Research article summary (published 30 May 1992):

Joint attention on actions: acquiring verbs in ostensive and non-ostensive contexts.

Full Abstract

Two studies of verb learning are reported. The focus of both studies was on children in their second year of life learning verbs in various pragmatic contexts. Of particular interest was the comparison of ostensive contexts--in which word and referent were simultaneously present in the child's perceptual field--to non-ostensive contexts. In a naturalistic study of 24 children at 1;3 and 1;9, it was found that mothers modelled verbs for their children most often BEFORE the referent action actually occurred. Over 60% of maternal verbs were used to refer to actions that mothers wished children to perform or that they were anticipating their performing (IMPENDING actions). Some verbs were also used to refer to current actions (ONGOING actions) or actions that had just been completed (COMPLETED actions). Children responded with comprehension most often to impending models. Impending and completed models, but not ongoing models, were correlated with children's verb vocabularies at 1;9. The second study was a lexical training study of 48 two-year-olds. Children learned to produce a novel verb best when it was modelled in the impending condition. They learned to comprehend it equally well in the impending and completed conditions. Children showed no signs of superior learning in the ostensive (ongoing) learning context. Results of the two studies are discussed in terms of the different learning processes involved in acquiring nouns and verbs, and, more broadly, in terms of a social-pragmatic view of language acquisition in which the ostensive teaching paradigm is but one of many contexts in which children learn to establish a joint attentional focus with mature language users.

Author information

Author/s: Tomasello, M (M); Kruger, A C (AC);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia 30322.

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: Journal of child language (J Child Lang), published in ENGLAND. (Language: eng)

Reference: 1992-Jun; vol 19 (issue 2) : pp 311-33

Dates: Created 1992/10/22; Completed 1992/10/22; Revised 2004/11/17;

PMID: 1527205, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 2/18/2009, IMS Date: )

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

External Links for this article
(including full text providers, if available):

Click Electronic Full-text Provider Links to see options for finding the electronic full text links to this article. Note there may be a subscription or fee required for access to the full text. See our FAQ for information on finding FREE full text articles.

This article may also be located in paper journal collections available in many libraries. Use the Journal and Publication Information above to find the full article.

MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Child Language Child, Preschool Female Humans Infant Language Tests Linguistics

Male Mother-Child Relations Speech Speech Intelligibility Speech Perception Verbal Behavior Vocabulary

Related articles

These are the highest related articles currently in the database:

• Dialogic reading and morphology training in Chinese children: effects on language and literacy. 30 Dec 2007
• Early surgery compared with watchful waiting for glue ear and effect on language development in preschool children: a randomised trial. 18 Mar 1999
• Behavioral inhibition and clinical outcomes in children with cochlear implants. 30 Mar 2005
• Modelling relations between sensory processing, speech perception, orthographic and phonological ability, and literacy achievement. 16 Jan 2008
• Young children learning Spanish make rapid use of grammatical gender in spoken word recognition. 27 Feb 2007
• Perception and production of lexical tones by 3-year-old, Mandarin-speaking children. 29 Sep 2005
• Knowing what a novel word is not: Two-year-olds 'listen through' ambiguous adjectives in fluent speech. 23 Aug 2005
• Nouns before verbs in comprehension vs. production: the view from pragmatics. 29 Sep 2000
• Precursors of literacy delay among children at genetic risk of dyslexia. 30 Jan 2000
• Prelinguistic predictors of language outcome at 3 years of age. 29 Nov 2006

See 100+ related articles.

Related Article Map

Legend: - FREE Full text Article. - Abstract only. - Title only. More help.

See a large map of 100+ related articles.