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My
research explores learning in infancy and childhood. When we think
about the
differences
between what infants and adults know, itâs apparent that infants
need to
learn
about a tremendous number of complex systems. How do infants
master all of
this
complexity? What learning mechanisms are available to infants, and
what are the constraints on those mechanisms? To answer these questions,
I focus on language
acquisition.
Language is perhaps the most complex system that infants will ever
acquire.
However, languageâs complexity is of a particular kind: languages
consist
of
multiple levels (for example, sound, word order, meaning), each of which
is partially
determined
by structure at other levels. My aim is to understand how infants
integrate
all
of these levels, and use structure at one level to aid them in acquiring
other levels.
In
particular, my research focuses on the ways in which infants learn to take
advantage
of
the auditory structure of language. This work can be divided into
two broad aims.
The
first line of research asks how infants learn which auditory events provide
cues to
linguistic
structure. Early in the first year of life, for example, infants
recognize the
rhythmic
structure of their native language, and use rhythm to help them discover
words
in fluent speech. Similarly, in the first years of their life, infants
learn which
sounds
are meaningfully different in their language, and which distinctions are
unimportant.
What information do infants use in order to begin taking advantage
of
these types of auditory regularities?
My
second line of research asks more basic questions about the learning mechanisms
available
to infants. Recent research indicates that infants are very sensitive
to the
probabilistic
nature of their environment, and learn quite rapidly which events predict
other
events (for example, that the first syllable in the word ãprettyä
predicts the
second
one). In a series of experiments with infants and adults, I have
examined
what
types of probabilistic information people use to learn language, what contexts
facilitate
the use of that information, and how learning differs across domains and
between
infancy and adulthood. The answers to these questions will eventually
provide
an understanding of processes that may be critical to many aspects of
development..
Updated
8/4/08 ET/tc
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