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In JoVE (1)
Other Publications (10)
- Journal of Psycholinguistic Research
- Language and Speech
- Journal of Child Language
- Clinical Neurophysiology : Official Journal of the International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology
- Journal of Psycholinguistic Research
- Journal of Child Language
- Journal of Child Language
- Journal of Child Language
- Optics Express
- Brain and Language
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Articles by Stephen Crain in JoVE
JoVE General
قياس وظائف المخ Neuromagnetic في مرحلة ما قبل المدرسة والأطفال MEG الحجم مخصص
Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, Macquarie University
ظهور أنظمة MEG الحجم للأطفال الصغار يفتح فرصا جديدة هامة لدراسة تطور الدماغ. ويمكن استخدام النظام الجديد ، جنبا إلى جنب مع متطلبات البروتوكول الذي ينسجم مع قدرات التجريبية للأطفال ، لدراسة العمليات المعرفية واللغوية لدى الأطفال ، الذين تتراوح أعمارهم بين الأصحاء مستيقظا 3-6.
Other articles by Stephen Crain on PubMed
Language Acquisition is Language Change
According to the theory of Universal Grammar, the primary linguistic data guides children through an innately specified space of hypotheses. On this view, similarities between child-English and adult-German are as unsurprising as similarities between cousins who have never met. By contrast, experience-based approaches to language acquisition contend that child language matches the input, with nonadult forms being simply less articulated versions of the forms produced by adults. This paper reports several studies that provide support for the theory of Universal grammar, and resist explanation on experience-based accounts. Two studies investigate English-speaking children's productions, and a third examines the interpretation of sentences by Japanese speaking children. When considered against the input children are exposed to, the findings of these and other studies are consistent with the continuity hypothesis, which supposes that child language can differ from the language spoken by adults only in ways that adult languages can differ from each other.
The Interpretation of Disjunction in Universal Grammar
Child and adult speakers of English have different ideas of what 'or' means in ordinary statements of the form 'A or B'. Even more far-reaching differences between children and adults are found in other languages. This tells us that young children do not learn what 'or' means by watching how adults use 'or'. An alternative is to suppose that children draw upon a priori knowledge of the meaning of 'or'. This conclusion is reinforced by the observation that all languages adopt the same meaning of 'or' in certain structures. For example, statements of the form 'not S[A or B]' have the same meanings in all languages, and disjunctive statements receive a uniform interpretation in sentences that contain certain focus expressions, such as English 'only'. These observations are relevant for the long-standing "nature versus nurture" controversy. A linguistic property that (a) emerges in child language without decisive evidence from experience, and (b) is common to all human languages, is a likely candidate for innate specification. Experience matters, of course. As child speakers grow up, they eventually learn to use 'or' in the same way as adults do. But, based on findings from child language and cross-linguistic research, it looks like certain aspects of language, including the interpretation of disjunction, are part of the human genome.
Focus Identification in Child Mandarin
In this study, we investigated how Mandarin-speaking children and adults interpret focus structures like Zhiyou Yuehan chi-le pingguo 'Only John ate an apple' and Shi Yuehan chi-de pingguo 'It is John who ate an apple'. We found that children tended to associate focus operators zhiyou 'only' and shi 'be' with the verb phrase (VP), whereas adults uniquely associated them with the subject noun phrase (NP). To account for this difference, we propose that children initially treat focus operators as adverbials, thus ending up associating them with the VP. In order to assess our proposal, we examined children's understanding of zhiyou-constructions with negation, like Zhiyou Yuehan meiyou chi pingguo 'Only John didn't eat an apple'. It was found that children, like adults, consistently associated the focus operator with the subject NP in this construction. The findings have an important bearing on language learnability, since negation assists children in reaching the adult-like interpretation.
Measurement of Brain Function in Pre-school Children Using a Custom Sized Whole-head MEG Sensor Array
Conventional whole-head MEG systems have fixed sensor arrays designed to accommodate most adult heads. However arrays optimised for adult brain measurements are suboptimal for research with the significantly smaller heads of young children. We wished to measure brain activity in children using a novel whole-head MEG system custom sized to fit the heads of pre-school-aged children.
Children’s Knowledge of the Quantifier Dou in Mandarin Chinese
The quantifier dou (roughly corresponding to English 'all') in Mandarin Chinese has been the topic of much discussion in the theoretical literature. This study investigated children's knowledge of this quantifier using a new methodological technique, which we dubbed the Question-Statement Task. Three questions were addressed: (i) whether young Mandarin-speaking children know that dou is a universal quantifier that quantifies over the elements to its left, (ii) whether they know that dou is an adverb of quantification (Q-adverb) which can (unselectively) bind any variable in its domain, and (iii) whether they know that dou can quantify over wh-words. The main finding was that, by age four, Mandarin-speaking children have the relevant knowledge. The results reflect the early availability of adult-like linguistic knowledge of dou-quantification.
Children's Interpretation of Disjunction in the Scope of 'before': a Comparison of English and Mandarin*
ABSTRACTThis study investigates three- to five-year-old children's interpretation of disjunction in sentences like 'The dog reached the finish line before the turtle or the bunny'. English disjunction has a conjunctive interpretation in such sentences ('The dog reached the finish line before the turtle and before the bunny'). This interpretation conforms with classical logic. Mandarin disjunction ('huozhe') can take scope over 'before' ('zai … zhiqian'), so the same sentence can mean 'The dog reached the finish line before the turtle or before the bunny (I don't know which)'. If children are guided by adult input in the acquisition of sentence meanings, English- and Mandarin-speaking children should assign different interpretations to such sentences. If children are guided by logical principles, then children acquiring either language should initially assign the conjunctive interpretation of disjunction. A truth-value judgment task was used to test this prediction and English- and Mandarin-speaking children were found to behave similarly.
Children's Use of Phonological Information in Ambiguity Resolution: a View from Mandarin Chinese
ABSTRACTHow do children develop the mapping between prosody and other levels of linguistic knowledge? This question has received considerable attention in child language research. In the present study two experiments were conducted to investigate four- to five-year-old Mandarin-speaking children's sensitivity to prosody in ambiguity resolution. Experiment 1 used eye-tracking to assess children's use of stress in resolving structural ambiguities. Experiment 2 took advantage of special properties of Mandarin to investigate whether children can use intonational cues to resolve ambiguities involving speech acts. The results of our experiments show that children's use of prosodic information in ambiguity resolution varies depending on the type of ambiguity involved. Children can use prosodic information more effectively to resolve speech act ambiguities than to resolve structural ambiguities. This finding suggests that the mapping between prosody and semantics/pragmatics in young children is better established than the mapping between prosody and syntax.
Downward Entailment in Child Mandarin
ABSTRACTThere are three hallmarks of core linguistic properties. First, they are expected to be manifested in typologically different languages. Second, they should unify superficially unrelated linguistic phenomena. Third, they are expected to emerge early in the course of language development, all things being equal (Crain, 1991). The present study investigates a candidate for a core linguistic property, namely the semantic property of downward entailment. We report the findings of two experimental studies of children's knowledge of downward entailment. These experiments explore two different aspects of downward entailment, in a study with Mandarin-speaking children. Taken together with previous research findings, the results of the present study support the conclusion that downward entailment is a core property of human languages.
Stable Optical Phase Modulation with Micromirrors
We measure the motional fluctuations of a micromechanical mirror using a Michelson interferometer, and demonstrate its interferometric stability. The position stability of the micromirror is dominated by the thermal mechanical noise of the structure. With this level of stability, we utilize the micromirror to realize an optical phase modulator by simply reflecting light off the mirror and modulating its position. The resonant frequency of the modulator can be tuned by applying a voltage between the mirror and an underlying electrode. Full modulation depth of ±π is achieved when the mirror resonantly excited with a sinusoidal voltage at an amplitude of 11V.
How the Brain Responds to Any: an MEG Study
The word any may appear in some sentences, but not in others. For example, any is permitted in sentences that contain the word nobody, as in Nobody ate any fruit. However, in a minimally different context any seems strikingly anomalous: (*)Everybody ate any fruit. The aim of the present study was to investigate how the brain responds to the word any in such minimally different contexts - where it is permitted (licensed) and where it is not permitted (unlicensed). Brain responses were measured from adult readers using magnetoencephalography (MEG). The results showed significantly larger responses to permissible contexts in the left posterior temporal areas between 400-500 ms and 590-660 ms. These results clarify the anatomy and timing of brain processes that contribute to our judgment that a word such as any is or is not permitted in a given context.
