Centers for Cognitive Science Research Endangered and Underdescribed Languages Language Acquisition Spatial Cognition Computational Modeling of Cognition Theory of Mind Evolution of Cognition Applied Cognitive Science

Roberta Golinkoff The ability to use a human language rests on a number of prior achievements. Dr. Golinkoff is known for her work on tracing the development of these early processes as well as for the creation of methodologies that allow us to probe infants' knowledge about language before they can talk. Among her current projects are studies that mirror the steps infants must go through to learn their native language. First, babies must segment the sound stream to find its units. Dr. Golinkoff has studied how babies use the prosody of the sentence (work with Anthony Alioto, a former undergraduate student) as well as their own names and other familiar words as a wedge into the speech stream. With Stephanie Baker (her former doctoral student from Linguistics), she found that hearing babies perceive sign language categorically at 4 months of age, but lose this capability by 14 months. Second, babies must be able to categorize the units they uncover in the language that surrounds them. Her laboratory continues to work on the question of how toddlers uncover the form class of individual words and whether they rely on a word's morphological endings to do so. Third, Dr. Golinkoff is particularly interested in the knowledge that undergirds the use of verbs. As verbs label events, and are the part of speech around which the sentence is constructed, babies must be able to analyze events. One example comes from work with her former Linguistics student Rachel Pulverman. They found that infants (both English- and Spanish-reared) as young as 7 months can distinguish between different manners (e.g., running versus walking) and different paths (e.g., over versus under) in ongoing nonlinguistic events. Finally, Dr. Golinkoff has asked questions about the grammatical and prosodic information in the input that children use to learn new verbs. That work is in collaboration with Khara Pence (a former student) and Amanda Brandone. Dr. Golinkoff will give the keynote address at the Boston Child Language meeting in 2006. Her work has also been featured on Good Morning America and in numerous radio and print media outlets. Research Projects: Infant Language Project Cognitive Science Student Conference: The Story of Ing: Children expect to hear it on nouns not verbs with Rebecca Seston and Amanda Brandone Vacuuming with my mouth? Children's ability to extend verbs with Rebecca Seston, Nicole Tomlinson, Jaclyn Pilette and Julia Byrem Does the owl fly out of the tree or leave the tree flying? with Christina Infiesta and Rachel Pulverman Do infants have categorial representations of intrasitive actions? with Lulu Song, Rebecca Seston and Weiyi Ma UDaily Article: Researchers study birth of words in infants Contact Info: Phone: (302) 831 1634 Office: 206 Willard Hall Email: roberta AT udel DOT edu