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The Relationship Between Pre-Verbal Event Representations And Semantic Structures: The Case Of Goal And Source Paths, Laura Lakusta, Danielle Spinelli, Kathryn Garcia
The Relationship Between Pre-Verbal Event Representations And Semantic Structures: The Case Of Goal And Source Paths, Laura Lakusta, Danielle Spinelli, Kathryn Garcia
Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
We explored the nature of infants’ concepts for goal path and source path in motion events (e.g., the duck moved into the bowl/out of the bowl), specifically asking how infants’ representations could support the acquisition of the semantic roles of goal path and source path in language. The results showed that 14.5-month-old infants categorized goal paths across different motion events (moving to X, moving on Y), and they also categorized source paths if the source reference objects were highly salient (relatively large in size and colorful). Infants at 10 months also categorized goal paths, suggesting that the broad concept GOAL …
Does Making Something Move Matter? Representations Of Goals And Sources In Motion Events With Causal Sources, Laura Lakusta, Paul Muentener, Lauren Petrillo, Noelle Mullanaphy, Lauren Muniz
Does Making Something Move Matter? Representations Of Goals And Sources In Motion Events With Causal Sources, Laura Lakusta, Paul Muentener, Lauren Petrillo, Noelle Mullanaphy, Lauren Muniz
Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
Previous studies have shown a robust bias to express the goal path over the source path when describing events (“the bird flew into the pitcher,” rather than “… out of the bucket into the pitcher”). Motivated by linguistic theory, this study manipulated the causal structure of events (specifically, making the source cause the motion of the figure) and measured the extent to which adults and 3.5- to 4-year-old English-speaking children included the goal and source in their descriptions. We found that both children's and adults’ encoding of the source increased for events in which the source caused the motion of …