Blooming, Buzzing Confusion

Making sense of language in the first few years of life

Winter 2026: CHDV 23010

Tuesdays and Thursdays 11:00am-12:20pm

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).

Teaching assistants (TAs): Yuchen Jin (yuchenjin@uchicago.edu) and Mei Mei (mei2@uchicago.edu).

Office hours:

  • Jin: Thursdays 9:45am–10:45am in Green 008 (book here).
  • Mei: Wednesdays 1:30–3:00 pm in Rosenwald 325 (book appointments via email).
  • Casillas: Fridays 11:00am–12:00pm in Rosenwald 318A (book here).

Course links: All course materials will be available via this chatterlab course webpage. All assignments should be submitted via Canvas.

Grading

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

ComponentPercentage
Participation10%
Reading notes20%
Midterm exams40%
Final paper30%

Participation (10%)

For participation credit, students are expected to come to class and actively participate in class activities unless they have an excused absence. In the case of an excused absence, students must email their TA.

Reading notes (20%)

For 20 of the 24 readings (it’s up to each student which 20 readings to do!), 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 well-done worksheet is complete, thoughtfully written, and has minimal direct quotations from the readings. Notes should be a maximum of 2 pages.

Notes are pass/fail assignments, each worth 1% of the final grade. Why put effort into them? These notes will be made available to you during your exams. Students may submit notes for all 24 readings; notes for the 21st–24th reading assignments may earn students up to 4% extra credit (i.e., 1% each).

There’s lot of jargon in these readings, so we’ll try and provide a glossary here (it’s meant to be read top to bottom).

Midterm exams (40%)

Students are expected to complete two midterm exams: one in week 4, and one in week 8. Both exams will be completed in person, with one written component and one oral component. Written components will take place during the class period. Oral exams will take place during a scheduled appointment time with a TA or the instructor.

Students will be able to use their submitted reading notes and submitted lecture notes for the exams. Students will also be able to choose which of multiple prompts to answer for one easier question and one harder question.

Final paper (30%)

Each student is expected to submit a ~1500 (max 2500) word final paper, in the form of a research proposal. Suggested workflow and evaluation guidelines here.

Course schedule

Day-by-day-schedule

Tuesday, 6 January 2026 (1.1)

  • Pre-class reading: None!

  • Assignments due today: None!

Module 1: Pattern recognition

Thursday, 8 January 2026 (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 notes

Tuesday, 13 January 2026 (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 notes

Thursday, 15 January 2026 (2.2)

  • Review and proposal work session

Module 2: Cognitive biases

Tuesday, 20 January 2026 (3.1)

  • Pre-class reading:

    • Cristia, A., & Casillas, M. (2022). Non-word repetition in children learning Yélî Dnye. Language Development Research, 2(1), 69-104. (JA) (pdf)
    • Goldin-Meadow, S. (2020). Discovering the biases children bring to language learning. Child Development Perspectives, 14(4), 195-201. (RV) (pdf)

  • Assignments due today: Reading notes

Thursday, 22 January 2026 (3.2)

  • Pre-class reading:

    • He & Arunachalam (2017). Word learning mechanisms. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 8(4), e1435. (RV) (pdf)
    • Frank et al. (2020). Variability and Consistency in Early Language Learning: The Wordbank Project (Ch 11). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (BC) (html)

  • Assignments due today: Reading notes

Tuesday, 27 January 2026 (4.1)

  • Pre-class reading:

    • Herrmann, E., Call, J., Hernández-Lloreda, M. V., Hare, B., & Tomasello, M. (2007). Humans have evolved specialized skills of social cognition: The cultural intelligence hypothesis.Science, 317(5843), 1360-1366. (JA) (pdf)
    • Gergely, G., Bekkering, H., & Király, I. (2002). Rational imitation in preverbal infants. Nature, 415(6873), 755-755. (JA) (pdf)

  • Assignments due today: Reading notes

Thursday, 29 January 2026 (4.2)

  • Midterm 1 written component — in class (today)

  • Midterm 1 oral component — by appointment (book here)

  • You may print and bring the following notes to the exam. They should be your OWN notes (and not a peer’s):

    • Reading notes: These are the notes you’ve submitted with each class session. You are allowed up to 2 pages PER reading assignment (“2 pages” means: 1 double-sided page or 2 single-sided pages).
      • Print and bring your submitted or revised notes (revisions of submitted reading notes), and any missed notes (reading notes you never submitted but have completed anyway).
      • We will check that your notes total to a maximum of 2 pages PER reading.
    • Supplementary notes: These are any additional notes you may want (e.g., from lectures). You may submit a maximum of 8 pages of supplementary reading notes for Midterm 1 (“8 pages” means: 4 double-sided pages or 8 single-sided pages).

You will submit your printed notes with your exam. We will keep your notes until grading is completed, and then we will return them to you. You will have access to your notes during both the oral and written exam components.

If you do not have access to a printer, please let us know ASAP.

Module 3: Maturation

Tuesday, 3 February 2026 (5.1)

  • Pre-class reading:

    • Vlach & Johnson (2013). Memory constraints on infants’ cross-situational statistical learning. Cognition, 127(3), 375-382. (JA) (pdf)
    • Kail, R. (1991). Development of processing speed in childhood and adolescence. Advances in Child Development and Behavior, 23, 151-185. (BC) (pdf)

  • Assignments due today: Reading notes

Thursday, 5 February 2026 (5.2)

  • Pre-class reading:

    • Kuhl, P. K., Tsao, F. M., & Liu, H. M. (2003). Foreign-language experience in infancy: Effects of short-term exposure and social interaction on phonetic learning. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 100(15), 9096-9101. (JA) (pdf)
    • Smith, L. B., Jayaraman, S., Clerkin, E., & Yu, C. (2018). The developing infant creates a curriculum for statistical learning. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 22(4), 325-336. (RV) (pdf)

  • Assignments due today: Reading notes

Module 4: Environment

Tuesday, 10 February 2026 (6.1)

  • Pre-class reading:

    • Liszkowski et al. (2012). A prelinguistic gestural universal of human communication. Cognitive Science, 36(4), 698-713. (JA) (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: Reading notes

Thursday, 12 February 2026 (6.2)

  • Pre-class reading:

    • Gaskins, S. (2006). Cultural perspectives on infant-caregiver interaction. In N. J. Enfield, & S. C. Levinson (Eds.), Roots of Human Sociality: Culture, Cognition and Interaction (pp. 279-298). Oxford: Berg. (BC) (pdf)
    • Casillas, M., Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (2020). Early language experience in a Tseltal Mayan village. Child Development, 91(5), 1819-1835. (JA) (pdf)

  • Assignments due today: Reading notes

Tuesday, 17 February 2026 (7.1)

  • Review and proposal work session

Thursday, 19 February 2026 (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 (it’s okay for your reading notes to be twice as long, 4 pages total): Rowe & Weisleder (2020). Language development in context. Annual Review of Developmental Psychology, 2, 201-223. (RV) (pdf)

  • Assignments due today: Reading notes

Tuesday, 24 February 2026 (8.1)

  • Midterm 2 written component — in class (today)

  • Midterm 2 oral component — by appointment (book here)

  • You may print and bring the following notes to the exam. They should be your OWN notes (and not a peer’s):

    • Reading notes: These are the notes you’ve submitted with each class session. You are allowed up to 2 pages PER reading assignment (“2 pages” means: 1 double-sided page or 2 single-sided pages).
      • Print and bring your submitted or revised notes (revisions of submitted reading notes), and any missed notes (reading notes you never submitted but have completed anyway).
      • We will check that your notes total to a maximum of 2 pages PER reading.
    • Supplementary notes: These are any additional notes you may want (e.g., from lectures). You may submit a maximum of 8 pages of supplementary reading notes for Midterm 1 (“8 pages” means: 4 double-sided pages or 8 single-sided pages).

You will submit your printed notes with your exam. We will keep your notes until grading is completed, and then we will return them to you. You will have access to your notes during both the oral and written exam components.

You only need to bring notes from the Maturation and Environment modules—you will not be tested on the Pattern Recognition and Cognitive Biases modules. That said, you may choose to bring ALL your reading notes if you would like to do so. If you do not have access to a printer, please let us know ASAP.

Module 5: Beyond the lab

Thursday, 26 February 2026 (8.2) – Discussion; no slides!

  • 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)

  • Assignments due today: Reading notes

Tuesday, 3 March 2026 (9.1) – Discussion; no slides!

  • Pre-class reading:

    • Sperry et al. (2018). Reexamining the verbal environments of children from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Child Development, 90(4), 1303-1318. (JA) (pdf)
    • De León, L. (2011). Language socialization and multiparty participation frameworks. In A. Duranti, E. Ochs, & B. B. Schieffelin (Eds.) The Handbook of Language Socialization (pp. 81-111). Wiley. (BC) (pdf)

  • Assignments due today: Reading notes

Thursday, 5 March 2026 (9.2)

  • Review and proposal work session

Final deadline (Tuesday, 10 March 2026)

Final paper (project proposal) due by 11:59pm Chicago time. See the suggested workflow and evaluation guidelines here.

(NB: We reserve the right to conduct an oral exam on any submission if we suspect any kind of plagiarism or over-reliance on AI. If an in-person oral exam is needed, we will require that it be scheduled before 5pm on 13 March, 2026.)

Accommodations

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.