ORCID Profile
0000-0003-4301-2290
Current Organisation
Australian National University
Does something not look right? The information on this page has been harvested from data sources that may not be up to date. We continue to work with information providers to improve coverage and quality. To report an issue, use the Feedback Form.
Research Topics
In Research Link Australia (RLA), "Research Topics" refer to ANZSRC FOR and SEO codes. These topics are either sourced from ANZSRC FOR and SEO codes listed in researchers' related grants or generated by a large language model (LLM) based on their publications.
Top 5 Research Topics
ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)
Psychology | Linguistics | Linguistic Structures (incl. Grammar, Phonology, Lexicon, Semantics) | Learning, Memory, Cognition And Language | Materials Engineering | Metals and Alloy Materials | Linguistic Processes (Incl. Speech Production And Comprehension) | Developmental Psychology and Ageing |
ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)
Expanding Knowledge in Psychology and Cognitive Sciences | Industrial Energy Conservation and Efficiency | Energy Conservation and Efficiency in Transport | Behavioural and cognitive sciences | Sheet Metal Products | Conserving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage | Expanding Knowledge in Language, Communication and Culture
Related Links
Publications
Uncovering ergative use in Murrinhpatha: Evidence from experimental data
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 02-01-2023
Why we need a gradient approach to word order
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH
Date: 25-04-2023
Abstract: This article argues for a gradient approach to word order, which treats word order preferences, both within and across languages, as a continuous variable. Word order variability should be regarded as a basic assumption, rather than as something exceptional. Although this approach follows naturally from the emergentist usage-based view of language, we argue that it can be beneficial for all frameworks and linguistic domains, including language acquisition, processing, typology, language contact, language evolution and change, and formal approaches. Gradient approaches have been very fruitful in some domains, such as language processing, but their potential is not fully realized yet. This may be due to practical reasons. We discuss the most pressing methodological challenges in corpus-based and experimental research of word order and propose some practical solutions.
Mandarin–English speaking bilingual and Mandarin speaking monolingual children’s comprehension of relative clauses
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 26-04-2019
DOI: 10.1017/S0142716419000079
Abstract: The current study investigated the comprehension of subject and object relative clauses (RCs) in bilingual Mandarin–English children ( N = 55, M age = 7 years, 5 months [7 ], SD = 1 ) and language-matched monolingual Mandarin-speaking children ( N = 59, M age = 5 , SD = 0 ). The children completed a picture-referent selection task that tested their comprehension of subject and object RCs, and standardized assessments of vocabulary knowledge. Results showed a very similar pattern of responding in both groups. In comparison to past studies of Cantonese, the bilingual and monolingual children both showed a significant subject-over-object RC advantage. An error analysis suggested that the children’s difficulty with object RCs reflected the tendency to interpret the sentential subject as the head noun. A subsequent corpus analysis suggested that children’s difficulty with object RCs may be in part due to distributional information favoring subject RC analyses. In idual differences analyses suggested crosslinguistic transfer from English to Mandarin in the bilingual children at the in idual but not the group level, with the results indicating that comparative English dominance makes children vulnerable to error.
A critical period for faces: Other-race face recognition is improved by childhood but not adult social contact
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 06-09-2019
DOI: 10.1038/S41598-019-49202-0
Abstract: Poor recognition of other-race faces is ubiquitous around the world. We resolve a longstanding contradiction in the literature concerning whether interracial social contact improves the other-race effect. For the first time, we measure the age at which contact was experienced. Taking advantage of unusual demographics allowing dissociation of childhood from adult contact, results show sufficient childhood contact eliminated poor other-race recognition altogether (confirming inter-country adoption studies). Critically, however, the developmental window for easy acquisition of other-race faces closed by approximately 12 years of age and social contact as an adult — even over several years and involving many other-race friends — produced no improvement. Theoretically, this pattern of developmental change in plasticity mirrors that found in language, suggesting a shared origin grounded in the functional importance of both skills to social communication. Practically, results imply that, where parents wish to ensure their offspring develop the perceptual skills needed to recognise other-race people easily, childhood experience should be encouraged: just as an English-speaking person who moves to France as a child (but not an adult) can easily become a native speaker of French, we can easily become “native recognisers” of other-race faces via natural social exposure obtained in childhood, but not later.
Symbolic play as a zone of proximal development: An analysis of informational exchange
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 23-02-2022
DOI: 10.1111/SODE.12592
Abstract: Symbolic play has long been considered a beneficial context for development. According to Cultural Learning theory, one reason for this is that symbolically‐infused dialogical interactions constitute a zone of proximal development. However, the dynamics of caregiver‐child interactions during symbolic play are still not fully understood. In the current study, we investigated informational exchange between fifty‐two 24‐month‐old infants and their primary caregivers during symbolic play and a comparable, non‐symbolic, functional play context. We coded over 11,000 utterances for whether participants had superior, equivalent, or inferior knowledge concerning the current conversational topic. Results showed that children were significantly more knowledgeable speakers and recipients in symbolic play, whereas the opposite was the case for caregivers, who were more knowledgeable in functional play. The results suggest that, despite its potential conceptual complexity, symbolic play may scaffold development because it facilitates infants’ communicative success by promoting them to ‘co‐constructors of meaning’.
Four-year-old Mandarin-speaking children’s online comprehension of relative clauses
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 03-2020
DOI: 10.1016/J.COGNITION.2019.104103
Abstract: A core question in language acquisition is whether children's syntactic processing is experience-dependent and language-specific, or whether it is governed by abstract, universal syntactic machinery. We address this question by presenting corpus and on-line processing dat a from children learning Mandarin Chinese, a language that has been important in debates about the universality of parsing processes. The corpus data revealed that two different relative clause constructions in Mandarin are differentially used to modify syntactic subjects and objects. In the experiment, 4-year-old children's eye-movements were recorded as they listened to the two RC construction types (e.g., Can you pick up the pig that pushed the sheep?). A permutation analysis showed that children's ease of comprehension was closely aligned with the distributional frequencies, suggesting syntactic processing preferences are shaped by the input experience of these constructions.
How diverse is child language acquisition research?
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 28-01-2022
DOI: 10.1177/01427237211066405
Abstract: A comprehensive theory of child language acquisition requires an evidential base that is representative of the typological ersity present in the world’s 7000 or so languages. However, languages are dying at an alarming rate, and the next 50 years represents the last chance we have to document acquisition in many of them. Here, we take stock of the last 45 years of research published in the four main child language acquisition journals: Journal of Child Language, First Language, Language Acquisition and Language Learning and Development. We coded each article for several variables, including (1) participant group (mono vs multilingual), (2) language(s), (3) topic(s) and (4) country of author affiliation, from each journal’s inception until the end of 2020. We found that we have at least one article published on around 103 languages, representing approximately 1.5% of the world’s languages. The distribution of articles was highly skewed towards English and other well-studied Indo-European languages, with the majority of non-Indo-European languages having just one paper. A majority of the papers focused on studies of monolingual children, although papers did not always explicitly report participant group status. The distribution of topics across language categories was more even. The number of articles published on non-Indo-European languages from countries outside of North America and Europe is increasing however, this increase is driven by research conducted in relatively wealthy countries. Overall, the vast majority of the research was produced in the Global North. We conclude that, despite a proud history of crosslinguistic research, the goals of the discipline need to be recalibrated before we can lay claim to truly a representative account of child language acquisition.
Changes in weight status, quality of life and behaviours of South Australian primary school children: results from the Obesity Prevention and Lifestyle (OPAL) community intervention program
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 22-10-2019
DOI: 10.1186/S12889-019-7710-4
Abstract: Childhood obesity is a serious public health concern worldwide . Community-based obesity prevention interventions offer promise due to their focus on the broader social, cultural and environmental contexts rather than in idual behaviour change and their potential for sustainability and scalability. This paper aims to determine the effectiveness of a South Australian community-based, multi-setting, multi-strategy intervention, OPAL (Obesity Prevention and Lifestyle), in increasing healthy weight prevalence in 9 to 11-year-olds. A quasi-experimental repeated cross-sectional design was employed. This paper reports on the anthropometric, health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and behaviour outcomes of primary school children (9–11 years) after 2–3 years of intervention delivery. Consenting children from primary schools (20 intervention communities, INT 20 matched comparison communities, COMP) completed self-report questionnaires on diet, activity and screen time behaviours. HRQoL was measured using the Child Health Utility 9D. Body Mass Index (BMI) z-score and weight status were determined from children’s measured height and weight. A multilevel mixed-effects model, accounting for clustering in schools, was implemented to determine intervention effect. Sequential Bonferroni adjustment was used to allow for multiple comparisons of the secondary outcomes. At baseline and final, respectively, 2611 and 1873 children completed questionnaires and 2353 and 1760 had anthropometric measures taken. The prevalence of children with healthy weight did not significantly change over time in INT (OR 1.11, 95%CI 0.92–1.35, p = 0.27) or COMP (OR 0.85, 95%CI 0.68–1.06, p = 0.14). Although changes in the likelihood of obesity, BMI z-score and HRQoL favoured the INT group, the differences were not significant after Bonferroni adjustment. There were also no significant differences between groups at final for behavioural outcomes. OPAL did not have a significant impact on the proportion of 9 to 11-year-olds in the healthy weight range, nor children’s BMI z-score, HRQoL and behaviours. Long-term, flexible community-based program evaluation approaches are required . ACTRN12616000477426 (12th April 2016, retrospectively registered).
The Longitudinal Relationship Between Conversational Turn‐Taking and Vocabulary Growth in Early Language Development
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 06-02-2021
DOI: 10.1111/CDEV.13511
Symbolic play promotes non-verbal communicative exchange in infant-caregiver dyads.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 28-05-2019
DOI: 10.1111/BJDP.12251
Abstract: Symbolic play has long been considered a fertile context for communicative development (Bruner, 1983, Child's talk: Learning to use language, Oxford University Press, Oxford Vygotsky, 1962, Thought and language, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA Vygotsky, 1978, Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA). In the current study, we examined caregiver-infant interaction during symbolic play and compared it to interaction in a comparable but non-symbolic context (i.e., 'functional' play). Fifty-four (N = 54) caregivers and their 18-month-old infants were observed engaging in 20 min of play (symbolic, functional). Play interactions were coded and compared across play conditions for joint attention (JA) and gesture use. Compared with functional play, symbolic play was characterized by greater frequency and duration of JA and greater gesture use, particularly the use of iconic gestures with an object in hand. The results suggest that symbolic play provides a rich context for the exchange and negotiation of meaning, and thus may contribute to the development of important skills underlying communicative development. Statement of contribution Current knowledge Symbolic play has long been linked to communicative development. We do not know the extent to which the social context of symbolic play fosters communicative skills. Present study We test whether key communicative acts (joint attention, gesture) are more common in infant-caregiver dyads during symbolic versus functional play. Joint attention was established more often and sustained for longer periods in symbolic play than in functional play. Infants and caregivers produced more in-hand representational gestures in symbolic compared to functional play.
The Acquisition of the Tagalog Symmetrical Voice System: Evidence from Structural Priming
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 29-09-2020
Close Encounters of the Word Kind: Attested Distributional Information Boosts Statistical Learning
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 10-10-2022
DOI: 10.1111/LANG.12523
Abstract: Statistical learning, the ability to extract regularities from input (e.g., in language), is likely supported by learners’ prior expectations about how component units co‐occur. In this study, we investigated how adults’ prior experience with sublexical regularities in their native language influences performance on an empirical language learning task. Forty German‐speaking adults completed a speech repetition task in which they repeated eight‐syllable sequences from two experimental languages: one containing disyllabic words comprised of frequently occurring German syllable transitions (naturalistic words) and the other containing words made from unattested syllable transitions (non‐naturalistic words). The participants demonstrated learning from both naturalistic and non‐naturalistic stimuli. However, learning was superior for the naturalistic sequences, indicating that the participants had used their existing distributional knowledge of German to extract the naturalistic words faster and more accurately than the non‐naturalistic words. This finding supports theories of statistical learning as a form of chunking, whereby frequently co‐occurring units become entrenched in long‐term memory.
Gestures and Words in Naming: Evidence From Crosslinguistic and Crosscultural Comparison
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 02-05-2019
DOI: 10.1111/LANG.12346
Where to from here? Increasing language coverage while building a more diverse discipline
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 02-09-2022
DOI: 10.1177/01427237221121190
Abstract: Our original target article highlighted some significant shortcomings in the current state of child language research: a large skew in our evidential base towards English and a handful of other Indo-European languages that partly has its origins in a lack of researcher ersity. In this article, we respond to the 21 commentaries on our original article. The commentaries highlighted both the importance of attention to typological features of languages and the environments and contexts in which languages are acquired, with many commentators providing concrete suggestions on how we address the data skew. In this response, we synthesise the main themes of the commentaries and make suggestions for how the field can move towards both improving data coverage and opening up to traditionally under-represented researchers.
Individual differences in first language acquisition and their theoretical implications
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Date: 15-09-2020
Symbolic play provides a fertile context for language development.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 23-07-2021
DOI: 10.1111/INFA.12422
Abstract: In this study, we test the hypothesis that symbolic play represents a fertile context for language acquisition because its inherent ambiguity elicits communicative behaviors that positively influence development. Infant-caregiver dyads (N = 54) participated in two 20-minute play sessions six months apart (Time 1 = 18 months, Time 2 = 24 months). During each session, the dyads played with two sets of toys that elicited either symbolic or functional play. The sessions were transcribed and coded for several features of dyadic interaction and language infants' linguistic proficiency was measured via parental report. The two contexts elicited different communicative and linguistic behaviors. Notably, the symbolic play condition resulted in significantly greater conversational turn-taking than functional play, and also resulted in the greater use of questions and mimetics in infant-directed speech (IDS). In contrast, caregivers used more imperative clauses in functional play. Correlational and regression analyses showed that frequent properties of symbolic play (i.e., turn-taking, yes-no questions, mimetics) were positively related to infants' language proficiency, whereas frequent features of functional play (i.e., imperatives in IDS) were negatively related. The results provide evidence supporting the hypothesis that symbolic play is a fertile context for language development, driven by the need to negotiate meaning.
Individual Differences in Infant Speech Segmentation: Achieving the Lexical Shift
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 12-08-2018
DOI: 10.1111/INFA.12256
The effect of children’s prior knowledge and language abilities on their statistical learning
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 09-2022
DOI: 10.1017/S0142716422000273
Abstract: Statistical learning (SL) is assumed to lead to long-term memory representations. However, the way that those representations influence future learning remains largely unknown. We studied how children’s existing distributional linguistic knowledge influences their subsequent SL on a serial recall task, in which 49 German-speaking seven- to nine-year-old children repeated a series of six-syllable sequences. These contained either (i) bisyllabic words based on frequently occurring German syllable transitions (naturalistic sequences), (ii) bisyllabic words created from unattested syllable transitions (non-naturalistic sequences), or (iii) random syllable combinations (unstructured foils). Children demonstrated learning from naturalistic sequences from the beginning of the experiment, indicating that their implicit memory traces derived from their input language informed learning from the very early stages onward. Exploratory analyses indicated that children with a higher language proficiency were more accurate in repeating the sequences and improved most throughout the study compared to children with lower proficiency.
Related Organisations
University Of Manchester
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Related Funding Activities
ARC Future Fellowships - Grant ID: FT100100746
Start Date: 2011
End Date: 12-2015
Amount: $811,142.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityDiscovery Projects - Grant ID: DP160101917
Start Date: 02-2016
End Date: 08-2019
Amount: $274,000.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityDiscovery Projects - Grant ID: DP1092668
Start Date: 2010
End Date: 03-2014
Amount: $150,000.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityDiscovery Projects - Grant ID: DP210102836
Start Date: 04-2021
End Date: 03-2024
Amount: $321,616.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded Activity