Knowing what a novel word is not: Two-year-olds 'listen through' ambiguous adjectives in fluent speech

Three studies investigated how 24-month-olds and adults resolve temporary ambiguity in fluent speech when encountering prenominal adjectives potentially interpretable as nouns. Children were tested in a looking-while-listening procedure to monitor the time course of speech processing. In Experiment 1, the familiar and unfamiliar adjectives preceding familiar target nouns were accented or deaccented. Target word recognition was disrupted only when lexically ambiguous adjectives were accented like nouns. Experiment 2 measured the extent of interference experienced by children when interpreting prenominal words as nouns. In Experiment 3, adults used prosodic cues to identify the form class of adjective/noun homophones in string-identical sentences before the ambiguous words were fully spoken. Results show that children and adults use prosody in conjunction with lexical and distributional cues to ‘listen through’ prenominal adjectives, avoiding costly misinterpretation.     

Children use vowels to help them spell consonants

English spelling is highly inconsistent in terms of simple sound-to-spelling correspondences but is more consistent when context is taken into account. For example, the choice between ch and tch is determined by the preceding vowel (coach, roach vs. catch, hatch). We investigated children's sensitivity to vowel context when spelling consonants in monosyllabic nonwords. Second graders (7-year-olds) tended to use vowel context correctly when spelling word-final consonants (codas). This use of context was progressively stronger for third and fifth graders as well as for college students. The increase is not due to differences in vocabulary because the contextual patterns are similar in reading materials targeted at all four age groups. Vowel letters (graphotactics) had a stronger influence than did vowel pronunciation. Children also used vowel context when spelling word-initial consonants (onsets); this effect was as strong for second graders as for adults. Thus, novice spellers take advantage of graphotactic information.     

It's what's on the outside that matters: an advantage for external features in children's word recognition

The relative importance of internal and external letter features of words in children's developing reading was investigated to clarify further the nature of early featural analysis. In Experiment 1, 72 6-, 8-, and 10-year-olds read aloud words displayed as wholes, external features only (central features missing, thereby preserving word shape information), or internal features only (central features preserved). There was an improvement in the processing of external features compared with internal features as reading experience increased. Experiment 2 examined the processing of the internal and external features of words employing a forward priming paradigm with 60 8-, 10-, and 12-year-olds. Reaction times to internal feature primes were equivalent to a nonprime blank condition, whereas responses to external feature primes were faster than those to the other two prime types. This advantage for the external features of words is discussed in terms of an early and enduring role for processing the external visual features in words during reading development.     

Neighborhood Poverty, Social Capital, and the Cognitive Development of African American Preschoolers

In this investigation, we examine the impact of the ecological context of the residential neighborhood on the cognitive development of children by considering social processes not only at the family-level but also at the neighborhood-level. In a socioeconomically diverse sample of 200 African American children living in 39 neighborhoods in Baltimore, we found that neighborhood poverty was associated with poorer problem-solving skills over and above the influence of family economic resources and level of positive parent involvement. Sampson has theorized that neighborhood poverty affects child well-being by altering levels of neighborhood social capital as well as family social capital. Although we found that indicators of neighborhood and family social capital were associated with cognitive skills, these factors did not explain the association between neighborhood poverty and problem-solving ability. Implications for future research in the area of neighborhoods and child development are discussed.     

Navigating Social Class Roles in Community Research

This paper describes the first author's attempt to collect data in a homeless shelter without attending to her role in the social class hierarchy of the organization. The author's egalitarian approach towards the homeless clients, and her lack of involvement in "staff-only" activities, transgress the social class norms within the organizational structure. While the author is successful in gaining the trust of the homeless clients, her approach alienates shelter staff, especially those in the higher echelons of the social hierarchy. The concepts of classism, world views, and Social Identity Theory, are utilized to discuss the dilemma faced by researchers who want to challenge, or work outside, a setting's status quo.     

The Role of the Child in Adult Development

This paper provides theoretical and empirical support for the view that children play a large and often underappreciated role in adult development. Fifty parents and teachers were asked to discuss occasions when they learned something valuable from a child or when a child changed them in some significant way. Adults reported that children can cause them to (a) shift their values or priorities, (b) integrate memories or experiences previously disowned or repressed, (c) become more creative and cognitively flexible, or (d) look at the world with more wonder, awe, or curiosity. Werner's concept of genetic stratification (H. Werner, 1957) and Labouvie-Vief, Chiodo, Goguen, Diehl, and Orwoll's concept of dynamic intersubjectivity (G. Labouvie-Vief, L. M. Chiodo, L. A. Goquen, M. Diehl, & L. Orwoll, 1995) are used to explain the results.     

The human first hypothesis: identification of conspecifics and individuation of objects in the young infant

How do infants individuate and track objects, and among them objects belonging to their species, when they can only rely on information about the properties of those objects? We propose the Human First Hypothesis (HFH), which posits that infants possess information about their conspecifics and use it to identify and count objects. F. Xu and S. Carey [Cognitive Psychology, 30(2), 111-153, 1996] argued that before the age of 1 year, infants fail to use property information. To explain their results, Xu and Carey proposed the Object First Hypothesis (OFH), according to which infants under 1 year of age have only the general concept of physical object to identify and count objects. We show that infants have a more extensive knowledge of sortals than that claimed by the OFH. When 10-month-olds see one humanlike and one non-humanlike object, they successfully identify and count them by using the contrast in their properties, as predicted by the HFH. We also show that infants succeed even when they make a decision based on differences between two close basic-level categories such as humanlike objects and doglike objects, but fail when they have to use differences within the human category. Thus, infants treat "human" as a basic sortal, as predicted by the HFH. We argue that our results cannot be accounted for by general purpose mechanisms. Neither the strong version of the OFH and its explanation in terms of object indexing mechanisms [A. M. Leslie, F. Xu, P. Tremoulet, & B. J. Scholl, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2(1), 10-18, 1998] nor explanations in terms of task demands [T. Wilcox & R. Baillargeon, Cognitive Psychology, 37(2), 97-155, 1998] are sufficient to explain our results.     

Child,parent, and peer predictors of early-onset substance use: a multisite longitudinal study

The purpose of this study was to identify kindergarten-age predictors of early-onset substance use from demographic, environmental, parenting, child psychological, behavioral, and social functioning domains. Data from a longitudinal study of 295 children were gathered using multiple-assessment methods and multiple informants in kindergarten and 1st grade. Annual assessments at ages 10, 11, and 12 reflected that 21% of children reported having initiated substance use by age 12. Results from longitudinal logistic regression models indicated that risk factors at kindergarten include being male, having a parent who abused substances, lower levels of parental verbal reasoning, higher levels of overactivity, more thought problems, and more social problem solving skills deficits. Children with no risk factors had less than a 10% chance of initiating substance use by age 12, whereas children with 2 or more risk factors had greater than a 50% chance of initiating substance use. Implications for typology, etiology, and prevention are discussed.     

Industry,innovation and social values

Remaining important tasks in finding and developing new drugs and vaccines for HIV/AIDS, malaria, cancer and other diseases require continued industry research and development. Industry’s research and development pipeline has produced drugs that have saved AIDS victims previously facing certain death, but still no cure nor vaccine is yet available. Experience with the process of research and development indicates that it requires more than a decade of development to produce a new drug with costs in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Intellectual property protection is critically important in assuring that drug development continues. Partnerships between industry and the public sector have increased access to new therapies in developing countries and promise to enhance access to both patented and generic medicines in the future. An earlier version of this paper was presented at an international conference, “The Ethics of Intellectual Property Rights and Patents,” held in Warsaw, Poland on 23–24 April, 2004. This paper was prepared with the assistance of Maciej Gajewski, Policy Research Analyst, International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association (IFPMA).     

What We Owe to the Global Poor

This essay defends an account of the duties to the global poor that is informed by the empirical question of what makes countries rich or poor, and that tends to be broadly in agreement with John Rawlss account in The Law of Peoples. I begin by introducing the debate about the sources of growth and explore its implications for duties towards the poor. Next I explore whether (and deny that) there are any further-reaching duties towards the poor. Finally, I ask about the moral foundations for the duties to the poor of the sort that earlier parts argue there are.