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Korean- and English-speaking children use cross-situational information to learn novel predicate terms*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2008

JANE B. CHILDERS  and
JAE H. PAIK
JANE B. CHILDERS*
Affiliation:
Trinity University
JAE H. PAIK
Affiliation:
San Francisco State University
*
Address for correspondence: Jane B. Childers, Trinity University, Department of Psychology, One Trinity Place, San Antonio, TX 78212. Email: jane.childers@trinity.edu. Tel: 210-999-8327. Fax: 210-999-8386.
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Abstract

This paper examines children's attention to cross-situational information during word learning. Korean-speaking children in Korea and English-speaking children in the US were taught four nonce words that referred to novel actions. For each word, children saw four related events: half were shown events that were very similar (Close comparisons), half were shown events that were not as similar (Far comparisons). The prediction was that children would compare events to each other and thus be influenced by the events shown. In addition, children in these language groups could be influenced differently as their verb systems differ. Although some differences were found across language, children in both languages were influenced by the type of events shown, suggesting that they are using a comparison process. Thus, this study provides evidence for comparison, a new mechanism to describe how children learn new action words, and demonstrates that this process could apply across languages.

Type
Brief Research Report
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , January 2009 , pp. 201 - 224
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

[*]

Funding was provided by a grant from the National Institutes of Health (1R15 HD044447-01) to the first author. Portions of this research were presented at the 2005 meeting of the Cognitive Development Society, San Diego, CA. We wish to thank Jennifer Roscetti and M. Elaine Heard for their assistance in stimuli creation and Megan Broughan, Laura Myers, Jessica Matley, Erin Mulvey, Kolette Ring, Amanda Snook, Emily Stanley, Sylvia Suciu, Margot Tarrillion and Valerie Torrez for assistance in data collection and coding. We also thank the parents and children who participated in the study, and the teachers and directors at four public preschools in Seoul, Korea and the University Presbyterian Church Children's Center in San Antonio, TX. We are extremely grateful to Soonja Choi, Department of Linguistics and Asian/Middle-Eastern Languages, San Diego State University, for her helpful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript, and are grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions. We also thank David Silva, Don Burquest, Yujeong Choi and Wenhua Jin in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Texas at Arlington, for their assistance with the linguistic description of the Korean sentences.

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