Prelinguistic foundations of verb learning: Infants discriminate and categorize dynamic human actions

Abstract

Action categorization is necessary for human cognition and foundational to learning verbs, which label categories of actions and events. In two studies using a nonlinguistic preferential looking paradigm, 10- to 12-month-old English-learning infants were tested on their ability to discriminate and categorize a dynamic, human manner of motion (i.e., way in which a figure moves; e.g., marching). Study 1 results reveal that infants can discriminate a change in path and actor across instances of the same manner of motion. Study 2 results suggest that infants categorize the manner of motion for dynamic human events, even under conditions in which other components of the event change, including the actor’s path and the actor. Together, these two studies extend prior research on infant action categorization of animated motion events by providing evidence that infants can categorize dynamic human actions, a skill foundational to the learning of motion verbs.

Categorization of dynamic realistic motion events: Infants form categories of path before manner

“…our results suggest that infants can form a category of a figure's path of motion during dynamic, realistic events (i.e., when actions are performed by a human agent in a realistic setting). Thus, the current results extend the recent body of research byPruden and colleagues (2013) in which they found categorization of the figure's path of motion using artificial, animated stimuli and bySong et al (2016) in which they found categorization of intransitive actions in the presence of a ground object using dynamic realistic stimuli.Although Experiment 1 demonstrates that 13-to 15-month-old infants can form a category of path with realistic events, whether such results can be generalized to manner is unknown. Previous research byPruden and colleagues (2012) found that younger infants, 10-to 12-month-olds, could not extract a figure's invariant manner of motion from an artificial event that contained a ground object and path.…”

“…While such arguments have been previously made (e.g., Gentner & Bowerman, 2009;Mandler, 2004;Pruden et al, 2013), few studies have tested for the ease with which infants' categorize path and manner. Lastly, this study provides some of the first evidence to suggest that infants can form categories of these event components using realistic stimuli that are more ecologically valid than previous studies (but see Song, Pruden, Golinkoff & Hirsh-Pasek, 2016).…”

“…Infants were randomly assigned to one of 4 between-subjects conditions that tested two distinct manner categories (i.e., hop, crawl) either in the presence of or absence of a ground object. These two actions were chosen, as we wanted to select actions (i.e., hop ;Song, et al, 2016) that infants have been shown to categorize and actions that have not been explored in prior studies (i.e., crawl). The procedure and coding for Experiment 2 were also identical to Experiment 1.…”

Evidence for Early Comprehension of Action Verbs

“…In another study, Ferry, Hespos, and Gentner (2015) showed that analogical ability -the ability to make relational comparisons -is present in 7-and 9month-olds, suggesting the effectiveness of relational conceptual mechanisms before the production of verbs. Finally, evidence for the foundations of verb learning has been presented by Song, Pruden, Golinkoff, and Hirsh-Pasek (2016) who showed that 10-to 12-month-olds can categorize aspects of events such as path or manner as well as the role of actors in events.…”

“…Regarding the research on the ability of infants to categorize aspects of actions, our study adds the important finding that infants as young as 10 months are already on their way to understanding aspects of verbs when these are presented to them by their parent in an interrogative manner. Thus, studies on the discrimination of actions in early development (Song et al, 2016) that suggest a period of prelinguistic categorization need to take into account that a linguistic influence is already in play at an early age (Nomikou et al, 2016).…”