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Modelling of early language acquisition aims to understand how infants bootstrap their language skills. The modelling encompasses properties of the input data used for training the models, the cognitive hypotheses and their algorithmic implementations being tested, and the evaluation methodologies to compare models to human data. Recent developments have enabled the use of more naturalistic training data for computational models. This also motivates development of more naturalistic tests of model behaviour. A crucial step towards such an aim is to develop representative speech datasets consisting of speech heard by infants in their natural environments. However, a major drawback of such recordings is that they are typically noisy, and it is currently unclear how the sound quality could affect analyses and modelling experiments conducted on such data. In this paper, we explore this aspect for the case of infant-directed speech (IDS) and adult-directed speech (ADS) analysis. First, we manually and automatically annotated audio quality of utterances extracted from two corpora of child-centred long-form recordings (in English and French). We then compared acoustic features of IDS and ADS in an in-lab dataset and across different audio quality subsets of naturalistic data. Finally, we assessed how the audio quality and recording environment may change the conclusions of a modelling analysis using a recent self-supervised learning model. Our results show that the use of modest and high audio quality naturalistic speech data result in largely similar conclusions on IDS and ADS in terms of acoustic analyses and modelling experiments. We also found that an automatic sound quality assessment tool can be used to screen out useful parts of long-form recordings for a closer analysis with comparable results to that of manual quality annotation.

CogSci 2023

Analysing the Impact of Audio Quality on the use of Naturalistic Long-Form Recordings for Infant-Directed Speech Research

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The 45th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society will take place in Sydney, Australia as a modified hybrid conference. Presentations from the main-session room will be live-streamed every day for all events. This will include all invited talks and award sessions. Recordings of all CogSci 2023 sessions will be made available for on-demand viewing after the conference.<br>
The in-person component will be held at the International Convention Centre Sydney at Darling Harbour. The Conference will take place Wednesday July 26th – Saturday July 29th, 2023 (Wednesday, July 26th is the Workshops Day).

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The 45th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society presents the latest research across cognitive science and highlights the theme of Cognition in Context.

We investigate the interpretation of disjunction in child and adult Romanian via a replication of Tieu et al. (2017). Specifically, we target the simple disjunction sau ‘or’ (with two intonation patterns: neutral and marked), and the complex disjunction markers sau…sau and fie…fie ‘either…or’. In a predictive Truth Value Judgment Task, participants evaluated a puppet’s disjunctive guesses (The hen pushed the bus or the plane) after seeing the outcome. Adults assigned predominantly exclusive interpretations to both simple and complex disjunctions (The hen pushed only one). Children, however, generally interpreted sau (with both intonational patterns) and sau…sau inclusively (The hen pushed one and possibly both), while they interpreted fie…fie conjunctively (The hen pushed both). It would appear that at an initial developmental stage, morphological/prosodic markedness does not affect children’s interpretation of disjunction. We discuss several possible accounts for the observed variation among complex disjunctions in child Romanian.

Not all complex disjunctions are alike: On inclusive and conjunctive interpretations in child Romanian

The link between language and cognition is evident in the first months of life. As early as three months of age, a parent labeling an object that the infant is looking at, influences the infants’ thoughts about those objects (Ferry et al., 2010). Prior research investigating this question has been conducted using face-to-face methodologies (Fulkerson & Waxman, 2007). Due to COVID, we sought to validate an online counterpart of the categorization task using preferential-looking paradigms. In Experiment 1, we found that language labels facilitated object categorization for 10- to 12-month-old infants. In contrast, a control condition that presented the same labeling phrases played in reverse did not facilitate categorization. In Experiment 2, we found that labels did not facilitate object categorization among 6-month-old infants. In sum, the advantage of online infant testing may be restricted to older ages.

Mixed results testing categorization in infants using a preferential-looking paradigm on Zoom

Core vocabulary is a topic of huge interest in linguistics and has been studied from a wide variety of perspectives, such as language learning, dictionary studies, and cross-linguistically. In many of these conceptions, word frequency is widely considered the conventional measure of a word's coreness; however, this approach overlooks important aspects of mental representation like centrality in an associative semantic network. In this experiment, we compare different approaches to defining core words in a task that involves predicting missing words in sentences. Results showed that core words (regardless of definition) were easier to guess than non-core words, but that frequency-defined ones did not perform as well as expected given their higher predictability and the nature of the task. Analysis of incorrect responses also showed that people preferred to guess core words, simple synonyms, and words that are taxonomically related to the target. The findings suggest that how core vocabulary is defined depends in part on the nature of the task and that aspects of both mental representation and the linguistic environment play an important role.

Word Prediction in Context: An Empirical Investigation of Core Vocabulary

Objects can either be represented as independent individuals (“object-files”) or as members of a single collection (“ensemble”). A great deal of work over the past 40 years has explored these representational systems, largely in the visual domain. Far less is known about auditory objects. Here, we show that a property characteristic of visual object representation – that it can be modulated by simple linguistic framing – also applies to auditory objects. In particular, we show that using the expression “each sound” versus “every sound” can bias auditory object construal in the same way that using “each circle” versus “every circle” can bias visual object construal. These findings support the idea that object-files and ensembles are not limited to the visual domain, but are representational formats found more generally throughout cognition.

Language Shifts the Representation of Sounds in Time: From Auditory Individuals to Auditory Ensembles

The effect of a first language (L1) on the acquisition of a second language (L2) is widely acknowledged across psycho-linguistics field. However, prior studies have focused on limited L1-L2 pairs and raise questions to how do linguistic structures (syntactic, phonological, or genetics) either promote or hinder the learning of a new language. In current study, we collected standardized English assessment scores from English Language Learners at international schools from 36 countries and addressed the language pairs by comparing linguistic similarities between more than 30 L1s. We also examined if different linguistic structures of L1 influence the acquisition of L2 in terms of syntactic, phonological, and genetic similarities. As a result, we found older ELLs learn English at a faster rate compared to younger ELLs. Among older ELLs, students who speak L1 that shares linguistic similarities with English learn faster than ELLs whose L1 has a relatively distant relationship with English.

Will children learn English faster if their native language is similar to English?

By 24 months, toddlers can process language incrementally using phonology to disambiguate lexical candidates. Adult research shows incremental processing of word meaning; however, this aspect is unclear in research with toddlers. Thus, we investigated the effect of phonological and semantic competition on word recognition in 18- and 24-month-old toddlers. In a preferential-looking task, toddlers looked at semantic-related (taxonomic or thematic) or unrelated pairs of pictures with different or similar phonological onset. The results showed that the 18-month group looked at the target only when the onset of both pictures was different but not when they were similar -regardless of the type of relationship. By contrast, the 24-month group had a similar look pattern as the 18-month group, only in semantically related but not in unrelated pairs. This research suggests that at 24 months of age, toddlers can interpret language incrementally based on phonological and semantic representations.

The Effects of Phonological and Semantic Similarity on Early Word Recognition

Language acquisition starts at birth and takes place since early interactions, with specific timings and dynamics. Caregivers may unconsciously reflect gender/sex stereotypes in their communication style, which results in children being infused with expectations about their societal and gender roles ever since. 

In an exploratory study on 48 3-min recordings of free play of 12 Polish mother-infant dyads (5 girls, 7 boys), collected at 2, 3, 8 and 12 months, we asked if such differences are already present in infant-directed speech and in the dynamics of interactive behavior depending on child’s gender. 

We propose a novel analysis, combining semantics, vocabulary content, and vocalizations dynamics (via Recurrence Quantification Analysis). The results suggest potential differences in utilization of infant’s name - data show opposite trends over time, decreasing in the female group and increasing in the male. Similarly, diagonal RQA profiles show minor differences in mother-child interaction dynamics.

Do gender/sex stereotypes shape early social interactions and development?

The study investigates two different ways of guiding an explainee through action demonstration: contrastive and non-contrastive. Their effect was tested on attention to specific action elements (goal) as well as event memory. In an eye-tracking experiment, participants were shown different motion videos that were either contrastive or non-contrastive with respect to segments of movement presentation. As action demonstration is often multimodal, the stimuli were created with respect to their visual and verbal presentation. For visual presentation, a video combined two movements in a contrastive (e.g., Up-motion following a Down-motion) or non-contrastive way (e.g., two Up-motions following each other). For verbal presentation, each video was combined with a sequence of instruction description in form of negative (i.e., contrastive) or assertive (i.e., non-contrastive) guidance. It was found, a) attention to the event goal increased for this condition in later time window, and b) participants’ recall to the event was facilitated when a visually contrastive motion was combined with a verbal contrast.

Contrastiveness in the context of action demonstration: an eye-tracking study on its effects on action perception and action recall

The Interface Transparency Thesis (ITT) proposes that people tend to use a canonical interpretation of linguistic expressions, even when this interpretation is sub-optimal for the task at hand. 
The current paper sought to investigate this claim further by adding a time-pressure manipulation to a quantified sentence verification task, and analysing the results through
a computational model of decision making. 
The results indicate that time pressure -while effectively changing behavioral responses- does not alter cognitive processes associated with quantifier verification, thus supporting the ITT.

Time-pressure Does Not Alter the Bias Towards Canonical Interpretation of Quantifiers

In many lexical and semantic tasks single word stimuli are presented in isolation and it is assumed that responses are a function of the characteristics of the words presented, with no contribution from words that are merely associated with target words. Recent research suggests that semantic characteristics of a target word’s associate may in fact influence target word responses a syntactic classification task. The present study extends that previous research to examine whether lexical and semantic properties of target word associates are recruited during lexical and semantic decision tasks, and whether the type of associate information recruited varies as a function of task. We found that lexical properties of a word associate are related to accuracy in lexical decision, and that semantic properties of a word associate are related to both response time and accuracy in semantic decision. These findings provide new insight about the way word associates contribute to semantic representation and processing, even though they are not actually presented, moving beyond previous assumptions about lexical-semantic processing of single words.

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Not all complex disjunctions are alike: On inclusive and conjunctive interpretations in child Romanian

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Not all complex disjunctions are alike: On inclusive and conjunctive interpretations in child Romanian

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