Our Paradigms

Words are the building blocks of language, and language is one of the key behaviors that distinguishes us from animals. We know a great deal about when children say their first words. We know much less about how they learn these words. In the last 20 years, advances in the sciences of infant development have allowed us to view the processes of early word learning for the first time.

Historically, language research has focused on how children learn nouns, or names for objects. Obviously, language consists of much more than naming the things we see around us. Language conveys not only what something is but what something is doing; it requires the use of verbs.   Our recent work on how children map words onto objects was published in Child Development in 2006 and was featured on Good Morning America and ABC News, among others. An overview of our theoretical position also appeared in Current Directions in 2006 under the title Baby wordsmith:  From associationist to social sophisticate. (see powerpoint reviewing the noun studies). Our work on verb learning is featured in Hirsh-Pasek & Golinkoff (2006) Action meets word (see powerpoint on verb studies).  An overview of our language research was presented at the Boston Language Conference as the keynote address in November 2006.  Please take a look at some of our language projects and our publications.

Selected Presentations

Most of research is conducted in language comprehension using the preferential learning paradigm.  These studies require a minimal response from the child and enable children to tell us what they know even when they are as young as 10 months of age.  For more information on how to set up a split-screen preferential looking paradigm, please consult Dr. George Hollich's Website. One publication using this technique is: Golinkoff, R., Chung, H., Hirsh-Pasek, K,.  Liu, Jing., Bertenthal, B., Brand, R., Maguire,M., & Hennon, E, (2002) Young children can extend motion verbs to point lite displays. Developmental Psychology, 38, 4, 604-615.  Below also see the live version Interactive preferential looking paradigm that uses 3-D objects displayed side by side on a velcro display.  One paper using this technique is: Pruden, S.,  Hirsh-Pasek, K.,Hennon, Golinkoff, R., Hennon, E. (2006) The birth of words:Ten-month-olds learn words through perceptual salience. Child Development. 77, 2, 266-281.

Selected Articles