Thesis (Ph.D.)--Pacific Graduate School of Psychology, 1986. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 47-11, Section: B, page: 4678.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Pacific Graduate School of Psychology, 1987. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 48-11, Section: B, page: 3433.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Pacific Graduate School of Psychology, 1987. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 48-11, Section: B, page: 3433.

Thesis (Educat.D.)--Fairleigh Dickinson University, 1985. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 46-03, Section: B, page: 0981.

Thesis (Educat.D.)--Fairleigh Dickinson University, 1985. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 46-06, Section: B, page: 2086.

Thesis (Psy.D.)--Fairleigh Dickinson University, 2004. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 65-06, Section: B, page: 3198. Chair: Ronald Dumont. Available also in print.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-11, Section: B, page: 6758. Adviser: Eva M. Pomerantz. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 53-62) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

Any event can be construed from a variety of perspectives. While this flexibility is fundamental to human ingenuity, it poses a challenge for language learners who must discern which meanings are encoded in their language and by which forms. The papers in this dissertation focus on verbs encoding directed motion (e.g., a girl runs into a house) and caused change-of-state events (e.g., a boy blows out candles). Both classes of events can be expressed by verbs that lexicalize different components of the event, namely Manner-of-motion (e.g., run) or Path (e.g., enter), and Means (e.g., blow) or Effect (e.g., extinguish), respectively. Papers 1 and 2 examine the representation of higher-order generalizations about the meanings of directed motion and novel caused change-of-state verbs. Both studies use a novel verb-learning paradigm to manipulate the meanings of novel verbs in the input and then assess how learners interpret subsequently encountered novel verbs (measure lexicalization bias). The results indicate that learners rapidly use semantic regularities to form higher-order generalizations about verb meaning. In Paper 1, adults taught Manner verbs construed new directed motion verbs as lexicalizing Manner more often than those taught Path verbs. Moreover, changes in verb learning bias were accompanied by shifts in visual attention: Manner-verb learners fixated on Manner-related elements of visually-presented events more than Path-verb learners. These results indicate that previously observed cross-linguistic differences in verb lexicalization biases are unlikely to stem from the restructuring of semantic representations along language-specific lines and more likely reflect the operation of a flexible, inferential learning mechanism that monitors the input and updates beliefs accordingly. Likewise, in Paper 2, adults taught Means verbs interpreted unknown verbs for caused change-of-state events as encoding the Means more often than those taught Effect verbs. Unlike directed motion verbs, the encoding of these events is not characterized by marked typological variation and the availability of Means and Effect verbs does not appear to vary appreciable within or across languages. Our results, then, suggest that the formation of higher-level generalizations about meaning is a fundamental property of the processes that undergird lexical acquisition. Paper 3 focuses on the representation of the event concepts that underlie verb meanings. Specifically, we examine the possibility that Manner-of-motion and Means are actually instances of a broader semantic category, MANNER, whereas Path and Effect are instances of a different semantic category, RESULT. Adults were taught novel verbs for either directed motion or caused changes of state and subsequently presented with novel verbs from the other semantic class. The results revealed that adults transfer newly-learned higher-order generalizations about the meanings of directed motion verbs to caused change-of-state verbs (and vice versa), providing support for the psychological reality of superordinate event concepts. / Psychology

Meta-ignorance is an awareness of one’s own knowledge or lack of knowledge. The goal of this dissertation is to examine the development of children’s meta-ignorance between 14 months and 42 months. I examine the hypothesis that children have some awareness of their own epistemic states, notably states of knowledge and ignorance. In Study 1, eight children’s use of the mental verb know was examined when they were between 18 and 36 months. Children (from the Child Language Data Exchange System) used know to affirm their own knowledge and that of their interlocutor. When they used know in the context of asking a question, they typically asked about their interlocutor’s knowledge states and not their own. Conversely, they often denied their own knowledge but rarely their interlocutor’s. Finally, they rarely referred to a third party’s knowledge. In Study 2, 64 children’s production of the flip gesture (hold two hands palm up out to the side to communicate “I don’t know”) was examined when they were between 14 and 42 months. The video recordings were from the Language Development Project. Flip gestures were observed at 14 months, which is four months before a minority of children were first observed saying: “I don’t know.” Children often flipped following their interlocutors’ comments and questions, suggesting that children used flips in a dialogic fashion. When children flipped, their interlocutors often interpreted flips as an expression of ignorance and responded accordingly. Study 3 involved an experiment in which 52 children aged 16 to 37 months were presented with familiar and unfamiliar pictures and asked to label them. For familiar pictures, children mostly produced the correct name. For unfamiliar pictures, children were more likely to display signs of uncertainty, including turning to gaze at an adult, producing a filled pause such as Um, asking for help, and saying I don’t know. Children’s ability to produce I DON’T KNOW flips, to say I don’t know, and to express uncertainty when asked to name unfamiliar objects indicates that they come to express a simple understanding of knowledge and ignorance in the course of the second and third year.

I explore music's early role in social cognition, testing the hypothesis that infants interpret singing as a social signal. Over six experiments, I examine 5- and 11-month-old infants' social responses to new people who sing familiar or unfamiliar songs to them. I manipulate song familiarity with three training methods: infants learn songs from a parent; from a musical toy; or from an unfamiliar adult who sings first in person and subsequently via video chat. I use two main outcome measures: a test of visual preference for the singer of a familiar song; and, in older infants, a more explicitly social test of selective reaching for objects associated with and endorsed by novel individuals. I also test infants' memory for the songs they hear in these studies. I find that infants garner social information from the songs they hear, which they subsequently act upon in the context of social interaction; when songs are not learned in a social context, infants recall them in great detail after long delays. These results demonstrate a social function of music in early development. Music is not just pleasurable noise: it is a member of a class of behaviors, including language, accent, and food preference, that reliably inform infants' social behavior.