Do two and three year old children use an incremental first-NP-as-agent bias to process active transitive and passive sentences?: A permutation analysis.

Kirsten Abbot-Smith,Heather Ferguson,Caroline Rowland,Julian Pine,Franklin Chang

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0186129

Kirsten Abbot-Smith, Heather Ferguson + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186129

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Abstract

We used eye-tracking to investigate if and when children show an incremental bias to assume that the first noun phrase in a sentence is the agent (first-NP-as-agent bias) while processing the meaning of English active and passive transitive sentences. We also investigated whether children can override this bias to successfully distinguish active from passive sentences, after processing the remainder of the sentence frame. For this second question we used eye-tracking (Study 1) and forced-choice pointing (Study 2). For both studies, we used a paradigm in which participants simultaneously saw two novel actions with reversed agent-patient relations while listening to active and passive sentences. We compared English-speaking 25-month-olds and 41-month-olds in between-subjects sentence structure conditions (Active Transitive Condition vs. Passive Condition). A permutation analysis found that both age groups showed a bias to incrementally map the first noun in a sentence onto an agent role. Regarding the second question, 25-month-olds showed some evidence of distinguishing the two structures in the eye-tracking study. However, the 25-month-olds did not distinguish active from passive sentences in the forced choice pointing task. In contrast, the 41-month-old children did reanalyse their initial first-NP-as-agent bias to the extent that they clearly distinguished between active and passive sentences both in the eye-tracking data and in the pointing task. The results are discussed in relation to the development of syntactic (re)parsing.

Highlights

In order to learn a language, children have to learn how its syntax maps onto who did what to whom in events
The first aim of the present study was to determine whether English-speaking two- and threeyear old children show a first-noun phrase (NP)-as-agent bias in an online eye-tracking experiment
In order to investigate whether young children show a bias to map the first NP incrementally onto the agent of a causative action, in our first analysis we used Matlab to time-lock to the onset of the first NP; i.e. the capitalized word in, for example, ‘THE boy is keefing the girl’ and ‘THE boy is being keefed by the girl’

Summary

Introduction

In order to learn a language, children have to learn how its syntax maps onto who did what to whom in events. They have to learn that in English active transitives (‘the fireman saved the baby’), the agent, or doer of an action (e.g. the fireman), is placed pre-verbally . .’) and the patient, or object of the action (e.g. the baby), is placed post-verbally. They have to learn that in English active transitives (‘the fireman saved the baby’), the agent, or doer of an action (e.g. the fireman), is placed pre-verbally (‘the fireman saved. . .’) and the patient, or object of the action (e.g. the baby), is placed post-verbally

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