School of Business & Management
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> Division of Education and Linguistics Seminar Series
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"Word learning in the first year and beyond"

Tuesday 9th December 2014, 15:00 – 16:00 in Room CY013

Dr Loukia Taxitari
Abstract:

When humans begin learning their native language, one of their main tasks is to assign meaning to the words they hear. As research on early language progress, we are becoming more and more aware of infants’ early understanding of words. From around 6 months of age, infants dive into the word learning task and by the end of the first year they are able to recognize the referents of many familiar words in experimental settings. In this talk we will review the most recent data on early word learning and try to look at the limits of infants’ early words.
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> Also we will try to approach the induction problem in language development: although infants have minimum input as to the basic dimensions determining meaning, they still successfully discover the meaning of words as used in their linguistic community. How do they do that? The talk will conclude with a discussion of constraints and biases in early word learning.
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> Biography:
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> Loukia Taxitari is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Cyprus, Department of English Studies, investigating early language development. She works on the adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory in Cypriot Greek and the standardization of the tool for different ages. She also works at the Cyprus Technological University as a special scientist in the Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, where she teaches undergraduate courses in Psychology and Linguistics. She received her PhD in Experimental Psychology from the University of Oxford, in 2009, having worked at the Oxford Babylab for several years with a team investigating language and cognitive development. After a short post-doc at the University of Potsdam she joined the Cyprus Acquisition Team.
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> Please register your participation with Sonia Mita at: info
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Guest Lecture_LoukiaTaxitari_Word learning in the firts year and beyond_ 9DEC.pdf