Mechanisms of Early Language Acquisition

Successful communication in humans critically depends on two aspects of language development: how many words we know (vocabulary growth) and whether we know how to combine them to understand and express meaningful ideas (semantic organization).

This fellowship is designed to examine the role of early language environment in shaping these two aspects of language development.

This aim will be addressed by conducting a longitudinal investigation of lexical development between 9 and 18 months of age.

This will make it possible to map the structure of individual parents speech to the individual language development of their children.

The focus on individual development promises not only to advance our theoretical understanding of typical development, but also to inform theory-based enrichment programs for atypical lexico-semantic development.

To achieve these aims, the proposed research will strengthen connections between two fields in infant research, language acquisition and semantic development.

Additionally, it will use a combination of complementary methods: analyses of naturalistic language input, parental reports, experimental paradigms, and cognitive modeling.

Bridging the two research fields through a multi-method approach places this fellowship at the intersection of the fellows current expertise and the research lines currently active at the host institution (BCBL).

Specifically, the semantic development aspect builds on the fellows strong background in category learning and lexico-semantic organization, while the language acquisition part aligns closely with the BCBLs research lines.

On the methodological side, the fellow will bring expertise in experimental designs, while skills related to the longitudinal approach, infant research, and cognitive modeling are those that the fellow will develop by training during this fellowship. Hence, this fellowship will strongly support the development of the prospective fellows independent line of research.