Early language acquisition and cognition : methods and results

Abstract

This thesis investigates the early stages of language acquisition from a nativist perspective and describes the most important behavioural methods that are used today to study the initial state of development. After discussing whether language is founded in human biology and whwther linguistic representations have an innate basis, I describe throughly those procedures that allow to study pre-lexical infants and which can give researchers an insight on language acquisition and early cognition. The methods described are: The High Amplitude Sucking Technique, The Visual Fixation Technique, The Visual Expectation Technique and The Head Turn Paradigm. The thesis then presents some of the results that have been obtaines in psycholinguistics with the application of the procedures mentioned above and describes in detail a series of experiments that have been run at The Language, Cognition and Development Lab at Sissa, Trieste.