台大心理系

Young children learn about the language(s) they hear at an astonishing rate. An intriguing question that has attracted much attention is how infants and young children learn novel words. Most researchers have been trying to answer this question from one of two different perspectives -- one from the child’s side and the other from the parent’s side. Numerous studies have focused on young learners’ abilities to process or use different types of information to learn the meanings of novel words. Another line of research focuses on the linguistic input provided by parents in early learning environments. In this talk, I will take a dyadic view and present studies using head-mounted eye-tracking techniques to investigate how parents’ and children’s individual and joint behaviors in real-time interaction contribute to early word learning. I will also discuss how children’s sensory experience influences the dynamics of interaction and affects word learning.