Papers by Catherine Sandhofer
Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 2009
Number-specific parental language input has been shown to influence children's number word acquis... more Number-specific parental language input has been shown to influence children's number word acquisition (Suriyakham, Levine, & Huttenlocher, 2006). That is, the more frequently children hear number words and concepts, the more readily they acquire them. In a cross-national study, Mandarinspeaking Chinese parents were found to use significantly more number language than their English-speaking counterparts when interacting with their preschool-aged children in naturalistic settings (Chang et al., under review). The current study examined parental numeric language input to preschool children in Mandarin-English bilingual speaking American parents. Results were consistent with a previous cross-national, cross-linguistic investigation, and suggest that early exposure to Mandarin Chinese, whether in a monolingual or bilingual setting, provides young children with more instances and examples of the cardinal number principle than their monolingual English-speaking peers.
Frontiers in Psychology, May 14, 2019
Number-related language input has been shown to influence children's number word acquisition and ... more Number-related language input has been shown to influence children's number word acquisition and mathematical ability. Significant differences exist between how Mandarin Chinese speaking parents and monolingual English-speaking parents use numeric language in speech to children. In particular, Mandarin Chinese speaking parents use cardinal number much more frequently in speech to children than do English speaking parents. However, because previous studies have been conducted cross-nationally, research has been unable to disentangle the influences of language from parental influence. The current study examined numeric language input to preschool children with bilingual Mandarin-English American parents. Results show that when parents speak to their children in Mandarin Chinese, children hear more instances and examples of the cardinal number principle than when parents speak to their children in English. This suggests that differences between how the Mandarin Chinese and English languages are structured leads to disparities in how frequently children hear cardinal number in everyday speech.
Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 2009
Number-specific parental language input has been shown to influence children's number word acquis... more Number-specific parental language input has been shown to influence children's number word acquisition (Suriyakham, Levine, & Huttenlocher, 2006). That is, the more frequently children hear number words and concepts, the more readily they acquire them. In a cross-national study, Mandarinspeaking Chinese parents were found to use significantly more number language than their English-speaking counterparts when interacting with their preschool-aged children in naturalistic settings (Chang et al., under review). The current study examined parental numeric language input to preschool children in Mandarin-English bilingual speaking American parents. Results were consistent with a previous cross-national, cross-linguistic investigation, and suggest that early exposure to Mandarin Chinese, whether in a monolingual or bilingual setting, provides young children with more instances and examples of the cardinal number principle than their monolingual English-speaking peers.
Springer eBooks, 2020
Young children discover the meaning of words from hearing words used across time and across conte... more Young children discover the meaning of words from hearing words used across time and across contexts. Children learn to label not only the specific instances they have experienced, but they also learn the meaning of words appropriately to new instances. Moreover, children remember these word-referent pairs across a period of time, such that they are able to recall the appropriate word after delays of days or weeks. In this chapter, we address these aspects of word learning – how do children generalize instances to new situations and remember word-referent pairs across time? In doing so, we discuss statistical learning as a mechanism for word learning with a specific focus on the processes of aggregation and abstraction. Second, we discuss how multiple examples dynamically support the retention of word-referent pairs.
Language Learning, Nov 14, 2019
Although language awareness is typically defined as the explicit understanding of language's func... more Although language awareness is typically defined as the explicit understanding of language's functions and conventions, much evidence on the influence of diverse language environments on language awareness has shown implicit understandings of language. In contrast, this study examined whether exposure to linguistic diversity predicted monolingual children's explicit language awareness. We examined four aspects of children's explicit language awareness: ability to label languages, understanding of the communicative consequences of speaking different languages, understanding of labeling conventions, and awareness of their language environment. Participants were monolingual 3-to 5-year-olds (N = 81) who were from (a) a relatively linguistically homogenous community, (b) a relatively linguistically diverse community, or (c) a bilingual household in a relatively linguistically diverse community. Results suggest that community linguistic diversity and home bilingual exposure predict children's explicit language labeling and understanding of labeling conventions but not other aspects of language
Developmental Psychology, Sep 1, 2022
The ability to categorize emotions has long-term implications for children's social and emotional... more The ability to categorize emotions has long-term implications for children's social and emotional development. Therefore, identifying factors that influence early emotion categorization is of great importance. Yet, whether and how language impacts emotion category development is still widely debated. The aim of the present study was to assess how labels influence young children's ability to group faces into emotion categories for both earliest-learned and laterlearned emotion categories. Across two studies, 128 2-and 3-year-olds (77 female; Mean age=3.04 years; 35.9% White, 12.5% Multiple ethnicities or races, 6.3% Asian, 3.1% Black, and 42.2% not reported) were presented with three emotion categories (Study 1=happy, sad, angry; Study 2=surprised, disgusted, afraid). Children sorted 30 images of adults posing stereotypical expressions into one of the three categories. Children were randomly assigned to either hear the emotion labels prior to sorting (e.g., "happy faces go here") or were not given labels (e.g., "faces like this go here"). Results revealed a significant effect of condition for Study 2, such that labels led to improved emotion categorization for later-learned categories (F(1,60)=8.15, p=.006, ! " =0.024). However, there was no significant effect of condition for the earliest-learned emotion categories in Study 1 (F(1,60)=0.94, p=.337, ! " =0.013). Taken together, these results suggest that labels are important for emotion categorization, but the impact of labels may depend on children's familiarity with the emotion category.
Emotion, Feb 1, 2022
Recent theories have suggested that emotion words may facilitate the development of emotion conce... more Recent theories have suggested that emotion words may facilitate the development of emotion concepts. The present study investigates whether emotion words affect children's performance on an emotion category learning task. Across two experiments, 72 three-year-old children (49 female) were asked to identify which emotional face best matched particular emotional scenarios during nine pretest and nine posttest trials. The scenarios in the present studies aligned with emotions typically learned among older age groups (annoyed, disgusted, and nervous). Between pretest and posttest, children participated in training in which a facial configuration (annoyed, disgusted, or nervous) was paired with an associated scenario while they heard the emotion labeled explicitly or heard irrelevant information (Experiment 1) or heard a broad emotion label versus irrelevant information (Experiment 2). Aside from the labels presented, all other information was kept the same across conditions, including the specific faces and scenarios heard during learning trials. In Experiment 1, children's emotion understanding increased more from pretest to posttest in the explicit label versus irrelevant condition, t(34) = 2.26, p = .030, d = .75, but in Experiment 2 the broad emotion labels did not provide an advantage over irrelevant information, t(34) = .72, p = .474, d = .24. These results suggest that emotion labels may be particularly helpful for young children learning about unfamiliar emotions, because specific labels may help children to aggregate disparate emotional information into meaningful categories. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
Infant and Child Development, Sep 7, 2021
Word learning is a crucial aspect of early social and cognitive development, and previous researc... more Word learning is a crucial aspect of early social and cognitive development, and previous research indicates that children’s word learning is influenced by the context in which the word is spoken. However, the role of emotions as contextual cues to word learning remains less clear. The present study investigated word learning among 2.5-year-old children in angry, happy, sad, and variable emotional contexts. Fifty-six children (30 female; Mean age=2.49 years) participated in a novel noun generalization task in which children observed an experimenter labeling objects in either a consistently angry, consistently happy, consistently sad, or variable (one exemplar per emotion) context. Children were then asked to identify the label-object association. Results revealed that children’s performance was above chance levels for all four conditions (all t’s>3.68, all p’s<.01), but performance did not significantly differ by condition (F(3,52)=0.51, p=.677). These results provide valuable information regarding potential boundaries for when contextual information may versus may not influence children’s word learning.
Cognitive Development, Oct 1, 2021
Children learn the abstract, challenging categories of emotions from young ages, and it has recen... more Children learn the abstract, challenging categories of emotions from young ages, and it has recently been suggested that language (and more specifically emotion words) may aid this learning. To examine the language that young children hear and produce as they're learning emotion categories, the present study examined nearly 2,000 transcripts from 179 children ranging from 15- to 47-months from the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES). Results provide key descriptive, developmental, and predictive information regarding child emotion language production, including the finding that child emotion word production was predicted by mothers' emotion word production (β=.21, p<.001), but not by child or mother language complexity (β=.01, p=.690; β=.00, p=.872). Frequency of specific emotion words are presented, as are developmental trends in early emotion language production and input. These results improve the understanding of children's daily emotional language environments and may inform theories of emotional development.
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, Aug 1, 2006
The experiments described in the lead articles by Kowalski and Zimiles and by O'Hanlon and Robers... more The experiments described in the lead articles by Kowalski and Zimiles and by O'Hanlon and Roberson examine factors that lead to color term acquisition. These experiments touch on the debate regarding the relative contributions of language and concepts in word learning. In this reXection, we examine how conclusions concerning the debate depend deeply on the particular task presented to children, and we propose an alternative approach to studying color term acquisition.
Psychology of Language and Communication, 2015
In Japanese, numeral classifiers-or measure words-co-occur with numbers in counting phrases. Th e... more In Japanese, numeral classifiers-or measure words-co-occur with numbers in counting phrases. Th e present study characterized parent numeral classifier use and its relation to children’s classifier acquisition and number learning. Twenty-four Japanese-speaking parents and their two- to six-year-old children viewed and talked about two wordless picture books about counting to each other. Children also participated in a Counting task and Give-N task. Results revealed (1) parents’ classifier use changed in relation to children’s age and classifier use, and (2) parents’ increased use of specific classifiers was uniquely associated with children’s number understanding. These results suggest that aspects of children’s language and numerical development are related to parents’ language input, demonstrating the importance of examining the relation between language and cognition in a developmental context.
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, Jul 1, 2014
To understand how generalization develops across the lifespan, researchers have examined the fact... more To understand how generalization develops across the lifespan, researchers have examined the factors of the learning environment that promote the acquisition and generalization of categories. One such factor is the timing of learning events, which recent findings suggest may play a particularly important role in children's generalization. In the current study, we build on these findings by examining the impact of equally spaced versus expanding learning schedules on children's ability to generalize from studied exemplars of a given category to new exemplars presented on a later test. We found no significant effects of learning schedule when the generalization test was administered immediately after the learning phase, but there was a clear difference when the generalization test was delayed by 24 h, with children in the expanding condition significantly outperforming children in the equally spaced learning condition. These results suggest that forgetting and retrieval dynamics may be lower level cognitive mechanisms promoting generalization and have several implications for broad theories of learning, cognition, and development.
Journal of Child Language, Oct 1, 2000
Previous research has focused on evaluating the nouns and verbs in parents' input through type\to... more Previous research has focused on evaluating the nouns and verbs in parents' input through type\token ratios. This research offers an additional means of evaluating parent speech by first examining the frequencies of individual nouns, verbs and descriptors and second examining the learning task presented to children. Study examines transcripts from the CHILDES database of English-speaking parents' speech to children at five developmental levels ranging from ; to ; in age. Study examines transcripts from the CHILDES database of Mandarin-speaking caregivers' speech to children ranging from ; to ; in age. The results suggest that the patterns of frequency for individual nouns and individual verbs are different, but that the frequency patterns for nouns and the frequency patterns for verbs are similar in English and Mandarin. Further, this research suggests that in both languages the nouns in parents' input are similarly organized : the most frequent nouns spoken to children tend to name solid objects that share a similar shape. In contrast verbs' meanings in both languages tend to include more variable conceptual relations.
Recent theories suggest that emotion words may facilitate the development of emotion concepts. Ho... more Recent theories suggest that emotion words may facilitate the development of emotion concepts. However, most research investigating this relation in early childhood has been correlational. To assess whether emotion words causally influence emotion concept development, we conducted a pre-test post-test study examining which facial configurations 3-year-olds associate with complex emotional scenarios (annoyed, disgusted, and nervous). Between pre- and post-test, children were randomly assigned to one of three conditions. Children observed a facial configuration paired with a scenario while presented with either an explicit emotion label, a vague emotion label, or irrelevant information. Data from 54 children (36 female, mean age= 3.53) revealed that children's average change in number of correct responses from pre-test to post-test by condition were as follows: Explicit=1.00 (SD=1.68); Vague=0.11 (SD=1.45); Irrelevant=-0.28, (SD=1.71). These results hold implications for how speci...
Universidad Nacional de Río Negro, May 11, 2018
Anti-communism is one of the pillars of the right-wing ideological hegemony during the second dec... more Anti-communism is one of the pillars of the right-wing ideological hegemony during the second decade of the 21 st century. The Brazilian president, Bolsonaro, fights communism in his country, the US president, Trump, and the Madrid journal El Pais fight communism in Venezuela (as well as in their own countries), and the Polish newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza, exposes the communist methods of the ruling party, Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, while the progovernment media in Poland trace the communist genealogies of Wyborcza's editors. Anticommunism blooms in Hungary, in Russia, in Turkey, and in the Philippines. But Poland remains a very good example of the nature, ideological function, and political meaning of today's anti-communism. The analysis of the local form taken by this phenomenon allows us to reconstruct the most important mechanisms of exclusion that support the anti-communist discourses and to answer the question of whether and how to fight against anti-communism. After 1989 communism in Poland became an universal stigma, allowing the exclusion of some ideas and voices from the political arena and the public debate. During the period of transformation, the neo-liberal fundamentalists brandished it, pacifying the critical voices and discrediting various forms of resistance against the social outcome of the capitalist restoration-mass pauperization, unemployment, uncertainty and privatization. Today their inheritors have become victims of the similar operation conducted by the national-conservative right, which smells communism in any action taken by the (neo)liberal opposition. The neo-liberal anti-communism differs from the national-conservative one in terms of rhetoric and the level of honesty. Nevertheless, it plays basically the same roles. Both camps are connected through Przemysław Wielgosz-journalist, publicist, publisher, curator, and activist. Chief editor of Le Monde Diplomatique-edycja polska magazine, and book series Le Monde Diplomatique and Biblioteka Alternatyw Ekonomicznych. Author, co-author, and editor of several left-wing books devoted to a critique of capitalism, alter-globalism and future of Europe. His texts were published in Aspen Review, Freitag and Guardian.
The world offers learners a seemingly infinite number of word-to-world mappings (Quine, 1960). In... more The world offers learners a seemingly infinite number of word-to-world mappings (Quine, 1960). In order to account for how learners manage to accomplish such a difficult task, theories of word learning have proposed different tools that make the task of learning words easier. However, we propose that reducing difficulty may be detrimental-difficulty may promote long-term word learning. We tested this hypothesis in a cross-situational paradigm in which object-label mappings were ambiguous during each learning event. The three conditions of learning (2 x 2, 3 x 3, and 4 x 4) varied in the degree of difficulty. Results revealed that, although difficulty deterred immediate performance, difficulty promoted long-term performance. We suggest that theory and research should shift from focusing on in-the-moment learning to examining both immediate and long-term learning. A complete theory of word learning not only accounts for word learning in the moment and on each time scale, but also inte...
Around the age of two, many children enter a period of rapid vocabulary growth. The Naming Boom i... more Around the age of two, many children enter a period of rapid vocabulary growth. The Naming Boom is commonly conceptualized as an increase in the rate of word learning across all categorical domains. However, recent research has suggested that the development of rapid word learning may occur within specific categorical domains as the result of previous experience learning words within the domain. The current study further tested this idea by analyzing patterns in childrens vocabularies at the onset of the Naming Boom. Childrens vocabularies were assessed; words that each child knew were sorted according to categorical domains (such as animals or vehicles). Most vocabularies exhibited a pattern of domain clumping: children knew many words in some domains, but few words in others. Results lend further support the to idea that rapid vocabulary growth develops within specific categorical domains and suggests that the Naming Boom may be better conceptualized as a series of domain-specific boomlets.
This paper examines the relationship between shape complexity and familiarity in extending novel ... more This paper examines the relationship between shape complexity and familiarity in extending novel adjectives. Previous research has suggested that familiarity with an object's basic level label determines the likelihood that a novel adjective will be extended to new instances. The present results do not support that conclusion. Instead the results suggest that given an adjectival syntactic frame children are likely to extend novel words to other objects of the same material when the objects are simple in shape. This result suggests that the perceptual properties of objects and the lexical form class cues are integral to understanding how children come to learn new words.
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Papers by Catherine Sandhofer