Blooming, Buzzing Confusion

Making Sense of Language in the First Few Years of Life

Winter 2023: CHDV 23010

Tuesdays and Thursdays 3:30pm-4:50pm

This course examines the social and cognitive mechanisms that drive language learning in the first few years of life. Nearly all children learn the language(s) of their community, despite the fact that human languages and caregiving practices offer immense diversity around the globe. What enables the learning system to adapt so robustly to the environment it finds itself in? We discuss the evidence for and against multiple factors that have been proposed to support language development across the world’s communities. We also critically examine how these ideas intersect with current deficit models of language learning. It is expected that, by the end of the course, students will grasp the basic mechanisms proposed to underlie early language learning and will design a novel research project to test one of these mechanisms in infants or young children.

Instructor: Marisa Casillas (she/her; mcasillas@uchicago.edu)

Office hours: Thursdays 12:00–2:00pm Rosenwald 318A (Zoom only by request).

Course materials:

All course materials will be available via this chatterlab course webpage, or otherwise via Canvas.

Grading

Students enrolled in this course will be graded on the following basis:

ComponentPercentage
Reading questions40%
Participation20%
Mini essay exams30%
Methods presentations10%

Reading questions

For each reading, students are expected to demonstrate their understanding by responding to a handful of questions. There are three types of readings: journal articles, scientific reviews, and book chapters. For journal articles (indicated below with (JA)), students should copy/download and then complete the notes worksheet here. For scientific reviews and book chapters (indicated below with (RV) or (BC)), the students should copy/download and then complete the notes worksheet here. A full-credit worksheet is complete, thoughtfully written, and has minimal direct quotation from the readings.

Participation

For participation credit, students are expected to come to class and actively participate in discussion unless they have an excused absence. In the case of an excused absence, please email Dr. Casillas (mcasillas@uchicago.edu)

Mini essay exams

Students are expected to complete three mini essay exams: one in week 4, one in week 7, and one during finals week. For each exam, students will have one week to give two short (~500 word) responses to take-home prompts. The exam will be graded following the instructions here.

Methods presentations

Each student is expected to participate in one methods presentation. Methods presentations are group projects. Each group will interview a researcher with expertise in the assigned method and then: (1) create a 20-minute pre-recorded mini lecture introducing and giving some demonstration of the assigned research method and (2) elicit and answer questions from the class (~10-15 minutes). Group members will also give a short evaluation of their and their peers’ contributions to the project (see the guidelines for details).

Extra credit

You may earn up to 4 percentage points of extra credit by participating in an ongoing experiment in the chatterlab (2 points per experiment). If you are interested in participating, contact lab manager Kennedy Casey (chatterlab@uchicago.edu) to schedule an appointment. The lab manager will communicate to Dr. Casillas when you have participated in an experiment, but you are welcome to follow up with her to confirm she has received notice of your extra credit.

Course schedule

Day-by-day-schedule

Tuesday, 3 January 2023 (1.1)

  • Pre-class reading: None!

  • Assignments due today: None!

Module 1: Pattern recognition

Thursday, 5 January 2023 (1.2)

  • Pre-class reading:

    • Saffran et al. (1996). Statistical learning by 8-month-old infants. Science 274(5294), 1926–1928. (JA) (pdf)
    • Saffran (2020). Statistical language learning in infancy. Child Development Perspectives 14(1), 49–54. (RV) (pdf)

  • Assignments due today: Reading questions

Tuesday, 10 January 2023 (2.1)

  • Pre-class reading:

    • Maye et al. (2002). Infant sensitivity to distributional information can affect phonetic discrimination. Cognition 82, B101–B111. (JA) (pdf)
    • Smith & Yu (2008). Infants rapidly learn word-referent mappings via cross-situational statistics. Cognition 106, 1558–1568. (JA) (pdf)

  • Assignments due today: Reading questions

Module 2: Cognitive biases

Thursday, 12 January 2023 (2.2)

  • Pre-class reading:

    • Goldstone & Hendrickson (2010). Categorical perception. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 1(1), 69-78. (RV) (pdf)
    • Bowerman (1980). The structure and origin of semantic categories in the language learning child. In Symbol as Sense (pp. 277-299). Academic Press. (BC) (pdf)

  • Assignments due today: Reading questions

Tuesday, 17 January 2023 (3.1)

  • Pre-class reading: None! Methods Presentations round 1 today

  • Assignments due today: None! Unless you’re doing a methods presentation today!

Thursday, 19 January 2023 (3.2)

  • Pre-class reading:

    • He & Arunachalam (2017). Word learning mechanisms. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 8(4), e1435. (RV) (pdf)
    • Ota et al. (2018). Why choo‐choo is better than train: The role of register‐specific words in early vocabulary growth. Cognitive Science, 42(6), 1974-1999. (JA) (pdf)

  • Assignments due today: Reading questions

Tuesday, 24 January 2023 (4.1)

  • Pre-class reading:

    • Frank et al. (2020). Variability and Consistency in Early Language Learning: The Wordbank Project (Ch 11). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (BC) (html)
    • Kidd et al. (2011). Toddlers use speech disfluencies to predict speakers’ referential intentions. Developmental Science, 14(4), 925-934. (JA) (pdf)

  • Assignments due today:

Module 3: Maturation

Thursday, 26 January 2023 (4.2)

  • Pre-class reading:

    • Karasik et al. (2014). Crawling and walking infants elicit different verbal responses from mothers. Developmental Science, 17(3), 388-395. (JA) (pdf)
    • Fausey et al. (2016). From faces to hands: Changing visual input in the first two years. Cognition, 152, 101-107. (JA) (pdf)

  • Assignments due today: Reading questions

Tuesday, 31 January 2023 (5.1)

  • Pre-class reading: None! Methods Presentations round 2 today

  • Assignments due today: None! Unless you’re doing a methods presentation today!

Thursday, 2 February 2023 (5.2)

  • Pre-class reading:

    • Vlach & Johnson (2013). Memory constraints on infants’ cross-situational statistical learning. Cognition, 127(3), 375-382. (JA) (pdf)
    • Gómez et al. (2006). Naps promote abstraction in language-learning infants. Psychological Science, 17(8), 670-674. (JA) (pdf)

  • Assignments due today: Reading questions

Tuesday, 7 February 2023 (6.1)

  • Pre-class reading: None! Methods Presentations round 3 today

  • Assignments due today: None! Unless you’re doing a methods presentation today!

Module 4: Environment

Thursday, 9 February 2023 (6.2)

  • Pre-class reading:

    • Erard, M. (in preparation). The four attentions. The linguistic history of first and last words (pp. 4–23). (BC) (erardInPrepCh1.pdf is on Canvas under “Files”)
    • Erard, M. (in preparation). The story of a first word (or why we pay attention to first words at all).The linguistic history of first and last words (pp. 24–47). (BC) (erardInPrepCh2.pdf is on Canvas under “Files”)

  • Assignments due today: In-class discussion participation

Tuesday, 14 February 2023 (7.1)

  • Pre-class reading:

    • Tomasello & Carpenter (2007). Shared intentionality. Developmental Science, 10(1), 121-125. (RV) (pdf)
    • Yu & Smith (2013). Joint attention without gaze following: Human infants and their parents coordinate visual attention to objects through eye-hand coordination. PloS one, 8(11), e79659. (JA) (pdf)

  • Assignments due today:

Thursday, 16 February 2023 (7.2)

  • Pre-class reading:

    • This counts as two readings (it’s long & detailed) – please adjust your notes so that they are equivalent to two readings of effort: Rowe & Weisleder (2020). Language development in context. Annual Review of Developmental Psychology, 2, 201-223. (RV) (pdf)

  • Assignments due today: Reading questions

Tuesday, 21 February 2023 (8.1)

  • Pre-class reading:

    • Liszkowski et al. (2012). A prelinguistic gestural universal of human communication. Cognitive Science, 36(4), 698-713. (JA) (pdf)
    • Carstensen et al. (2019). Context shapes early diversity in abstract thought. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(28), 13891-13896. (JA) (pdf)

  • Assignments due today: Reading questions

Thursday, 23 February 2023 (8.2)

  • Pre-class reading: None! Methods Presentations round 4 today

  • Assignments due today: None! Unless you’re doing a methods presentation today!

Tuesday, 28 February 2023 (9.1)

  • Pre-class reading:

    • Hart and Risley (2003). The early catastrophe: The 30 million word gap by age 3. American Educator, 27(1), 4-9. (RV) (pdf)
    • Hirsh-Pasek, K., Adamson, L. B., Bakeman, R., Owen, M. T., Golinkoff, R. M., Pace, A., … & Suma, K. (2015). The contribution of early communication quality to low-income children’s language success. Psychological Science, 26(7), 1071-1083. (JA)(pdf)
    • Sperry et al. (2018). Reexamining the verbal environments of children from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Child Development, 90(4), 1303-1318. (JA) (pdf)

  • Assignments due today: Reading questions

Thursday, 2 March 2023 (9.2) – video

  • Pre-class reading: None!

  • Assignments due today: In-class discussion participation

Final deadline (Tuesday, 7 March 2023)

Mini essay exam 3 due by 11:59pm.

Contact

Email: mcasillas@uchicago.edu

Office hours: Thursdays 12:00–2:00pm Rosenwald 318A (Zoom only by request).

If you require any accommodations for this course, as soon as possible please provide your instructor with a copy of your Accommodation Determination Letter (provided to you by the Student Disability Services office) so that you may discuss with him/her how your accommodations may be implemented in this course. The University of Chicago is committed to ensuring the full participation of all students in its programs. If you have a documented disability (or think you may have a disability) and, as a result, need a reasonable accommodation to participate in class, complete course requirements, or benefit from the University’s programs or services, you are encouraged to contact Student Disability Services as soon as possible. To receive reasonable accommodation, you must be appropriately registered with Student Disability Services. Please contact the office at 773-834-4469/TTY 773-795-1186 or gmoorehead@uchicago.edu, or visit the website at disabilities.uchicago.edu. Student Disability Services is located in Room 233 in the Administration Building located at 5801 S. Ellis Avenue.