Collaborative Research: Language-Specific Input, Cross-Cultural Differences and Spatial Cognition: A Case of 'Support' Relation

本研究的目的是了解婴幼儿语言与认知发展之间的关系。研究人员提出，语言和认知之间的双向互动从发展的早期阶段就开始了。这个项目将侧重于空间关系的支持领域（例如，将目标物体放在桌子上）。婴儿在语言开始之前就已经探索了支持关系的许多方面，然而语言以明显不同的方式划分这些关系。为了理解语言与认知之间的关系，研究者建议揭示婴儿形成抽象类别支持关系的非语言能力（如水平支持与垂直支持、依恋支持），以及这种能力如何与他们所听到的语言相互作用，以获得语言中空间词的意义。研究人员采用多语言和多方法的方法来研究这种相互作用。具体来说，他们研究了学习英语、韩语、德语或西班牙语的儿童的支持关系的非语言和语义类别的发展，这些语言群体在如何组织各种支持关系方面形成了有趣的对比。在研究环境输入对儿童空间认知的影响时，这些研究比较了（在四个语言群体中）母亲在谈论支持事件（把x放在y上）时的语言和手势方面。为了实现这一目标，研究人员将对每种语言进行纵向研究，从10个月（孩子的年龄）开始，在自然环境中（即孩子的家里）进行亲子互动，持续一年半。还计划进行一项横断面启发研究，以比较父母谈话的跨文化差异。为了了解婴幼儿如何组织和分类各种类型的支持关系，研究人员还将进行实验研究，系统地调查婴儿空间类别组织的发展。通过对从言语前期到幼儿期（10至27个月大）的几个年龄组进行研究，这些研究将记录婴儿时期形成的非语言支持类别如何受到他们语言中空间支持术语习得的影响。为了更好地评估婴儿能力和环境之间的相互作用，本研究综合了几种方法，包括自然主义方法、纵向方法、横断面启发方法和实验横断面方法。这两项共同研究在英语和韩语学习儿童的空间认知和空间语言发展方面取得了跨文化的发现，有助于最近对语言和认知之间早期关系的重新思考。在拟议的项目中，他们为他们的研究增加了一个新的维度，通过解决父母的输入在空间认知发展中的作用，并通过精确定位驱动婴儿将支持分类为特定语言语义类别的语言元素。总的来说，这项研究将有助于更准确地理解儿童早期语言和认知之间相互作用的本质。在这个项目中，研究人员之间的国际合作为研究问题提供了独特的方法方法，并为研究人员及其学生提供了广泛的培训机会。由于该项目的跨语言性质，他们计划招募和培训来自代表性不足的少数民族的学生，以协助项目的各个方面。该项目的结果还将为发育研究中未被充分代表的婴幼儿提供急需的数据。研究结果将在学术（包括国际媒体）和非学术环境（通过研讨会和对教师、家长和日托工作者的演讲）中广泛传播。

The goal of the present proposal is to understand the relation between language and cognitive development in infants and toddlers . The researchers propose a two-way interaction between language and cognition from a very early stage in development. This project will focus on the domain of the spatial relation of support (e.g., placing a target object on a table). Infants already explore many aspects of support relations well before language begins and yet languages divide up these relations in significantly different ways. To understand the relation between language and cognition, the researchers propose to uncover infants' nonverbal abilities to form abstract categories of support relations (e.g., horizontal vs. vertical support, support by attachment), and how such abilities interact with the language they hear in acquiring the meaning of the spatial words in their language. The researchers take a multi-language and multi-method approach to investigate this interaction. Specifically, they examine the development of nonlinguistic and semantic categories of support relations in children learning English, Korean, German, or Spanish, language groups that contrast interestingly in how they organize various support relations in their language. In examining the effect of environmental inputs on children's spatial cognition, the studies compare (across the four language groups) linguistic and gestural aspects of maternal speech when they talk about support events (putting x on y) to their children. For this goal, for each language, the researchers will conduct a longitudinal study following parent-child interactions in a naturalistic setting (i.e., the child's home) starting from 10 months (child's age) for a year and half will also be conducted. A cross-sectional, elicitation study to compare cross-cultural differences in parental talking is also planned. To understand how infants and toddlers organize and categorize various types of support relations, the researchers also will conduct experimental studies to systematically investigate the development in infants' organization of spatial categories. By examining several age groups from the preverbal period to early childhood (from 10 to 27 months of age), the studies will document how the nonlinguistic categories of support formed in infancy may be influenced by the acquisition of the spatial terms of support in their language. To best assess the interaction between infants' abilities and their environment, the investigation combines several methodologies in an integrative way, including naturalistic, longitudinal methods, cross-sectional elicitations methods, and experimental cross-sectional approaches. The two co-PIs have yielded cross-cultural findings on the development of spatial cognition and spatial language in English- and Korean-learning children that have contributed to a recent rethinking of the early relationship between language and cognition. In the proposed project, they add a new dimension to their investigation by addressing the role of parents' input in the development of spatial cognition and by pinpointing the linguistic elements that drive infants' categorization of support into the language-specific semantic categories. Overall, the proposed study will contribute to understanding more precisely the nature of the interaction between language and cognition in early childhood.The international collaboration among the researchers in this project lends a unique methodological approach to the research questions and provides a wide range of training opportunities for the researchers and their students. Because of the cross-linguistic nature of the project, they plan to recruit and train students from underrepresented minorities to assist with various aspects of the project. The results from the project also will contribute much needed data from infants and toddlers underrepresented in developmental research. The results will be disseminated broadly, in academic (including international outlets) and non-academic settings (via workshops and presentations to teachers, parents, and daycare workers).