year-old and 23 adult native Turkish-speakers described four-picture displays where the target picture depicted in-on, front-behind, or left-right relations between objects. As the complexity of spatial relations increased, children were more likely to rely on gestures as opposed to speech to informatively express the spatial relation. Adults overwhelmingly relied on speech to informatively express the spatial relation, and this did not change across the complexity of spatial relations. Nevertheless, even when spatial expressions in both speech and co-speech gesture were considered, children lagged behind adults when expressing the most complex left-right relations. These findings suggest that cognitive development and mapping difficulties introduced by the modality of expressions interact in shaping the development of spatial language.

Abstract

There is a strong relation between children’s exposure to
spatial terms and their later memory accuracy. In the current
study, we tested whether the production of spatial terms by
children themselves predicts memory accuracy and whether
and how language modality of these encodings modulates
memory accuracy differently. Hearing child speakers of
Turkish and deaf child signers of Turkish Sign Language
described pictures of objects in various spatial relations to each
other and later tested for their memory accuracy of these
pictures in a surprise memory task. We found that having
described the spatial relation between the objects predicted
better memory accuracy. However, the modality of these
descriptions in sign, speech, or speech-plus-gesture did not
reveal differences in memory accuracy. We discuss the
implications of these findings for the relation between spatial
language, memory, and the modality of encoding.

Abstract

A fundamental aspect of human cognition is the ability to parse our constantly unfolding expe- rience into meaningful representations of dynamic events and to communicate about these events with others. How do we communicate about events we have experienced? Influential theories of language production assume that the formulation and articulation of a linguistic message is pre- ceded by preverbal apprehension that captures core aspects of the event. Yet the nature of these preverbal event representations and the way they are mapped onto language are currently not well understood. Here, we review recent evidence on the link between event conceptualization and lan- guage, focusing on two core aspects of event representation: event roles and event boundaries. Empirical evidence in both domains shows that the cognitive representation of events aligns with the way these aspects of events are encoded in language, providing support for the presence of deep homologies between linguistic and cognitive event structure.

Abstract

Although it is widely assumed that the linguistic description of events is based on a structured representation of event components at the perceptual/conceptual level, lit- tle empirical work has tested this assumption directly. Here, we test the connection between language and perception/cognition cross-linguistically, focusing on the rela- tive salience of causative event components in language and cognition. We draw on evidence from preschoolers speaking English or Turkish. In a picture description task, Turkish-speaking 3-5-year-olds mentioned Agents less than their English-speaking peers (Turkish allows subject drop); furthermore, both language groups mentioned Patients more frequently than Goals, and Instruments less frequently than either Patients or Goals. In a change blindness task, both language groups were equally accurate at detecting changes to Agents (despite surface differences in Agent men- tions). The remaining components also behaved similarly: both language groups were less accurate in detecting changes to Instruments than either Patients or Goals (even though Turkish-speaking preschoolers were less accurate overall than their English- speaking peers). To our knowledge, this is the first study offering evidence for a strong—even though not strict—homology between linguistic and conceptual event roles in young learners cross-linguistically.

Abstract

When monitoring the origins of their memories, people tend to mistakenly attribute mem- ories generated from internal processes (e.g., imagination, visualization) to perception. Here, we ask whether speaking a language that obligatorily encodes the source of informa- tion might help prevent such errors. We compare speakers of English to speakers of Turkish, a language that obligatorily encodes information source (direct/perceptual vs. indirect/hearsay or inference) for past events. In our experiments, participants reported having seen events that they had only inferred from post-event visual evidence. In general, error rates were higher when visual evidence that gave rise to inferences was relatively close to direct visual evidence. Furthermore, errors persisted even when participants were asked to report the specific sources of their memories. Crucially, these error patterns were equivalent across language groups, suggesting that speaking a language that obligatorily encodes source of information does not increase sensitivity to the distinction between per- ception and inference in event memory.

Abstract

It has long been recognized that language interacts with visual and spatial processes. However, the nature and extent of these interactions are widely debated. The goal of this article is to review empirical findings across several domains to understand whether language affects the way speakers conceptualize the world even when they are not speaking or understanding speech. A second goal of the present review is to shed light on the mechanisms through which effects of language are transmitted. Across domains, there is growing support for the idea that although language does not lead to long-lasting changes in mental representations, it exerts powerful influences during momentary mental computations by either modulating attention or augmenting representational power

Abstract

Although children typically comprehend the links between specific forms and their mean- ings before they produce the forms themselves, the opposite pattern also occurs. The nat- ure of these ‘reverse asymmetries’ between production and comprehension remains debated. Here we focus on a striking case where production precedes comprehension in the acquisition of Turkish evidential morphology and explore theoretical explanations of this asymmetry. We show that 3- to 6-year-old Turkish learners produce evidential mor- phemes accurately (Experiment 1) but have difficulty with evidential comprehension (Experiment 2). Furthermore, comprehension failures persist across multiple tasks (Experiments 3–4). We suggest that evidential comprehension is delayed by the develop- ment of mental perspective-taking abilities needed to compute others’ knowledge sources. In support for this hypothesis, we find that children have difficulty reasoning about others’ evidence in non-linguistic tasks but the difficulty disappears when the tasks involve accessing one’s own evidential sources (Experiment 5)