{"pk":27753,"title":"Do children privilege phonological cues in noun class learning?","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Previous research on acquisition of noun class systems, such as\ngrammatical gender, has shown that child learners rely dispro-\nportionately on phonological cues to class, even when compet-\ning semantic cues are more reliable. Culbertson, Gagliardi, and\nSmith (2017) use artificial language learning experiments with\nadults to argue that over-reliance on phonology may be due\nto the fact that phonological cues are available first; learners\nbase early representations on surface phonological dependen-\ncies, only later integrating semantic cues from noun meanings.\nHere, we show that child learners (6-7 year-olds) show this\nsame sensitivity to early availability. However, we also find\nintriguing evidence of developmental changes in sensitivity to\nsemantics; when both cues are simultaneously available chil-\ndren are more likely to rely on a phonology cue than adults.\nOur results suggest that early availability and a bias in favor\nof phonological cues may both contribute to children’s over-\nreliance on phonology in natural language acquisition.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"Noun class"},{"word":"Language Acquisition"},{"word":"Artificial language learning"},{"word":"category learning"}],"section":"Publication-based-Talks","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/74g7g684","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Jennifer","middle_name":"","last_name":"Culbertson","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Edinburgh","department":""},{"first_name":"Hanna","middle_name":"","last_name":"Jarvinen","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Edinburgh","department":""},{"first_name":"Frances","middle_name":"","last_name":"Haggarty","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Edinburgh","department":""},{"first_name":"Kenny","middle_name":"","last_name":"Smith","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Edinburgh","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2018-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/27753/galley/17393/download/"}]}