A Crosslinguistic Study of Spatial Categorization from the Preverbal State to Adulthood

语义与认知的关系：从言语前阶段到成年期的空间分类的跨语言研究本项目研究了英语和韩语中从婴儿期到成年期空间关系概念分类与语言特定词义之间的关系。这两种语言在划分空间关系的方式上有很大的不同。例如，英语有“IN”和“ON”这样的词来区分“containment”（例如，把一个苹果放在碗里）和“support”（例如，把一个杯子放在桌子上），而韩语没有这样的词。相反，韩语中有区分宽松（例如，碗里的苹果）和紧密（例如，盒式录像带；手指上的戒指）的词，而不考虑容器和支撑。这项研究探讨了由此发现而产生的两个相互关联的问题：(1)孩子们是如何这么早就学会这些特定语言的单词的意思的？(2)这些早期习得的词义如何影响后期的空间概念？这些问题将通过调查儿童和成人区分各种类型空间关系的方式来研究。更具体地说，这些研究询问，那些还不会说话的婴儿在开始学习语言时，是否会使用比他们正在学习的语言所需的更广泛的空间类别，以及年龄较大的儿童和成人是否对同样广泛的空间类别保持敏感，或者，正如初步研究表明的那样，他们主要将注意力转移到他们在学习第一语言时所学到的区别上。初步的实验表明，不会说话的婴儿（9、11和14个月）能够区分大量的空间特征，包括那些与正在学习的语言无关的特征，但随着时间的推移，语言会将他们的注意力引导到更有限的语言相关特征上。拟议的工作通过一系列涉及遏制和支持的空间特征进一步考察了这种可能性。该研究采用了优先观看设计，测量参与者观看特定场景的时间，并在两个场景中进行选择。该方法可用于幼儿（从9个月开始）和成人，从而可以对两个人群进行系统比较。此外，成年参与者被要求执行一项分类任务，要求他们口头解释他们的决定。这项研究将为儿童在很小的时候就获得特定语言的词义系统的机制，以及婴儿、儿童和成人在语言和概念形成之间发生的各种相互作用提供见解。

Choi, SoonjaBCS-0091493The relation between semantics and cognition: a crosslinguistic study of spatial categorization from the preverbal stage to adulthoodThis project investigates the relation between language-specific word meanings and conceptual classifications of spatial relations in English and Korean, from infancy to adulthood. The two languages differ significantly in the way they divide up spatial relations for purposes of language. For example, whereas English has words such as IN and ON to distinguish between containment (e.g., putting an apple IN a bowl) and support (e.g., putting a cup ON a table), Korean does not have such terms. Instead, Korean has words that distinguish between loose fit (e.g., apple in a bowl) and tight fit (e.g., video cassette in its case; ring on a finger) regardless of containment and support. The research explores two interrelated questions that arise from this finding: (1) How do children learn such language-specific word meanings so early?, and (2) how do these early-acquired word meanings influence spatial concepts at later stages? These questions will be studied by investigating the ways in which children and adults distinguish various types of spatial relations. More specifically, the studies ask whether infants who do not yet talk initially begin learning language with a more extensive set of spatial categories than is needed for the language they are learning, and whether older children and adults maintain sensitivity to the same extensive set of spatial categories or, as preliminary work suggests, they channel their attention primarily to distinctions they learned in acquiring their first language.Preliminary experiments suggest that preverbal infants (9, 11, and 14 months) are able to distinguish a wide range of spatial features, including those not relevant for the language being learned, but that over time, the language channels their attention to a more limited set of linguistically relevant features. The proposed work examines this possibility further with a set of spatial features involving containment and support. The studies employ a preferential looking design that measures the amount of time the participant looks at a particular scene, given a choice between two scenes. This method can be used with both young children (starting from 9 months) and adults, thus allowing systematic comparisons of the two populations. In addition, adult participants are asked to perform a classification task which requires that they verbally explain their decisions. This research will provide insight into the mechanisms that enable children to acquire language-specific word-meaning systems at a very young age, and the kinds of interactions that take place between language and concept formation in infants, children and adults.