Research project Distributional learning: Domain-specificity and the impact of social cues (DIDI)
The purpose of the DIDI project is to determine the role of distributional learning (DL) for speech sound category formation in infants.
Distributional learning(DL) refers to the fact that distributional properties of stimuli impact how they are perceived in perceptual categories. Although this perceptual process is hypothesized to underlie the emergence of speech sound categories, it has not yet been demonstrated for stimuli where no perceptual categories are already present.
This project tests whether DL can explain the emergence of new perceptual categories by attempting to induce non-speech categories in infants and in adults. The impact of social cues on DL will also be investigated, since social interaction appears essential for speech sound category formation, and it is possible that DL contributes to new category formation only in social situations.
Project description
Paradigms in which DL or perceptual category formation has previously been demonstrated for speech sounds will be used to test whether non-speech categories can be induced, and speech conditions will be included to ensure compatibility with previous studies. Spectrally rotated speech will be used as non-speech stimuli since it is of comparable structural complexity to speech. It is a type of sound to which participants have previously not been exposed, and consequently no pre-existing perceptual categories are expected. The project studies the impact of social cues on DL in the form of visual gaze direction towards different objects, since this is a way in which social interaction can provide invariant cues regarding which category different speech sounds belong to.
The project clarifies whether sounds need to be species-specific and/or be heard in social situations for the perceptual system to learn categories from their distributional properties. In doing so, it contributes key insights into the understanding of humans’ capacity for language and adds to the knowledge of specific elements that are necessary for language learning to occur.
Project members
Project managers
Ellen Marklund
Docent
Members
Lisa Gustavsson
Associate Professor
Iris-Corinna Schwarz
Docent, studierektor
Elisabet Cortes
PhD Student, Research Assistant
Petter Kallioinen
PhD Student (guest), Research assistant
Klara Marklund Hjerpe
Research assistant
David Pagmar
Researcher
