Human language is learned, symbolic and exhibits syntactic structure, a set of properties which make it unique among naturally-occurring communication systems. How did human language come to be as it is? Language is culturally transmitted and cultural processes may have played a role in shaping language. However, it has been suggested that the cultural transmission of language is constrained by some language-specific innate endowment. The primary objective of the research outlined in this paper is to investigate how such an endowment would influence the acquisition of language and the dynamics of the repeated cultural transmission of language.

Synchrony detection between different sensory and/or motor channels appears critically important for young infant learning and cognitive development. For example, empirical studies demonstrate that audio-visual synchrony aids in language acquisition. In this paper we compare these infant studies with a model of synchrony detection based on the Hershey and Movellan (2000) algorithm augmented with methods for quantitative synchrony estimation. Four infantmodel comparisons are presented, using audiovisual stimuli of increasing complexity. While infants and the model showed learning or discrimination with each type of stimuli used, the model was most successful with stimuli comprised of one audio and one visual source, and also with two audio sources and a dynamic-face visual motion source. More difficult for the model were stimuli conditions with two motion sources, and more abstract visual dynamics—an oscilloscope instead of a face. Future research should model the developmental pathway of synchrony detection. Normal audio-visual synchrony detection in infants may be experience-dependent (e.g., Bergeson, et al., 2004).

thank members of the UBC Baby Cognition Lab for their help with data collection, and Paul Bloom, Geoff Hall, and Terry Regier for helpful discussion. We owe a particular debt to Liz Bonawitz, for discussions and pilot work on an earlier version of this work.

van de academische graad van doctor in de wetenschappen, in het openbaar te verdedigen op vrijdag 8 maart 2002. Acknowledgements I started as a research assistant in the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in autumn 1996. My first interests were into behavioural robotics and robot ecosystems. As a continuation to my “licentiaats ” thesis I started building a camera system to extend the sensory perception of the lab’s robots (Belpaeme and Birk, 1997a,b; Belpaeme, 1998; Birk and Belpaeme, 1998; Birk et al., 1998, 1999; Belpaeme and Birk, 2001). It was around that time when Luc Steels got interested in the origins of language. His early experiments formed the seed for what is now one of the most important paradigms for exploring linguistic interactions with computer simulations. Luc soon wanted more and had plans to implement a language experiment in the real world, for which I delivered the visual perception (Belpaeme et al., 1998; Belpaeme, 1999). This got me interested in visual features, and my research

Abstract. The human brain has evolved the capacity for language not only through specific mechanisms of routinized articulation of speech patterns, but through general mechanisms of adaptive memory organization. As shown by amnesic syndromes in humans and animals, the consolidation of memory requires neural traffic between localized neocortical networks, specialized for sensory or motor articulation, and the more diffuse, densely-interconnected limbic networks at the core of the brain. The connectivity of limbic networks allows not only the integration of widespread cortical regions, but the recruitment of subcortical motivational systems. A cognitive representation, such as supports the understanding of a word, is thus multileveled, with four or five discrete network levels in the pathway linking limbic (visceral) with neocortical (sensorimotor articulation) representations. Through their influences on subcortical arousal systems, the limbic networks provide motivational control over the consolidation process. Through reentrant corticolimbic traffic, language appears to be articulated in neocortical networks through a microdevelopmental process that begins in the prelinguistic, syncretic, postural-affective matrix of felt emotional significance represented at the limbic core of the brain. In its fundamental architecture, meaning is thus embodied. On the other hand, conscious realization of meaning may require the differentiation of specific form out of the syncretic paralimbic matrix, and this realization

tening to an unfamiliar language we no longer experience sequences of discrete words, but rather hear a continuous stream of speech with boundaries separating individual sentences or utterances. Examination of the physical form of speech confirms the impression given by listening to foreign languages. Speech does not contain gaps or other unambiguous markers of word boundaries -- there is no auditory analog of the spaces between words in printed text (Lehiste, 1960). Thus the perceptual experience of native speakers reflects language- Matt Davis Lexical segmentation and vocabulary acquisition 3 specific knowledge of ways in which to divide speech into words. An important set of questions, therefore, concern the sources of information that are used for segmentation and how infants learn to segment the speech stream in order to learn their first words. The continuous nature of speech might not be a problem for infants learning language if they were `spoon-fed' with sin

This paper was originally written while the author was at the University of California at Berkeley

Fourteen- and 18-month-old infants observed an adult experiencing each of 2 objects (experienced objects) and then leaving the room; the infant then played with a 3rd object while the adult was gone (unexperienced object). The adult interacted with the 2 experienced objects in 1 of 3 ways: by (a) sharing them with the infant in an episode of joint engagement, (b) actively manipulating and inspecting them on his or her own as the infant watched (individual engagement), or (c) looking at them from a distance as the infant played with them (onlooking). As evidenced in a selection task, infants of both ages knew which objects had been experienced by the adult in the joint engagement condition, only the 18-montholds knew this in the individual engagement condition, and infants at neither age knew this in the onlooking condition. These results suggest that infants are 1st able to determine what adults know (have experienced) on the basis of their direct, triadic engagements with them.

Recent research on children’s inferencing has found that although adults typically adopt the pragmatic interpretation of some (implying not all), 5- to 9-year-olds often prefer the semantic interpretation of the quantifier (meaning possibly all). Do these failures reflect a breakdown of pragmatic competence or the metalinguistic demands of prior tasks? In 3 experiments, the authors used the visual-world eye-tracking paradigm to elicit an implicit measure of adults ’ and children’s abilities to generate scalar implicatures. Although adults ’ eye-movements indicated that adults had interpreted some with the pragmatic inference, children’s looks suggested that children persistently interpreted some as compatible with all (Experiment 1). Nevertheless, both adults and children were able to quickly reject competitors that were inconsistent with the semantics of some; this confirmed the sensitivity of the paradigm (Experiment 2). Finally, adults, but not children, successfully distinguished between situations that violated the scalar implicature and those that did not (Experiment 3). These data demonstrate that children interpret quantifiers on the basis of their semantic content and fail to generate scalar implicatures during online language comprehension.

this paper. They are not responsible for my views, however