Photo from PIRE funded research trip to the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour at Radboud University, the Netherlands.
My research adopts a developmental approach to explore the challenges confronting learners as they impose the discrete representational system of language onto the continuous flow of events in the world. Some areas of inquiry include:
- Verb Learning
- Event Segmentation
- Statistical Learning
- Second Language Learning and Bilingualism
- Language and Thought
- Force and Motion Understanding
- Science of Learning
Recent and Ongoing Research
Event Perception and Verb Learning
Verb learning presents unique challenges, demanding that we map the discrete representational system of language onto continuous, dynamic events. Moreover, relational terms label only part of a motion event and languages differ in the parts that are highlighted. For instance, English speakers use the verb cross to depict an object moving from one side of a surface to another, while Japanese speakers use different verbs to depict crossing a bounded surface (e.g., wataru for crossing a street) and an unbounded surface (e.g., tooru for crossing a field). How do infants navigate these challenges en route to mature, language-specific representations of events? My theoretical work synthesizes research at the intersection of language and event perception to better understand the developmental processes underlying this area of language acquisition (George, Goksun, Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff, 2014; George, Konishi, Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff, 2014). This research shows that, regardless of their language community, infants detect the same array of non-linguistic components of events, including fine-grained distinctions that are not encoded in their native language. In turn, as infants are exposed to language, they undergo a process of semantic reorganization, in which attention to these distinctions is heightened or dampened through tracking how language maps onto events. Language, in this case, has the function of orienting infants’ attention to some relations in events over others. Through this process, infants develop new perspectives in their interpretations of event categories.
Hierarchies in Language and Events
Linguistic analyses yield a list of semantic components that languages express in relational terms. Though likely not an exhaustive list, constructs like path (where an object moves relative to the ground), manner (how an object moves), and goal (the endstate of movement) capture event units central to representations of the world from infancy through adulthood. While these categories allow researchers to gain purchase on questions of event segmentation, they reflect a fine grain of segmentation, in which events are a sequence of independent, linear units. In reality, events are more intricate, comprised of units that are arranged in complex hierarchical configurations. The statement, “The boy was walking towards the street, when his mother pulled him back onto the sidewalk” represents an event as a series of independent relations, such as the boy’s goal path towards the street, the direction of the mother’s causal force on the boy, and the boy’s endstate on the sidewalk. Each of these relations can indicate an event unit, but can also be bound together to yield the broader event of prevent, an instance of the semantic category of force dynamics. Force dynamics inspires a fresh perspective on partonomic hierarchies in event perception, providing a formal account of how broad event units can be defined by patterns of simpler elements. My research in this area suggests that, in comparison to adults’ representations, preschool-aged children struggle to identify force dynamics relations, reflecting the difficulty in learning to encode this level of partonomic structure in development (George, Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff, under review). Further, my research demonstrates that language is an important cue that helps children to integrate chains of simple relations into more complex and broader event units that carry new meaning. These results provide new perspectives on how children and adults navigate these partonomic hierarchies en route to mature representations of events.
Development of Conceptions of Force and Motion
Emerging from my involvement in the Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center at Temple University, my work takes on an applied focus through examining how language may affect the perception of events in the domain of spatial reasoning. Specifically, my projects in this area use the same semantic categories of force dynamics as a window into representations of force and motion across development. In a study published in Child Development, my colleagues and I find that children are best able to predict the outcome of two forces operating on a small ball when the arrangement of those forces is prototypical of a force dynamics category (i.e., two forces directly opposing one another, as in prevent) as opposed to when they are not (i.e., two forces arranged perpendicularly; Göksun, George, Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff, 2013). A follow-up study further extends this result to problems of inference in 5-year-olds (George, Göksun, Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff, in preparation), and separate habituation studies with infants and toddlers show that the difficulties in reasoning about forces across two dimensions extends even to recognition paradigms (George, Göksun, Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff, in preparation). These studies were most recently applied to the creation of a child-friendly, electronic assessment of force and motion problems that allows for the examination of learning trajectories across development (Harris, George, Newcombe, & Hirsh-Pasek, under review). By providing a single methodology for all ages, we afford richer knowledge of how both correct and incorrect ideas about force and motion naturally develop. This knowledge has implications for educational interventions designed to build upon early competencies and to preempt the entrenchment of troubling misconceptions.
Second Language Learning and Bilingualism
Second language learners face the daunting challenge of learning a new vocabulary that often does not map transparently onto the terms of their native tongue. My research in this area begins by furthering our understanding of the cross-linguistic differences in semantic categories that contribute to this challenge, including examinations of causal subjects across English and Japanese speakers (Kanero, Konishi, George, Damonte, Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff, in preparation) and causal verbs across English and Turkish speakers. As a member of the Center for Language Science (CLS) at Penn State University, an interdisciplinary research center with considerable interests in second language learning and bilingualism, I also explore issues of plasticity in second language learning. My research sheds light on how the nature of the difference in semantic categories across languages affects learnability. For instance, English speakers are better able to acquire novel words that differed from their first language in granularity (e.g., Dutch subdivides the English category of on into three distinct categories) as opposed to those that require attention to different foci (e.g., Japanese differentiates between tight and loose fit, cross-cutting the English in/on distinction; George & Weiss, in preparation). As an NSF Partnerships for International Research and Education (PIRE) Postdoctoral Fellow, I since traveled to Radboud University in the Netherlands, where my research has broadened to examine whether Dutch-English bilinguals have an advantage in learning novel semantic categories as a function of their previous experience with juggling potentially conflicting semantic categories in their two languages.
Verb learning presents unique challenges, demanding that we map the discrete representational system of language onto continuous, dynamic events. Moreover, relational terms label only part of a motion event and languages differ in the parts that are highlighted. For instance, English speakers use the verb cross to depict an object moving from one side of a surface to another, while Japanese speakers use different verbs to depict crossing a bounded surface (e.g., wataru for crossing a street) and an unbounded surface (e.g., tooru for crossing a field). How do infants navigate these challenges en route to mature, language-specific representations of events? My theoretical work synthesizes research at the intersection of language and event perception to better understand the developmental processes underlying this area of language acquisition (George, Goksun, Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff, 2014; George, Konishi, Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff, 2014). This research shows that, regardless of their language community, infants detect the same array of non-linguistic components of events, including fine-grained distinctions that are not encoded in their native language. In turn, as infants are exposed to language, they undergo a process of semantic reorganization, in which attention to these distinctions is heightened or dampened through tracking how language maps onto events. Language, in this case, has the function of orienting infants’ attention to some relations in events over others. Through this process, infants develop new perspectives in their interpretations of event categories.
Hierarchies in Language and Events
Linguistic analyses yield a list of semantic components that languages express in relational terms. Though likely not an exhaustive list, constructs like path (where an object moves relative to the ground), manner (how an object moves), and goal (the endstate of movement) capture event units central to representations of the world from infancy through adulthood. While these categories allow researchers to gain purchase on questions of event segmentation, they reflect a fine grain of segmentation, in which events are a sequence of independent, linear units. In reality, events are more intricate, comprised of units that are arranged in complex hierarchical configurations. The statement, “The boy was walking towards the street, when his mother pulled him back onto the sidewalk” represents an event as a series of independent relations, such as the boy’s goal path towards the street, the direction of the mother’s causal force on the boy, and the boy’s endstate on the sidewalk. Each of these relations can indicate an event unit, but can also be bound together to yield the broader event of prevent, an instance of the semantic category of force dynamics. Force dynamics inspires a fresh perspective on partonomic hierarchies in event perception, providing a formal account of how broad event units can be defined by patterns of simpler elements. My research in this area suggests that, in comparison to adults’ representations, preschool-aged children struggle to identify force dynamics relations, reflecting the difficulty in learning to encode this level of partonomic structure in development (George, Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff, under review). Further, my research demonstrates that language is an important cue that helps children to integrate chains of simple relations into more complex and broader event units that carry new meaning. These results provide new perspectives on how children and adults navigate these partonomic hierarchies en route to mature representations of events.
Development of Conceptions of Force and Motion
Emerging from my involvement in the Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center at Temple University, my work takes on an applied focus through examining how language may affect the perception of events in the domain of spatial reasoning. Specifically, my projects in this area use the same semantic categories of force dynamics as a window into representations of force and motion across development. In a study published in Child Development, my colleagues and I find that children are best able to predict the outcome of two forces operating on a small ball when the arrangement of those forces is prototypical of a force dynamics category (i.e., two forces directly opposing one another, as in prevent) as opposed to when they are not (i.e., two forces arranged perpendicularly; Göksun, George, Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff, 2013). A follow-up study further extends this result to problems of inference in 5-year-olds (George, Göksun, Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff, in preparation), and separate habituation studies with infants and toddlers show that the difficulties in reasoning about forces across two dimensions extends even to recognition paradigms (George, Göksun, Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff, in preparation). These studies were most recently applied to the creation of a child-friendly, electronic assessment of force and motion problems that allows for the examination of learning trajectories across development (Harris, George, Newcombe, & Hirsh-Pasek, under review). By providing a single methodology for all ages, we afford richer knowledge of how both correct and incorrect ideas about force and motion naturally develop. This knowledge has implications for educational interventions designed to build upon early competencies and to preempt the entrenchment of troubling misconceptions.
Second Language Learning and Bilingualism
Second language learners face the daunting challenge of learning a new vocabulary that often does not map transparently onto the terms of their native tongue. My research in this area begins by furthering our understanding of the cross-linguistic differences in semantic categories that contribute to this challenge, including examinations of causal subjects across English and Japanese speakers (Kanero, Konishi, George, Damonte, Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff, in preparation) and causal verbs across English and Turkish speakers. As a member of the Center for Language Science (CLS) at Penn State University, an interdisciplinary research center with considerable interests in second language learning and bilingualism, I also explore issues of plasticity in second language learning. My research sheds light on how the nature of the difference in semantic categories across languages affects learnability. For instance, English speakers are better able to acquire novel words that differed from their first language in granularity (e.g., Dutch subdivides the English category of on into three distinct categories) as opposed to those that require attention to different foci (e.g., Japanese differentiates between tight and loose fit, cross-cutting the English in/on distinction; George & Weiss, in preparation). As an NSF Partnerships for International Research and Education (PIRE) Postdoctoral Fellow, I since traveled to Radboud University in the Netherlands, where my research has broadened to examine whether Dutch-English bilinguals have an advantage in learning novel semantic categories as a function of their previous experience with juggling potentially conflicting semantic categories in their two languages.