ERIC Number: EJ1075075
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2015-Oct
Pages: 15
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0012-1649
EISSN: N/A
English- and Mandarin-Learning Infants' Discrimination of Actions and Objects in Dynamic Events
Chen, Jie; Tardif, Twila; Pulverman, Rachel; Casasola, Marianella; Zhu, Liqi; Zheng, Xiaobei; Meng, Xiangzhi
Developmental Psychology, v51 n10 p1501-1515 Oct 2015
The present studies examined the role of linguistic experience in directing English and Mandarin learners' attention to aspects of a visual scene. Specifically, they asked whether young language learners in these 2 cultures attend to differential aspects of a word-learning situation. Two groups of English and Mandarin learners, 6-8-month-olds (n = 65) and 17-19-month-olds (n = 91), participated in 2 studies, based on a habituation paradigm, designed to test infants' discrimination between actions and objects in dynamic events. In Study 1, these stimuli were presented in silence, whereas in Study 2, a verbal label accompanied videos. Results showed that 6-8-month-olds could discriminate action changes but not object changes, whereas 17-19-month-olds could discriminate both types of changes. However, there were only very subtle cross-linguistic differences in these patterns when the scenes were presented together with a verbal label. These findings show strong evidence for universal developmental trends in attention, with somewhat weaker evidence that the differences in the types of words Mandarin- versus English-learning children produce or are exposed to affect attention to different aspects of a scene in the first 2 years of life.
Descriptors: Infants, English, Mandarin Chinese, Attention, Visual Discrimination, Language Acquisition, Habituation, Age Differences, Child Development, Verbal Stimuli, Language Skills, Measures (Individuals), Foreign Countries
American Psychological Association. Journals Department, 750 First Street NE, Washington, DC 20002. Tel: 800-374-2721; Tel: 202-336-5510; Fax: 202-336-5502; e-mail: order@apa.org; Web site: http://www.apa.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) (NIH)
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: China (Beijing)
Identifiers - Assessments and Surveys: MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory
Grant or Contract Numbers: 1R03 HD60139-01A1