Preschoolers' Use of Vocal Affect as a Cue to Referential Intent

Berman, Jared

Preschoolers' Use of Vocal Affect as a Cue to Referential Intent

atmire.migration.oldid	1064
dc.contributor.advisor	Graham, Susan
dc.contributor.advisor	Chambers, Craig
dc.contributor.author	Berman, Jared
dc.date.accessioned	2013-06-26T20:38:57Z
dc.date.available	2013-11-12T08:00:13Z
dc.date.issued	2013-06-26
dc.date.submitted	2013	en
dc.description.abstract	In this dissertation, I examined the development of preschoolers’ use of a speaker’s vocal affect to guide their understanding of referential situations. Across all experiments, children’s eye gaze was measured as an index of their underlying interpretive processes. The first set of experiments examined 5-year-olds’ use of vocal affect to understand the referential intentions of a speaker. Across three experiments, differences in 5-year-olds’ use of vocal affect across multiple contexts (i.e., ambiguous: two same category referents vs. unambiguous: only one linguistically defined referent) and valence types (i.e., positive vs. negative) were investigated to determine whether vocal affect might help children identify a linguistically ambiguous referent or speed the detection of a linguistically unambiguous referent. Results indicated that 5-year-olds use both positive and negative vocal affect to resolve referential ambiguity. Further, when 5-year-olds were provided with unambiguous contexts, negative, but not positive vocal affect altered children’s eye gaze early in the utterance (i.e., prenoun). Second, I examined whether 4- and 5-year-olds could use vocal affect to learn new words. Results indicated that both 4- and 5-year-olds’ eye gaze reflected the use of both positive and negative vocal affect to map novel labels to novel objects. When 5-year-olds completed extension and generalization tasks, negative but not positive vocal affect played a role in children’s ability to learn new words. Finally, I examined whether 3- and 5-year-olds can use a speaker’s vocal affect to match the face of the speaker. Eye gaze results indicated that both 3- and 5-year-olds could use a speaker’s vocal affect to find her matching emotional face. However, there were significant differences across valence types in terms of timing. Specifically, children’s eye gaze reflected an earlier use of negative compared to positive vocal affect. However, when children were asked to explicitly locate the matching face (i.e., through pointing) only 5-year-olds displayed this ability. The findings from this dissertation demonstrate that preschoolers can use a speaker’s vocal affect as a cue to referential intent. Furthermore, when provided with negative vocal affect children were not only more accurate, but were able to use this information earlier in the utterance.	en_US
dc.identifier.citation	Berman, J. (2013). Preschoolers' Use of Vocal Affect as a Cue to Referential Intent (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/27418	en_US
dc.identifier.doi	http://dx.doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/27418
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/11023/766
dc.language.iso	eng
dc.publisher.faculty	Graduate Studies
dc.publisher.institution	University of Calgary	en
dc.publisher.place	Calgary	en
dc.rights	University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.
dc.subject	Psychology--Cognitive
dc.subject	Psychology--Developmental
dc.subject.classification	Vocal Affect	en_US
dc.subject.classification	Referential Intent	en_US
dc.title	Preschoolers' Use of Vocal Affect as a Cue to Referential Intent
dc.type	doctoral thesis
thesis.degree.discipline	Clinical Psychology
thesis.degree.grantor	University of Calgary
thesis.degree.name	Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
ucalgary.item.requestcopy	true