Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-nwzlb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T09:16:41.168Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Cognitive architectures and language acquisition: A case study in pronoun comprehension*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 March 2010

JACOLIEN VAN RIJ*
Affiliation:
University of Groningen
HEDDERIK VAN RIJN
Affiliation:
University of Groningen
PETRA HENDRIKS
Affiliation:
University of Groningen
*
Jacolien van Rij, Center for Language and Cognition Groningen (CLCG), University of Groningen. PO Box 716, 9700AS Groningen, The Netherlands. tel: +31 (0)50 363 5873; fax: +31 (0)50 363 6855; e-mail: J.C.van.Rij@rug.nl

Abstract

In this paper we discuss a computational cognitive model of children's poor performance on pronoun interpretation (the so-called Delay of Principle B Effect, or DPBE). This cognitive model is based on a theoretical account that attributes the DPBE to children's inability as hearers to also take into account the speaker's perspective. The cognitive model predicts that child hearers are unable to do so because their speed of linguistic processing is too limited to perform this second step in interpretation. We tested this hypothesis empirically in a psycholinguistic study, in which we slowed down the speech rate to give children more time for interpretation, and in a computational simulation study. The results of the two studies confirm the predictions of our model. Moreover, these studies show that embedding a theory of linguistic competence in a cognitive architecture allows for the generation of detailed and testable predictions with respect to linguistic performance.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

[*]

This investigation was supported in part by a grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, NWO, awarded to Petra Hendriks (grant no. 277-70-005). The authors thank the children, teachers and parents of the Nassauschool in Groningen for participating in the experiment, Sanne M. Berends and Sanne Kuijper for assisting with the experiment, Petra van Berkum and Robert Prins for drawing the pictures, Margreet Drok-van der Meulen for recording the sentences, and Jennifer Spenader, the Groningen Cognitive Modeling Group and the University of Groningen Language Acquisition Lab for helpful discussions regarding this study.

References

REFERENCES

Anderson, J. R. (2007). How can the human mind occur in the physical universe? New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Anderson, J. R., Bothell, D., Byrne, M. D., Douglass, S., Lebiere, C. & Qin, Y. (2004). An integrated theory of the mind. Psychological Review 111(4), 1036–60.Google Scholar
Anderson, J. R. & Schooler, L. J. (1991). Reflections of the environment in memory. Psychological Science 2(6), 396408.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baayen, R. H. (2008). Analyzing linguistic data: A practical introduction to statistics using R. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Baayen, R. H., Davidson, D. J. & Bates, D. M. (2008). Mixed-effects modeling with crossed random effects for subjects and items. Journal of Memory and Language 59(4), 390412.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bates, D. M. (2005). Fitting linear mixed models in R. R News 5, 2730.Google Scholar
Bloom, P., Barss, A., Nicol, J. & Conway, L. (1994). Children's knowledge of binding and coreference: Evidence from spontaneous speech. Language (Baltimore) 70(1), 5371.Google Scholar
Blutner, R. (2000). Some aspects of optimality in natural language interpretation. Journal of Semantics 17(3), 189216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Case, R. (1987). The structure and process of intellectual development. International Journal of Psychology 22(5), 571607.Google Scholar
Chien, Y. C. & Wexler, K. (1990). Children's knowledge of locality conditions in Binding as evidence for the modularity of syntax and pragmatics. Language Acquisition 1(3), 225–95.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1981). Lectures on Government and Binding: The Pisa lectures. Dordrecht: Foris Publications.Google Scholar
De Villiers, J., Cahillane, J. & Altreuter, E. (2006). What can production reveal about Principle B? In Deen, K. U., Nomura, J., Schulz, B. & Schwartz, B. D. (eds), The Proceedings of the Inaugural Conference on Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition – North America, Volume 1, 89–100. Honolulu, HI: University of Connecticut Occasional Papers in Linguistics 4.Google Scholar
Dijkstra, T. & De Smedt, K. (1996). Computer models in psycholinguistics: An introduction. In Dijkstra, T. & De Smedt, K. (eds), Computational psycholinguistics, 3–23. London: Taylor & Francis.Google Scholar
Elbourne, P. (2005). On the acquisition of Principle B. Linguistic Inquiry 36(3), 333–65.Google Scholar
Grimshaw, J. & Rosen, S. T. (1990). Knowledge and obedience: The developmental status of the Binding Theory. Linguistic Inquiry 21(2), 187222.Google Scholar
Hendriks, P. & De Hoop, H. (2001). Optimality theoretic semantics. Linguistics and Philosophy 24(1), 132.Google Scholar
Hendriks, P. & Spenader, J. (2005/2006). When production precedes comprehension: An optimization approach to the acquisition of pronouns. Language Acquisition 13(4), 319–48.Google Scholar
Hendriks, P., Van Rijn, H. & Valkenier, B. (2007). Learning to reason about speakers' alternatives in sentence comprehension: A computational account. Lingua 117(11), 1879–96.Google Scholar
Jakubowicz, C. (1984). On markedness and binding principles. Proceedings of the North Eastern Linguistics Society 14, 154–82.Google Scholar
Koster, C. (1993). Errors in anaphora acquisition. Doctoral dissertation, Utrecht University.Google Scholar
Lewis, R. L. & Vasishth, S. (2005). An activation-based model of sentence processing as skilled memory retrieval. Cognitive Science 29(3), 375419.Google Scholar
Love, T., Walenski, M. & Swinney, D. (2009). Slowed speech input has a differential impact on on-line and off-line processing in children's comprehension of pronouns. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 38(3), 285304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matthews, D., Lieven, E., Theakston, A. & Tomasello, M. (2009). Pronoun co-referencing errors: Challenges for generativist and usage-based accounts. Cognitive Linguistics 20(3), 599626.Google Scholar
McClelland, J. L. (1995). A connectionist perspective on knowledge and development. In Simon, T. J. & Halford, G. S. (eds), Developing cognitive competence: New approaches to process modeling, 157204. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Meyer, D. E. & Kieras, D. E. (1997). A computational theory of executive cognitive processes and multiple-task performance: I. Basic mechanisms. Psychological Review 104(1), 365.Google Scholar
Misker, J. M. V. & Anderson, J. R. (2003). Combining Optimality Theory and a cognitive architecture. In Detje, F., Dörner, D. & Schaub, H. (eds), Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Cognitive Modeling, 165–70. Bamberg: Universitäts-Verlag Bamberg.Google Scholar
Montgomery, J. W. (2004). Sentence comprehension in children with specific language impairment: Effects of input rate and phonological working memory. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders 39(1), 115–33.Google Scholar
Newell, A. (1990). Unified theories of cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Philip, W. & Coopmans, P. (1996). The double Dutch delay of Principle B effect. In Stringfellow, A., Cahana-Amitay, D., Hughes, E. & Zukowski, A. (eds), Proceedings of the Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, 576–87. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Prince, A. & Smolensky, P. (2004). Optimality Theory: Constraint interaction in generative grammar. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Reinhart, T. (2006). Interface strategies: Optimal and costly computations: Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salvucci, D. D. & Taatgen, N. A. (2008). Threaded cognition: An integrated theory of concurrent multitasking. Psychological Review 115(1), 101130.Google Scholar
Small, J. A., Andersen, E. S. & Kempler, D. (1997). Effects of working memory capacity on understanding rate-altered speech. Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition 4(2), 126–39.Google Scholar
Smolensky, P. (1996). On the comprehension/production dilemma in child language. Linguistic Inquiry 27, 720–31.Google Scholar
Spenader, J., Smits, E. J. & Hendriks, P. (2009). Coherent discourse solves the pronoun interpretation problem. Journal of Child Language 36(1), 2352.Google Scholar
Stevenson, S. & Smolensky, P. (2006). Optimality in sentence processing. In Smolensky, P. & Legendre, G. (eds), The harmonic mind: From neural computation to optimality-theoretic grammar, Volume 2, Linguistic and philosophical implications, 307338. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Taatgen, N. A. & Anderson, J. R. (2002). Why do children learn to say ‘Broke’? A model of learning the past tense without feedback. Cognition 86(2), 123–55.Google Scholar
Thornton, R. & Wexler, K. (1999). Principle B, VP ellipsis, and interpretation in child grammar. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Van Maanen, L. & Van Rijn, H. (2007). An accumulator model of semantic interference. Cognitive Systems Research 8(3), 174–81.Google Scholar
Van Maanen, L., Van Rijn, H. & Borst, J. P. (2009). Stroop and picture-word interference are two sides of the same coin. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 16(6), 987–99.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Van Rij, J., Hendriks, P., Spenader, J. & Van Rijn, H. (2009a). From group results to individual patterns in pronoun comprehension. In Chandlee, J., Franchini, M., Lord, S. & Rheiner, M. (eds), Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, Volume 2, 563–74. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Van Rij, J., Hendriks, P., Spenader, J. & Van Rijn, H. (2009b). Modeling the selective effects of slowed-down speech in pronoun comprehension. In Crawford, J., Otaki, K. & Takahashi, M. (eds),Proceedings of the 3rd Conference on Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition North America (GALANA, 2008), 291302. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
Van Rijn, H. & Anderson, J. R. (2003). Modeling lexical decision as ordinary retrieval. In Detje, F., Dörner, D. & Schaub, H. (eds), Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Cognitive Modeling, 207212. Bamberg: Universitätsverlag.Google Scholar
Van Rijn, H., Van Someren, M. & Van der Maas, H. (2003). Modeling developmental transitions on the balance scale task. Cognitive Science 27(2), 227–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weismer, S. E. & Hesketh, L. J. (1996). Lexical learning by children with specific language impairment effects of linguistic input presented at varying speaking rates. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research 39(1), 177–90.Google Scholar