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Biomedical subjects

V Valian

Publications and source records attributed to V Valian.

10 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2000

Sex, sex differences, and social behavior.

Sex differences in social behavior are center stage in recent formulations of evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychology, with its emphasis on the long-term consequences of early adaptations, offers itself as an alternative meta-theory to mainstream social psychology, which emphasizes the importance of social structures in determining the existence and extent of social and cognitive sex differences. Using a range of examples, we argue that evolutionary psychology is open to criticism on several fronts: It does not (a) include a role for mediating and moderating variables or test predictions rigorously; (b) appreciate the importance of the difference between first- and second-order effects; (c) offer a truly interactionist theory; or (d) seriously consider the social implications of sex-based inequities. We also argue that social psychology has, in its turn, failed to appreciate the non-intuitive richness of some evolutionary hypotheses or that there is a role for evolutionary psychology in a genuinely interactionist theory This paper restates the need for that perspective, and suggests how it may be achieved.

Biological Evolution↗
PubMed1996

The development of syntactic subjects in Portuguese-speaking children.

In order to separate competence and performance factors in acquisition of knowledge of syntactic subjects, we audiotaped and analysed the spontaneous speech of 20 Portuguese-speaking two-year-olds in natural conversation with Portuguese-speaking adults. We separated the children into three groups based on Mean Length of Utterance in Words: 1.5-1.99; 2.0-2.99; 3.0-4.99. Our cross-sectional data demonstrated that Portuguese-speaking children increased their use of subjects from 28% in the lowest-MLUW group to 57% in the highest-MLUW group. The children in the highest-MLUW group almost perfectly matched the adult speakers in the study on every measure. The increase in children's use of subjects was primarily due to an increase in the use of pronominal subjects. A comparison between Portuguese- and English-speaking children suggests that adult competence about the status of subjects is present at the onset of combinatorial speech, as shown by differential production of subjects. Each group also experiences performance limitations, as shown by the increase in subject use as development proceeds.

Brazil↗
PubMed1991

Syntactic subjects in the early speech of American and Italian children.

Why do young children leave out sentential subjects? Two competence-deficit hypotheses and a performance-limitation account are evaluated in the present set of studies. American children appear to understand that English requires subjects before mean length of utterance (MLU) 2.0. On balance, performance factors account for the data best. Natural conversations between 21 American children (ranging in age from 1;10 to 2;8 and in MLU from 1.53 to 4.38) and their mothers were taped, transcribed, and analyzed to determine when American children understand that English requires subjects. We measured the frequency of subjects (Study 1); types of pronominal subjects, including expletives (Study 2); frequency of modals and semi-auxiliaries (Study 3); frequency of infinitival to, past tense, third person singular, and subordinate clauses (Study 4); length of verb phrase, frequency of different types of verbs, and frequency of direct objects (Study 5). For Studies 1 and 3 we also used, for comparative purposes, transcripts of 5 Italian children, taped monthly for a year. Even our lowest-MLU American group (5 children between 1.5 and 1.99) used subjects and pronominal subjects more than twice as often as the Italian children, and correctly case-marked their subjects. The American children also produced examples of all the sentence elements measured.

Child Language↗
PubMed1990

Null subjects: a problem for parameter-setting models of language acquisition.

Some languages, like English, require overt surface subjects, while others, like Italian and Spanish, allow "null" subjects. How does the young child determine whether or not her language allows null subjects? Modern parameter-setting theory has proposed a solution, in which the child begins acquisition with the null subject parameter set for either the English-like value or the Italian-like value. Incoming data, or the absence thereof, force a resetting of the parameter if the original value was incorrect. This paper argues that the single-value solution cannot work, no matter which value is chosen as the initial one, because of inherent limitations in the child's parser, and because of the presence of misleading input. An alternative dual-value solution is proposed, in which the child begins acquisition with both values available, and uses theory-confirmation procedures to decide which value is best supported by the available data.

Child Language↗
PubMed1979

Children's internal organization of locative categories.

4 locative categories were investigated to determine whether their examples were organized according to the prototype/nonprototype distinction. A ranking task was presented to 30 adult subjects to see whether they would judge those instances which had been designated as prototypes by the experimenter to be the best exemplars of each category. An elicited-drawing task was administered to see whether there was a preference for drawing adult-designated prototypical instances. A matching task was presented to determine whether fewer errors would occur in response to adult-designated prototypical instances. The latter 2 tasks were presented to 4-year-olds, 6-year-olds, and adults, with 17 subjects in each group. The results provide strong evidence of prototype/nonprototype organization in 3 of the locative categories and weak evidence in the fourth. Tentative conclusions regarding the development of such organization are drawn.

Adult↗