Skip to main content
eScholarship
Open Access Publications from the University of California

Scholarly Works (14 results)

  • Article
  • Peer Reviewed
Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Volume 44 (2022)
Picture books are a popular medium through which to promote language acquisition in young children. However, not much is known about how the pictorial context in which words are introduced in such books impacts word learning in toddlers, or how joint book reading further mediates this relationship. The present study introduced words to 19-23-month-old toddlers through books in either contextually rich, semantically relevant illustrations, or on a white background in isolation. Children and their parents participated in three lab visits during which a range of language and environmental measures were taken. Parents read our intervention materials at home between the first and second visits. We found that the pictorial context in which vocabulary words are presented was significantly related to language measures throughout our study. Further, this context also influences parents’ reading techniques, with longer interactions and more target words produced when reading contextually illustrated books. Our minimal book intervention shows promise in promoting vocabulary development in typically talking toddlers.
    Cover page: Learning from Word Books: Does the Type of Illustration Matter?Creative Commons 'BY' version 4.0 license
    • Article
    • Peer Reviewed
    Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Volume 44 (2022)
    Understanding child language development requires accurately representing children’s lexicons. However, past work modeling children’s lexical-semantic structure typically utilized adult norms and corpora. The present work uses Word2Vec embeddings trained on a newly-created toddler-directed language corpus. Distributional approaches like Word2Vec calculate similarities taking into account not just when words occur together, but also when words occur in similar contexts. A network created from Word2Vec embeddings showed higher accuracy in predicting normed word acquisition from 16 to 30 months using network centrality measures, when compared to a network created using sliding window co-occurrences. We also compared predictions from the Word2Vec toddler network, a network created by training Word2Vec on typical adult input, and a model trained using both corpora. The toddler-only network outperformed the other two, indicating the importance of selecting language sources that reflect the population of interest. The present results reveal a promising new direction in understanding toddler word learning.
      Cover page: How to Build a Toddler Lexical NetworkCreative Commons 'BY' version 4.0 license
      • Article
      • Peer Reviewed
      Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Volume 42 (2020)
      Adolescents are going through a period of rapid growth in cognitive resources, both in crystallized, or knowledge-based, cognition and fluid cognition, or the ability to think and reason flexibly. Past literature reveals an ongoing debate as to whether, or in what way, different activities during childhood relate to these abilities. The current study leveraged the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development baseline dataset to explore the interplay between nine- and ten-year-olds’ extracurricular activities, screen time, and the different components of cognition. Results indicate that adolescents’ activities explain more variance in crystallized than fluid cognition. Further, participation in artistic activities is associated with increased fluid and crystallized cognition, though sports is positively associated with fluid but negatively associated with crystallized cognition. Different types of screen time, though notably not video game playing, may be negatively associated with cognition. Screen time explains more variance in fluid cognition than extracurricular activities do, whereas the opposite is true of crystallized cognition. This correlational study suggests potential avenues for further work to disentangle the causal links underlying the relationships between experiences and cognition. Do such activities change adolescents’ cognitive skill, or do children self-select to participate in certain types of activities that complement their existing skills?
        Cover page: The Differential Relationship of Extracurricular Activities and Screen Time with Adolescents’ Fluid and Crystallized CognitionCreative Commons 'BY' version 4.0 license
        • Article
        • Peer Reviewed
        Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Volume 41 (2019)
        This study explores how the vocabulary growth trajectories of typically developing and late-talker children change in relation to their word learning biases. Forty late talkers and 44 typically developing toddlers visited the lab once a month for one year starting at about 18 months of age. Word-learning trajectories were tracked using a parent-reported vocabulary measure, and shape and material bias measures were collected using the novel noun generalization task each month. A two-level hierarchical linear model was utilized for the longitudinal analyses. Results indicate that, at the first visit, a stronger shape bias was significantly associated with a larger vocabulary in typically developing talkers. In late talkers, however, a stronger initial shape bias was associated with a smaller vocabulary. Over the course of the study, for every additional visit, stronger shape biases were associated with larger vocabularies in late talkers, but not in typically developing toddlers. Results for the material bias mirrored the shape bias results. These findings suggest different possible underlying mechanisms for the two groups of children, as well as avenues for the design of language interventions that might support young late talkers.
          Cover page: Word-Learning Biases Contribute Differently to Late-Talker and Typically Developing Vocabulary Trajectories
          • Article
          • Peer Reviewed
          Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Volume 46 (2024)
          Dual language learners (DLLs) constitute a large portion of the population, but relatively little is known about the best ways in which to assess their vocabulary knowledge. Past research has used both conceptual vocabulary knowledge, assessing whether a child knows a word in either language, as well as total vocabulary knowledge, assessing what words a child knows in each language separately. The present work uses neural networks to predict specific word learning for individual Cantonese-English DLLs. As its input, The model utilizes word2vec embeddings that either represent children's' conceptual word knowledge or total word knowledge. We find that using total word knowledge results in higher predictive accuracy, suggesting that knowing what specific words DLLs know in each of their languages provides the most accurate picture of DLLs' vocabulary knowledge. The present work has many implications for both identification of at-risk individuals and the creation of learning materials for DLL populations.
            Cover page: How Should We Represent Bilingual Vocabulary Knowledge?Creative Commons 'BY' version 4.0 license
            • Article
            Pediatrics (2020)

            Neonates on respiratory support often experience rapid changes in their carbon dioxide (CO2). These fluctuations in CO2 concentrations can alter cerebral blood flow and increase the risk of intraventricular hemorrhage.

            Frequent blood sampling to monitor CO2:

            • Disrupts sleep - wake cycle

            • Is painful; associated with chronic pain

            • Associated with poor developmental outcomes

            Transcutaneous carbon dioxide monitors (TCOMs) allow for measurement of the partial pressure of carbon dioxide (pCO2). This technology utilizes the diffusion properties of CO2 through tissues and skin, allowing for sensor readings at the skin surface. Using this technology available, newborns in the NICU will not have to endure as many blood draws and will lower risks of complications.

              Cover page: Use of Transcutaneous Carbon Dioxide Monitors (TCOMs) in the NICU
              • Article
              Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Volume 40 (2018)
              This study is an exploratory analysis of young children’s representation of five spatial terms: above, under, by, next to, and between. Children (n = 76) and adults (n = 11) indicated the spatial extent of a grid they thought each term indicated. Qualitative analyses were used to categorize responses, separately for each word, and showed more agreement among adults than children. Furthermore, children who showed adult- like representations were generally older than those who showed unsystematic responses. Quantitative analyses, using a median split in age to create two groups of children, compared representational sizes and distances from the referent(s). For above, under, and between, adults had larger representations than children; the trend was reversed but not significant for by and next to. Furthermore, representation size was correlated for above and under, but not for by and next to. Analyses of distances showed a predicted reversal in the vertical dimension of above and under that interacted with age. There were no differences across age groups or terms for by and next to, but between showed a decrease in horizontal distance over development. These results suggest that children may initially understand words differently than adults do.
                Cover page: Children’s Representations of Five Spatial Terms
                • Article
                Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Volume 40 (2018)
                How much does children’s performance on analogy tasks reflect general analogical reasoning versus specific knowledge? We asked this by comparing young children’s performance on conceptual (e.g., whole, broken) versus spatial (e.g., above, overlapping) analogies. We asked two primary research questions. First, does children’s performance correlate across tasks that depict conceptual versus spatial analogies? Second, if children complete the easier analogical task first, does that experience boost performance on the second, harder task? Successfully solving analogy problems in one domain could provide insights to children that may carry over to a new domain. However, if poor performance reflects an underlying lack of knowledge, rather than weak analogical reasoning, then additional analogy experience will not be beneficial. Results showed that children performed significantly better on conceptual than spatial analogies, and that the order of tasks did not influence performance. Furthermore, performance was not correlated across domains. These results suggest that performance on these two tasks primarily reflects children’s understanding of the concepts and relations needed to complete the analogies, rather than analogical reasoning.
                  Cover page: Differentiation by Domain in Young Children’s Analogical Reasoning
                  • Book
                  • Peer Reviewed
                  Farm (2000)
                  Insecticides, acaricides, fungicides, and herbicides listed for use on 64 specialty crops or crop groups.
                    Cover page: Pesticides for Specialty Crops
                    • Article
                    • Peer Reviewed
                    Frontiers of Biogeography, Volume 16, Issue 2 (2024)

                    The dynamic nature of intrinsic (e.g., reproductive system, hybridization) and extrinsic factors (e.g., physical barriers to gene flow) across space and time generate complex biological processes that influence contemporary patterns of genetic diversity, highlighting the need for interdisciplinary studies. Using the widespread, mixed-mating annual Triodanis perfoliata, previous work demonstrated the important roles of breeding system, isolation by distance, and isolation by resistance in shaping patterns of population genetic diversity. Here we significantly build on this first step by incorporating paleoclimatic data, historical admixture, and estimating species divergence times across 18 populations of T. perfoliata spanning the contiguous US. This current study provides novel insights into factors driving patterns of intraspecific diversification that were not explained using only contemporary climate models. Specifically, these new analyses highlight the early Holocene (11.7 - 8.326 ka) and the Marine Isotope Stage M2 (ca. 3.3 Ma), as important time periods for explaining patterns of contemporary population genetic diversity, the latter of which appears to be an important time period for intraspecific divergence of T. perfoliata. In addition, we explored the influence of historical intrinsic factors, via admixture to explain patterns of population isolation and connectivity. The inclusion of an admixture analysis provided clarity through evidence of historical gene flow between populations that would have experienced suitable habitat connectivity in past climates. Our study illustrates the importance of incorporating historic, as well as contemporary data, into phylogeographic studies to generate a comprehensive understanding of patterns of population diversity, and the processes important in driving these patterns.

                      Cover page: Paleo-climates and past introgression explain the spatio-temporal distribution of genetic structure in Triodanis perfoliataCreative Commons 'BY' version 4.0 license
                      Top