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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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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jan 14, 2026

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The Agent Preference in Ontogeny: Predictability of Agent and Patient Roles in Child-Directed Utterances Across

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Children learning language prioritize agent roles, anticipating "doers" of actions more easily than "undergoers." This agent preference is consistent across languages and requires minimal context for prediction.

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Area of Science:

  • Psycholinguistics
  • Developmental Psychology
  • Computational Linguistics

Background:

  • Language comprehension involves incremental prediction and revision.
  • Adults across languages show a strong agent-first preference over patients.
  • How children learn semantic roles with incomplete input remains unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

  • Quantify incremental predictability of semantic roles (agents vs. patients) in child-directed speech.
  • Investigate the impact of contextual information on learning semantic roles.
  • Examine cross-linguistic variation in agent/patient predictability.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized transcribed child-directed speech from Tagalog, English, and Turkish.
  • Employed a computational model trained on naturalistic data to assess incremental predictability.
  • Validated the computational model against experimental data in each language.

Main Results:

  • Agents were highly predictable across all languages and sentence positions, needing little context.
  • Patient predictability was lower and required more contextual information, varying by language.
  • Cross-linguistic differences in patient prediction were observed.

Conclusions:

  • Agent role assignment is an easier task for children across diverse languages.
  • Patient roles are contextually induced and shaped by language-specific structures.
  • Findings support a general cognitive preference for agents in language acquisition.