Full Description
How do infants and young children coordinate information in real time to arrive at sentence meaning from the words and structure of the sentence and from the nonlinguistic context? This volume introduces readers to an emerging field of research, experimental developmental psycholinguistics, and to the four predominant methodologies used to study on-line language processing in children. Authored by key figures in psycholinguistics, neuroscience and developmental psychology, the chapters cover event-related brain potentials, free-viewing eyetracking, looking-while-listening, and reaction-time techniques, also providing a historical backdrop for this line of research. Multiple aspects of experimental design, data collection and data analysis are addressed in detail, alongside surveys of recent important findings about how infants and children process sounds, words, and sentences. Indispensable for students and researchers working in the areas of language acquisition, developmental psychology and developmental neuroscience of language, this volume will also appeal to speech language pathologists and early childhood educators.
Contents
1. Introduction (by Sekerina, Irina A.); 2. List of contributors; 3. Behavioral methods for investigating morphological and syntactic processing in children (by Clahsen, Harald); 4. Event-related brain potentials as a window to children's language processing: From syllables to sentences (by Mannel, Claudia); 5. Using eye movements as a developmental measure within psycholinguistics (by Trueswell, John C.); 6. Looking while listening: Using eye movements to monitor spoken language comprehension by infants and young children (by Fernald, Anne E.); 7. What lurks beneath: Syntactic priming during language comprehension in preschoolers (and adults) (by Snedeker, Jesse); 8. Language acquisition research. A peek at the past: A glimpse into the future (by Cairns, Helen); 9. Index
