MELA · Mechanisms of Early Language Acquisition
Horizon Europe — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2023-01-09 → 2025-01-08
- EU contribution
- €181,153
- Participants
- 2
- Scheme
- HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Mechanisms of Early Language Acquisition
One of the most exciting moments in every child’s development is when they start to talk. It is astounding to observe the speed with which young children add words to their growing vocabularies. Things become even more interesting when they start to communicate their ideas by combining words – “Baby drink”. This signals that the child has not only learned the individual words, but also the links that connect words based on their meaning. Successful communication in humans critically depends on these two aspects of language development: how many words we know (vocabulary growth) and whether we know how to combine them to communicate meaningful ideas (semantic organization). The current research was designed to examine the role of early language environment in shaping these two aspects of language development. More specifically, it was designed to uncover whether early language development in individual children can be predicted from the statistical structure of their language input, i.e., the co-occurrence regularities with which words are used in daily child-parent interactions. By shedding light on the cues and the mechanism guiding early language acquisition, the proposed research promises to have important theoretical as well as practical implications, as it may support the development of theory-driven interventions for children who are on a slower developmental path. MELA project aims to address two main objectives. First one is to examine whether early vocabulary growth can be predicted from the co-occurrence structure of children’s language input. Second is to test whether early semantic links in children’s mental lexicon can be predicted from the co-occurrence structure of their language input.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
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.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
Links
- View on CORDIS
- DOI: 10.3030/101063306
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e515acc7cb&appId=PPGMS
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e5fe405822&appId=PPGMS
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e5fe405cd6&appId=PPGMS
Data: CORDIS, © European Union