RUI: Conceptual Foundations of Language: Infants' Representations of Sources and Goals in Events

考虑一下一只狗冲出狗窝跳进游泳池的事件。即使是婴儿也能想到这些事件，然后，作为年幼的孩子，他们能够随时谈论它们。这是如何实现的？这项任务远非简单;语言以高度抽象的格式表示事件的组成部分（例如，在英语中，“the dog”被映射到名词短语，“dashing”被映射到动词短语，而“into”被映射到介词短语）。婴儿是否也抽象地表示事件的组成部分;例如，他们是否将事件中的特定狗表示为属于世界上被称为“狗”的一类事物？或者，婴儿是否具体地代表了一个事件的组成部分;例如，他们是否只把事件中的狗代表为他们特定的狗托托？此外，学习语言是否会影响婴儿思考世界的方式？拟议中的研究将通过探索婴儿如何代表运动事件的两个未充分研究的组成部分来解决这些基本问题-起点（“走出狗屋”）和终点（“进入游泳池”）。拟议的研究将使用婴儿控制的注视时间方法来测试婴儿是否代表不同运动事件抽象的起点和终点。此外，拟议的研究将使用两种语言发展措施来探讨婴儿对起点和终点的表征是否以及如何与语言习得有关。拟议研究的结果将对发展认知心理学和语言学的理论产生重大影响，并将更广泛地影响社会，以及学生。在理论方面，研究结果将揭示语言习得的可能机制（语言如何影响婴儿如何表征事件？），以及婴儿事件表征的性质（婴儿的表征是抽象的还是狭窄和具体的？）。此外，这些发现将与语言理论中的基本问题有关，例如，语言表征是否直接反映了人类认知的本质，包括婴儿期的思想？其次，在社会方面，拟议的研究将有助于更全面地描述典型发育儿童的认知和语言发展，然后可以应用于可能正在发育的儿童。最后，在学生方面，该项目通过吸收不同群体的本科生和硕士研究生参与，促进代表性不足群体的学生参与。学生将在研究项目的各个方面得到指导，从而使他们接触到科学研究的严谨性和价值。

Consider the event of a dog dashing out of a doghouse and jumping into a pool. Even infants can think about such events, and then, as young children, they are able to readily talk about them. How is this accomplished? The task is far from simple; language represents an event's components in a highly abstract format (e.g., in the English language, "the dog" is mapped into a Noun Phrase, "dashing" is mapped into a Verb Phrase, and "into" is mapped into a Prepositional Phrase). Do infants also represent an event's components abstractly; for example, do they represent the specific dog in the event as belonging to a class of things in the world referred to as "dogs"? Or, do infants represent an event's components concretely; for example, do they represent the dog in the event only as their specific dog Toto? Further, does learning language influence the way infants think about the world? The proposed studies will address these fundamental questions by exploring how infants represent two understudied components of motion events--starting points ("out of a doghouse") and endpoints ("into a pool"). The proposed research will use an infant-controlled looking time method to test whether infants represent starting points and endpoints across different motion events abstractly. Further, the proposed studies will use two measures of language development to explore whether and how infants' representations of starting points and endpoints are related to the acquisition of language.The findings from the proposed research will have significant implications for theories in developmental cognitive psychology, as well as linguistics, and will impact society more broadly, as well as students. In regards to theory, the findings will shed light on the possible mechanisms of language acquisition (how does language influence how infants represent events?), as well as the nature of infant event representations (are infants' representations abstract or are they narrow and concrete?). Further, the findings will be pertinent to fundamental questions in linguistic theory, such as, do language representations directly reflect the nature of human cognition, including thought in infancy? Second, in regards to society, the proposed research will contribute to a more thorough characterization of cognitive and language development in typically developing children, which can then be applied to children who may be developing atypically. Lastly, in regards to students, this project promotes the involvement of students from underrepresented groups by involving a diverse group of undergraduate and Master's level graduate students. Students will be mentored on all aspects of the research project, thus exposing them to the rigor and merit of scientific research.