This study investigates the semantic development of heritage bilingual preschool children aged 3 to 5 who acquire Cantonese as their heritage language (HL) at home and English as their community ...language (L2) in school settings. The research examines how bilingual children organize and access their vocabulary in two distinct languages and how their heritage language influences semantic development in L2. We examined their performance in Word Association Identification Task (WAID) and Word Association Task (WAT) in both languages. Results showed that they perform similarly in WAID in both languages, with higher accuracy in semantically unrelated conditions. The WAT results showed that children had more syntagmatic responses in Cantonese than in English, but had similar paradigmatic responses in both languages. Regression analysis revealed that paradigmatic responses in Cantonese predicted children's English paradigmatic responses. Their English paradigmatic responses were also associated with WAID performance in English. This study contributes to understanding heritage bilingual children's semantic development, with implications for education and language support.
•Co-occurrence regularities have been overlooked as a driver of semantic development.•Co-occurrence in language and visual input contribute to semantic development.•Evidence from behavioral and ...modeling studies supports these conclusions.
As adults, we draw upon our ample knowledge about the world to support such vital cognitive feats as using language, reasoning, retrieving knowledge relevant to our current goals, planning for the future, adapting to unexpected events, and navigating through the environment. Our knowledge readily supports these feats because it is not merely a collection of stored facts, but rather functions as an organized, semantic network of concepts connected by meaningful relations. How do the relations that fundamentally organize semantic concepts emerge with development? Here, we cast a spotlight on a potentially powerful but often overlooked driver of semantic organization: Rich statistical regularities that are ubiquitous in both language and visual input. In this synthetic review, we show that a driving role for statistical regularities is convergently supported by evidence from diverse fields, including computational modeling, statistical learning, and semantic development. Finally, we identify a number of key avenues of future research into how statistical regularities may drive the development of semantic organization.
Understanding the magnitude of rational numbers is crucial for mathematical development. However, children do not readily integrate the quantity of fractions and decimals and are even less likely to ...show a linear representation of fractions and decimals. Thus, the current study examined whether college-aged individuals show spontaneous quantity integration across distinct notations of rational numbers, whether rational number representation would resemble a number line, and whether their rational number representation predicts algebra performance. Further, we examined whether math anxiety plays a role. We found that college students do develop linear representation integrating the quantity between fractions and decimals. Quantitative representation of rational numbers predicted higher algebra scores. Linearity was not a significant predictor for algebra performance. The relations remained even after controlling for math anxiety. Implications for numerical understanding as well as math achievement are discussed.
•There is variability in how college students organize rational numbers, including whether they use a linear representation.•Quantitative representation of rational numbers is associated with higher algebra performance.•Math anxiety was associated with notation based rational number representation and lower algebra performance.
The Context Dependency Effect is the well-established finding in which memory performance is enhanced under conditions in which the encoding and retrieval contexts overlap (i.e., Same-Context) and ...diminished when the overlap between encoding and retrieval contexts is low (i.e., Different-Context). Despite much research on context-dependent memory, most prior work examined only mean performance levels. The current experiment examined the influence of context change, manipulated by using three different pieces of background music, on semantic organization during free recall. Recall driven by semantic organization captures an important, ecologically valid aspect of memory retrieval: because narratives of real-life events are typically comprised of semantically related concepts (e.g., “sea,” “bathing suit,” and “sand” when recalling a trip to the beach), their recall is likely driven by semantic organization. Participants in the current study were tested in the same or different context as the material was learned. The results showed that although the mean number of correctly recalled items was numerically greater in the Same-Context condition compared to the Different-Context condition, the Context Dependency Effect was not significant. In contrast, however, semantic clustering—an established measure of semantic organization—was greater in the Different-Context condition compared to the Same-Context condition. Together, these results suggest that when contextual cues at recall are relatively meager, participants instead use semantic information as cues to guide memory retrieval. In line with previous findings, temporal organization, patterns of errors, and serial position analyses showed no differences between the two context conditions. The present experiment provides novel evidence on how external context change affects recall organization.
Westerners tend to relate items in a categorical manner, whereas Easterners focus more on functional relationships. The present study extended research on semantic organization in long-term memory to ...working memory. First, Americans' and Turks' preferences for categorical versus functional relationships were tested. Second, working memory interference was assessed using a 2-back working memory paradigm in which lure items were categorically and functionally related to targets. Next, a mediation model tested direct effects of culture and semantic organization on working memory task behaviour, and the indirect effect, whether semantic organization mediated the relationship between culture and working memory interference. Whereas Americans had slower response times to correctly rejecting functional lures compared to categorical lures, conditions did not differ for Turks. However, semantic organization did not mediate cultural difference in working memory interference. Across cultures, there was evidence that semantic organization affected working memory errors, with individuals who endorsed categorical more than functional pairings committing more categorical than functional errors on the 2-back task. Results align with prior research suggesting individual differences in use of different types of semantic relationships, and further that literature by indicating effects on interference in working memory. However, these individual differences may not be culture-dependent.
Knowledge integration is a crucial part of learning as concepts are built over time and modality. In mathematics, rational numbers are a particularly difficult concept that requires integration ...across notations to understand the quantity represented by fractions and decimals (e.g., ½ and 0.5). We investigated how 5- to 14-year-old children conceptualize rational numbers, whether it differs across development (Study 1), and whether the conceptualization is related to math achievement (Study 2). A novel Numerical SpAM task was created to document children’s unprompted rational number conceptualization. We found that most children organized rational numbers either by notation or quantity, with quantity becoming more common after age 10. Quantitative conceptualization predicted higher math achievement compared to notation, regardless of age. Moreover, conceptualizing rational numbers by quantity across distinct notations (e.g., 1/2 and 0.5) was related to children’s math achievement. Implications for numerical understanding as well as general cognition are discussed.
•The novel Numerical SpAM task is a useful tool to measure individual’s spontaneous conceptualization of rational numbers.•Children conceptualize rational numbers predominantly as either notation or quantity.•Quantitative conceptualization of rational numbers, not notation, is associated with mathematics achievement.•Integrating quantity across distinct notations of rational numbers appears to be particularly important for math achievement.
Our knowledge about the world is represented not merely as a collection of concepts, but as an organized lexico-semantic network in which concepts can be linked by relations, such as “taxonomic” ...relations between members of the same stable category (e.g., cat and sheep), or association between entities that occur together or in the same context (e.g., sock and foot). To date, accounts of the origins of semantic organization have largely overlooked how sensitivity to statistical regularities ubiquitous in the environment may play a powerful role in shaping semantic development. The goal of the present research was to investigate how associations in the form of statistical regularities with which labels for concepts co-occur in language (e.g., sock and foot) and taxonomic relatedness (e.g., sock and pajamas) shape semantic organization of 4–5-year-olds and adults. To examine these aspects of semantic organization across development, we conducted three experiments examining effects of co-occurrence and taxonomic relatedness on cued recall (Experiment 1), word-picture matching (Experiment 2), and looking dynamics in a Visual World paradigm (Experiment 3). Taken together, the results of the three experiments provide evidence that co-occurrence-based links between concepts manifest in semantic organization from early childhood onward, and are increasingly supplemented by taxonomic links. We discuss these findings in relation to theories of semantic development.
Both behavioral and neurophysiological evidence shows that lexical-semantic organization emerges by two years in monolingual children. Research in bilingual children is more scarce, and there is only ...a limited amount of neurophysiological evidence of the effect of language dominance on lexical-semantic activation. In the present event-related potential (ERP) study, we investigated whether bilingual French-Spanish and French-English learning 24- to 30-month-olds activate semantic relations between words similarly in their both languages, and whether the priming effects are similar in children learning two different language pairs. Participants were presented with related and unrelated dominant and non-dominant language word pairs in a within-language lexical-semantic priming paradigm. The amplitudes of N400 were modulated by trial type, language dominance and language group. A language-independent priming effect - more pronounced N400 amplitudes for unrelated than for related target words - was found in the group of toddlers learning French and Spanish. In the group of toddlers learning French and English, a priming effect was observed only in their non-dominant language. Our results propose that the language pair may contribute to lexical-semantic facilitation in priming tasks during early childhood.
•N400 was modulated by trial type, language dominance and language group.•A symmetrical priming effect was found in French-Spanish learning toddlers.•An unsymmetrial priming effect was observed in French-English learning toddlers.•Our results show that language pair contributes to lexical-semantic facilitation in bilinguals.
Recent years have seen a flourishing of Natural Language Processing models that can mimic many aspects of human language fluency. These models harness a simple, decades‐old idea: It is possible to ...learn a lot about word meanings just from exposure to language, because words similar in meaning are used in language in similar ways. The successes of these models raise the intriguing possibility that exposure to word use in language also shapes the word knowledge that children amass during development. However, this possibility is strongly challenged by the fact that models use language input and learning mechanisms that may be unavailable to children. Across three studies, we found that unrealistically complex input and learning mechanisms are unnecessary. Instead, simple regularities of word use in children's language input that they have the capacity to learn can foster knowledge about word meanings. Thus, exposure to language may play a simple but powerful role in children's growing word knowledge. A video of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/dT83dmMffnM.
Research Highlights
Natural Language Processing (NLP) models can learn that words are similar in meaning from higher‐order statistical regularities of word use.
Unlike NLP models, infants and children may primarily learn only simple co‐occurrences between words.
We show that infants' and children's language input is rich in simple co‐occurrence that can support learning similarities in meaning between words.
We find that simple co‐occurrences can explain infants' and children's knowledge that words are similar in meaning.
Recent years have seen a flourishing of Natural Language Processing models that can learn a lot about word meanings just from exposure to language, because words similar in meaning are used in language in similar ways. However, the possibility that children also learn about words in this way is strongly challenged by the fact that models use language input and learning mechanisms that may be unavailable to children. Across three studies, we find that unrealistically complex input and learning mechanisms are unnecessary: instead, simple regularities of word use in children's language input can foster their knowledge about word meanings.
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