1998 |
Xu, Fei |
R03Activity Code Description: To provide research support specifically limited in time and amount for studies in categorical program areas. Small grants provide flexibility for initiating studies which are generally for preliminary short-term projects and are non-renewable. |
Language and Acquiring Kind Concepts and Infancy @ Northeastern University
This proposal explores the relation between learning natural language terms such as "dog," "cup," and "ball," and acquiring kind concepts which underlie these lexical items. Kind concepts are among the most basic categorical distinctions adults make and words for object categories are among children's first words, thus through this project we address the fundamental question of the relation between language and thought at the onset of language acquisition. Specifically the proposed study explores the possibility that learning words such as "cup" may play a role in helping infants acquire concepts such as cup. The experiments use a standard infant habituation-dishabituation paradigm and measure infants' looking times as the basis of inferring the infants' representations. In an object individuation task in which infants are asked to infer two distinct objects after being shown one object at a time, e.g., a ball emerges from behind a screen then returns, followed by a cup emerging from behind the same screen then returning. When the screen is removed after familiarization, the infants are then shown the expected outcome of a cup and a ball or the unexpected outcome of only the cup or only the ball. For some conditions, labels were provided during the experiment to see if they would allow the infant to succeed at this task earlier than previously thought. The long term goal of the project is to systematically address the question whether acquiring count nouns can facilitate categorization in human infants and whether language is necessary for acquiring kind concepts. The proposed study will provide very valuable preliminary data for a full grant proposal to be submitted to NIH in the near future.
|
0.942 |
2000 — 2001 |
Xu, Fei |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
The Role of Language in the Acquisition of Kind Concepts @ Northeastern University
The proposed research will investigate the relation between early language acquisition and how children acquire concepts. Specifically, how learning words for kinds of objects such as "dog" and "cup" may lead the infant to organize the world in terms of kinds of physical entities and how this process changes the infant's object representations. Previous studies have shown that there may be a major developmental change in infant's ability to individuate objects towards the end of the first year: Infants as young as 4 months are able to use spatiotemporal information for establishing representations of two distinct objects, but it is not until somewhere between 10 and 12 months that they are able to use object kind information to do so. That is, infants understand that objects travel on continuous paths and if a spatiotemporal discontinuity is detected, they will conclude that a second, distinct object is involved. In contrast, if shown, say, a toy duck and a cup emerging from behind a screen and returning, one at a time, 12- but not 10-month-old infants would conclude that there are two distinct objects behind the screen. Furthermore, several studies have shown that infants are able to use labeling to facilitate categorization and toddlers are able to use labels as a source of information for inductive inference. The current proposal tests the hypothesis that infants may use distinct labels to pick out the kinds of objects in their environment, that is, the process of learning words such as "dog" and "cup" is the process of acquiring kind concepts dog and cup. Learning these words may subsequently impact on infants' object representations, their concept of kind, and their ability to make inductive inference. These hypotheses will be investigated with several methods, including a violation of expectancy looking time method, a manual search method, and an inductive inference method. The results of these experiments should lead to a more detailed and deeper understanding of the relation between early language acquisition and cognitive development in the domain of learning count nouns and acquiring kind concepts. In the future these results may be helpful to researchers in early education.
|
0.942 |
2001 — 2004 |
Xu, Fei |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
The Development of Number Concepts @ Northeastern University
The research investigates how human infants represent numerical concepts and the relationship between learning to count verbally and pre-linguistic number representations. Specifically, the objective is to determine if there are two representations of number in infants, one for small numbers (1, 2, 3, and perhaps 4) and one for large numbers (numbers larger than 3 or 4). Furthermore, we take the first step in investigating how learning the integer list of English (i.e., 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc.) may change children's later numerical concepts. Previous studies on number representations in infants and preschool children have shown that there may be a major developmental change in infants' number representations when they have acquired the meaning of the number words at around 3 to 3.5 years of age. Young infants may begin with two systems of number representations, one for small number (1, 2, and 3) and one for large numbers (e.g., 8, 16, etc.). The proposed study tests the hypothesis these two representations are distinct and that verbal counting allows the child to combine these two representations to yield adult-like numerical representations. In other words, because the verbal counting list (1, 2, 3, etc.) imposes certain constraints on conceptual representations, the child has to use both the small number and the large number representations in order to make sense of the counting list. These hypotheses will be investigated with several methods, including a violation of expectancy looking time method with infants, a training-then-transfer method with toddlers, and the how-many and give-a-number tasks widely used in assessing children's understanding of number words. The results of these experiments should lead to a more detailed and deeper understanding of the relationship between pre-linguistic representations of number and children's learning to count. The proposed research will shed basic light on the relationship between language and cognition in the domain of number representations.
|
0.942 |
2018 — 2021 |
Xu, Fei |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Collaborative Research: Early Understanding of Personal and Social Causes of Intentional Action: a Cross-Cultural Investigation @ University of California-Berkeley
In the first few years of life, infants and children rapidly learn about the social world by observing and interacting with the people in their immediate environment. These people are the first source of information as children begin to learn about human behavior and social norms shaping that behavior. The goal of this study is to examine how contextual factors influence the manner in which children interpret the behavioral intentions of others. With a focus on social-cognitive development, this study addresses how children learn about the goals and desires of others and how children learn about the rules and norms of various social groups. In this global age, individuals are increasingly required to understand multiple worldviews. This study will foster skills needed to promote positive social behaviors and sensitivity to the norms and values of different cultural groups in the United States, which, in turn, will reduce harmful stereotyping and misunderstandings.
Understanding the perspectives, norms, and conventions of various individuals will help children develop a better understanding of their own place in the social world. This study investigates the mechanisms underlying the process by which children acquire this understanding. The study also examines cultural differences and similarities in how children interpret intentional actions over the first five years of life. This will be accomplished by tracking emerging developmental changes in understandings of personal and social causes of intentional action at three time points starting in infancy and continuing on to the preschool years. Two cultural groups will be compared: European- and Chinese-Americans. The study also involves examining how infants, toddlers, and preschoolers employ statistical learning mechanisms in interpreting behavior. The methodological approach consists of a critical third party generalization task; this means that having learned about the behaviors (and intentions) of one person, investigators will determine whether infants and children are able to predict the behaviors (and intentions) of an unfamiliar person. A statistical learning measure will be used to determine how infants and children across cultures use statistical information to infer goals and desires of individuals. For example, if a young child grows up in a culture in which actions are governed by common cultural norms and practices as opposed to personal preferences, and thus observes consistency across individuals, that child may learn, over time, that observed intentional actions are frequently generalizable across individuals. In contrast, if a young child grows up in a culture in which actions are frequently expressions of idiosyncratic personal tastes, and thus, observes variability across individuals, then, that child may learn over time that intentional actions are not necessarily generalizable across individuals. Three age groups will be assessed: infants (ages 11-13 months), toddlers (ages 28-32 months) and preschoolers (ages 3-5 years). Central questions posed include: Are children's predictions regarding the intentions of others a function of the sociocultural group to which the children belong? At what age do socioculturally-based inferences begin to surface?
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.
|
1 |