Marianella Casasola, Ph.D. - US grants

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The current project explores how young children acquire the meanings that are expressed in language-specific semantic spatial categories. A multifaceted approach is taken in which aspects of both infant spatial cognition as well as the effect of language on infants' spatial categorization is examined across a number of experimental studies. In particular, a number of the experimental studies explore the content of infants' spatial categories (i.e., what types of spatial categories can preverbal and early-linguistic infants form?) as well as the underlying processes that guide infant categorization of spatial relations (i.e., what factors influence infants' categorization of spatial relations?). Additional experimental studies are designed to begin to outline the degree and mechanism by which linguistic input can influence infants' categorization of spatial events. For this reason, the types of spatial categories that English-learning infants and toddlers form will be compared to the types of spatial categories formed by Korean-learning infants and toddlers as well as those formed by Spanish-learning infants and toddlers. Other experimental studies explore whether the addition of linguistic input can facilitate infants' ability to form particular types of spatial categories. Together, the findings from the current project will provide insight into the nature of the interaction between infants' nonlinguistic spatial cognition and language during the first two years of development and will help elucidate how young children form the semantic spatial categories that are specific to their language. Finally, the findings will document whether the development of infant spatial categorization varies in infants and toddlers raised in different cultures and with languages other than English.

The research supported by the CAREER award to Dr. Casasola will examine the cognitive and linguistic abilities that guide infants' and toddlers' acquisition of spatial language. Although languages differ in how they describe spatial events, young children display little difficulty acquiring the semantic categories that are specific to their language. For example, English-learning toddlers learn to map the English preposition "in" onto all types of containment events, for example, placing a peg in a block. Korean-learning toddlers correctly learn to map the Korean spatial verb, "kkita," onto tight-fit containment as well as tight-fit support events, for example, putting a peg in a block made to fit and a Lego block on another Lego block. Hence, by their second birthday, toddlers have begun to acquire language-specific semantic spatial categories, attending to those spatial relations (e.g., tight-fit) that are lexically are relevant to their language.
When and how do infants and toddlers acquire the concept of containment described in the English term "in" or the concept of tight-fit described in the Korean term "kkita"? Are language-specific semantic categories drawn from infants' nonlinguistic spatial categories, for example, the result of infants' nonlinguistic processing of their spatial world? Or are the concepts expressed in semantic spatial categories instead acquired as the result of experience with a particular language? The current research project is designed to address these questions. A multifaceted, multi-methodological approach is taken to explore aspects of infants' and toddlers' perceptual, cognitive, and linguistic development. Specifically, the research program explores the role of nonlinguistic spatial cognition in the acquisition of language-specific semantic spatial categories by exploring the types of spatial categories formed by infants within different linguistic environments. The research program explores the possible role of linguistic input in the formation of language-specific semantic categories by documenting whether language can motivate infants to form nonlinguistic and semantic spatial categories. The research also examines the early acquisition of spatial language in infants and toddlers from different linguistic environments. The results are expected to advance our understanding of the processes guiding infant categorization and toddlers' early linguistic development. The results also will address how development may vary in infants and toddlers raised with languages other than English.
The research program is integrated with an educational program in which students from underrepresented minorities will be recruited to help conduct the research, especially those who have first-hand experience negotiating two languages and who can provide an insider's perspective on the language-thought issues being explored. Because a number of different methodologies will be employed, students will gain expertise in the use of a diverse array of methods, such as visual habituation, preferential-looking, action-imitation tasks, and act-out comprehension, as well as an understanding of the different data yielded by each methodology. The goal of this education program is to provide the field with independent researchers from underrepresented minorities who will seek academic positions, contribute to the field as scientists and educators, and function as mentors and role models for other students from underrepresented minorities.

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).

This conference brings together leading researchers to address both the historical roots of the information-processing approach and its future direction in the study of infant perception and cognition. One important emphasis of this conference, to be held as a preconference to the International Conference on Infant Studies on March 26th, 2007, is its exploration of the underlying processes that explain developmental change from infancy to childhood. By focusing on a single theoretical perspective, the conference allows its participants to view how the information-processing approach can address development across a number of important and diverse domains, such as infant attention, object perception, face processing, spatial cognition, object categorization, and symbolic understanding. A number of leading researchers will address the future directions of the field, some of whom will outline innovative methodological approaches, while others link the historical roots of this approach to its future directions. The uniqueness of the conference is in linking many diverse areas of cognition under one theoretical framework. The conference is also intended to recognize the contribution of Leslie B. Cohen, both theoretically and methodologically, in advancing the understanding of infant perception and cognition.

The small conference will facilitate interactions among researchers, many of whom may not usually exchange ideas because they focus on different aspects of infant perceptual and cognitive development. An important component of the conference is providing support for young investigators (graduate students, post-docs, and junior faculty) to attend the conference and participate in discussions via travel awards. The smaller size of the conference will provide an intimate arena for interaction among leading researchers and young investigators alike, with the goal of serving as a catalyst for forging collaborations among more experienced as well as junior investigators, and engendering new ideas about the future direction of the field. The presentations of each invited speaker will be published in an edited volume by Oxford University Press, which will allow dissemination of the presentations and findings to a broader audience.

The Cognitive Development Society seeks to promote the attendance of young scholars from groups traditionally underrepresented in the field at its 2015 meeting taking place October 9-10 in Columbus, OH. The award will support travel awards to students, post-docs and young investigators from underrepresented groups. To promote networking and professional socialization for these awardees, funds will also support a new mentoring program to ensure a positive and productive conference experience for the young scholars.

The mentoring program will match each young scholar with a more experienced scholar in the field, one with similar research interests. Through an organized meeting at the start of the conference with their mentors, mentees will have the opportunity to forge new professional relationships and broaden their academic network. The young scholars will also be promoted at the conference by being acknowledged during an awards ceremony. Mentors will also support their mentees by attending the young scholars' presentations. These activities are intended to ensure that attending the CDS 2015 conference is a positive and productive experience for young scholars from traditionally underrepresented groups, and to increase the likelihood that attending the conference will yield a positive impact that endures beyond the conference itself.

The Cognitive Development Society (CDS) seeks to promote the attendance, at its 2017 meeting, of young scholars from groups traditionally underrepresented in the Developmental Sciences. This award will support travel awards to graduate students, post-docs, and young investigators from these groups, broadly defined. Travel awards increase the likelihood that young scholars will have the means to attend and present their work at CDS, and will support them through their participation in a mentoring program, designed to ensure that young scholars will have a productive experience at the conference. A broader impact of the present award is to increase the likelihood that the conference experience endures beyond the conference itself by strengthening the professional networks of young scholars from traditionally underrepresented groups.

The present award will increase the diversity of the CDS membership through several mechanisms. Supporting travel to the CDS conference increases the number of young scholars from underrepresented groups who are able to attend the conference. To promote the awardees' networking, professional socialization, and retention in the Society, funds will be used for a mentoring program that will match each young scholar with a more experienced scholar in the field, one with similar research interests. Through an organized meeting at the start of the conference with their mentors, mentees will have the opportunity to forge new professional relationships and broaden their academic network. Mentors will support their mentees by attending the young scholars' presentations. In addition, the young scholars will meet with each other and with the recipients of the 2015 travel awards to foster a community of young scholars from underrepresented groups. Finally, CDS will highlight the recipients of the 2017 travel awards at the conference by acknowledging them during an awards ceremony. Anonymous feedback from the young scholars and their mentors following the 2017 meeting will help ensure that CDS can improve upon the effectiveness of its travel awards in achieving its goal of increasing the involvement of scholars traditionally under-represented in the field.

Mental rotation, the ability to mentally manipulate a visual representation of an object and recognize its appearance from a different orientation, shows stability from infancy through preschool. This ability predicts mathematical achievement in kindergarten and beyond as well as entry into the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields. The present work focuses on identifying how non-spatial processes contribute to mental rotation abilities. Findings will help identify ideal time points for intervention, advance understanding of the factors that contribute to mental rotation, and address how individual differences in mental rotation during infancy predict later abilities. This work will involve the creation and refinement of measures that can be used to trace the development of mental rotation from infancy into preschool; thereby, not only contributing new tools to the field, but also yielding insights that can inform current theoretical conceptions of mental rotation and its relation to non-spatial processes.

The critical research question is as follows: What are the non-spatial processes that contribute to mental rotation abilities and their development? Associations between mental rotation, object features, processing bias, and motor experience will be examined using a cross-sequential design with overlapping age cohorts. The investigators will recruit an infant cohort at 8 months, a toddler cohort at 20 months, and a preschool cohort at 3 years. Each cohort will be assessed at three time points -- every six months for infants (i.e., 8, 14, and 20 months), every 8 months for toddlers (i.e., 20, 28, and 36 months), and every year for preschoolers (3, 4, and 5 years). When examined at a specific age, the sample will provide a snapshot into the association between mental rotation and non-spatial skills (i.e., object features, processing bias, and motor experience). The longitudinal design will allow the investigators to follow participants across infancy, toddlerhood, or the preschool years. This approach provides an opportunity to understand how non-spatial skills, such as more precocious motor skills during infancy, may shape mental rotation over time. Such findings are central to bolstering understanding of the possible mechanisms by which particular types of experiences can promote infants' mental rotation. This, consequently, has implications for promoting academic achievement and remediating existing discrepancies in spatial and mathematical skills in children from different socioeconomic backgrounds.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.