Early Language Learning in the Lab and in the World
Elika Bergelson, Harvard University. She is a language scientist known for her work on language acquisition and cognitive development.
Elika Bergelson, , May 15, 2025, 1:00 pm, Haldeman 41, free and open to the public.
Early Language Learning in the Lab and in the World
While a longstanding view in language development holds that infants don't understand words until they begin talking (around age 1), recent research has revealed that infants begin understanding words months earlier (e.g., Bergelson & Swingley, 2012;2015; Tincoff & Jusczyk 1999;2012; Parise & Csibra, 2012; Bergelson & Aslin 2017; Kartushina & Mayer, 2019). In this talk I will explore two branches of my lab's work that begin to unpack the mechanisms of early language development, largely focused on building the early lexicon (with a quick foray into early speech production as well). First, I will discuss eye tracking data revealing infants' initially immature expectations about how words sound and what they mean, and how their representations eventually become more adult-like over infancy and toddlerhood. Synthesizing across studies, I will discuss recent results showing a robust, non-linear, and arguably qualitative improvements in infants' real-time word comprehension just after the first birthday. Second, drawing from SEEDLingS, my lab's audio and video corpus of home recordings, I will argue that this "comprehension boost" is not well-explained by changes in language input for common words, but rather, by postulating that infants learn to take better advantage of relatively stable input data. I will propose complementary theoretical accounts of what makes older infants "better learners." Finally, I will also briefly discuss the dynamics of language learning beyond our typical WEIRD populations, drawing on early language production data from cross-cultural collaborations, and our lab's recent work looking at infants who are blind and infants who are Deaf/Hard of Hearing.
Elika Bergelson is a language scientist known for her work on language acquisition and cognitive development. She was the principal investigator of the SEEDLingS project, a longitudinal study of word learning in infants from 6 to 18 months. Bergelson was selected for Forbes' 30 under 30 in 2015 for her work on language acquisition. Bergelson is an associate professor of developmental psychology at Harvard University.
Free and open to the public.
Sponsored by the Cognitive Science Program
