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Related Concept Videos

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Children master language quickly and with relative ease, supported by both biological predisposition and reinforcement. B. F. Skinner (1957) proposed that language is learned through reinforcement, while Noam Chomsky (1965) argued that language acquisition mechanisms are biologically determined.
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Language, whether spoken, signed, or written, consists of specific components: lexicon and grammar. The lexicon is the vocabulary of a language, comprising its words. Grammar is the set of rules used to convey meaning through the lexicon. For example, English grammar adds “-ed” to most verbs to indicate past tense. Words are formed by combining phonemes, which are the basic sound units of a language. Different languages have different sets of phonemes (e.g., “ah” vs.
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E. C. Tolman emphasized the purposiveness of behavior — the idea that much of our behavior is goal-directed. For instance, employees who aim for a promotion work diligently to meet their targets. Tolman argued that when classical conditioning and operant conditioning occur, the organism acquires certain expectations. In classical conditioning, a child might fear a dog because they expect it to bite. In operant conditioning, a person might consistently work overtime because they expect a...
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The Spatial Memory Game: Testing the Relationship Between Spatial Language, Object Knowledge, and Spatial Cognition
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Containment and Support: Core and Complexity in Spatial Language Learning.

Barbara Landau1, Kristen Johannes1, Dimitrios Skordos2

  • 1Department of Cognitive Science, Johns Hopkins University.

Cognitive Science
|June 21, 2016
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Spatial terms like "in" and "on" are not universal. Children learning English or Greek show different patterns for spatial support terms, highlighting complexity in spatial language acquisition.

Keywords:
ContainmentCross-linguisticLanguage learningSpatial languageSpatial relationsSupport

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Science
  • Developmental Psychology
  • Linguistics

Background:

  • Spatial terms like 'containment' and 'support' are often assumed to be universal.
  • However, English terms 'in' and 'on' apply broadly, with cross-linguistic variations observed.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the internal structure of containment and support domains.
  • To examine how this structure influences basic spatial term usage across languages and age groups.
  • To understand constraints on children's spatial term learning.

Main Methods:

  • Developed a new battery of tests to assess spatial term distribution.
  • Compared how adults and 4-year-old children (English and Greek speakers) use spatial terms for containment and support subtypes.

Main Results:

  • Containment terms showed consistent usage across all groups (adults and children, English and Greek speakers).
  • Support terms showed similar usage among adults but significant differences between English- and Greek-learning children.
  • Children's learning of spatial terms, particularly 'in' and 'on', is complex and language-dependent.

Conclusions:

  • The domains of containment and support present different learning challenges.
  • Spatial term learning, especially for terms like 'in' and 'on', requires a more nuanced understanding beyond universal assumptions.
  • Cross-linguistic and developmental differences underscore the complexity of acquiring spatial language.