Morten H Christiansen
Biographic Data
| ID | 577324 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Morten H Christiansen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Morten H |
| FAMILY NAME | Christiansen |
| SIGNATURE | CHRISTIANSEN M H |
| AFFILIATIONS | Cornell University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3850-0655 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 141 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
LLMs highlight the importance of interaction in human language learning
Recent years have seen large language models (LLMs) achieve impressive performance with core linguistic abilities. This can be taken as a demonstration that, contrary to long-held assumptions about innate linguistic constraints, language can be learned through statistical learning from linguistic input alone. However, statistical language learning in these models differs from human learners in a crucial way: human language acquisition evolved not…
Chunking ability predicts online sensitivity to L2 morphosyntax
Research has revealed substantial individual differences in how language is processed during reading by both first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) speakers, with morphosyntax in particular being identified as a ‘bottleneck’ area in L2 acquisition. While some predictors of reading performance are well studied (e.g. working memory, individual word knowledge), recent research has suggested a role for multiword unit chunking ability in L1 sent…
Measuring the semantic priming effect across many languages
Infant-directed speech does not always involve exaggerated vowel distinctions
This study compared the acoustic properties of 26 (100% female, 100% monolingual) Danish caregivers' spontaneous speech addressed to their 11- to 24-month-old infants (infant-directed speech, IDS) and an adult experimenter (adult-directed speech, ADS). The data were collected between 2016 and 2018 in Aarhus, Denmark. Prosodic properties of Danish IDS conformed to cross-linguistic patterns, with a higher pitch, greater pitch variability, and slowe…
Individual differences in artificial and natural language statistical learning
Statistical learning (SL) is considered a cornerstone of cognition. While decades of research have unveiled the remarkable breadth of structures that participants can learn from statistical patterns in experimental contexts, how this ability interfaces with real-world cognitive phenomena remains inconclusive. These mixed results may arise from the fact that SL is often treated as a general ability that operates uniformly across all domains, typic…
We need a comparative approach to language acquisition
The study by Kidd and Garcia is long overdue. Their analyses of published research on language acquisition highlight the lack of typological diversity in studies of how children acquire their native tongue. We concur with their conclusion that more research on understudied languages is urgently needed. However, we argue that what the field needs is not just wider cross-linguistic coverage but a systematic comparative approach to language acquisit…
Danish as a Window Onto Language Processing and Learning
It is often assumed that all languages are fundamentally the same. This assumption has been challenged by research in linguistic typology and language evolution, but questions of language learning and use have largely been left aside. Here we review recent work on Danish that provides new insights into these questions. Unlike closely related languages, Danish has an unusually reduced phonetic structure, which seemingly delays Danish-learning chil…
Integrating statistical learning into cognitive science
Over the last two decades statistical learning (SL) has evolved into a key explanatory mechanism underlying the incidental learning of regularities across different domains of cognition, such as language, visual and auditory perception, and memory. Yet SL has mainly been investigated as an independent research area, separated from the primary study of the relevant cognitive domains. The aim of this special issue is to foster a bilateral integrati…
When Too Many Vowels Impede Language Processing
Research has suggested that Danish-learning children lag behind in early language acquisition. The phenomenon has been attributed to the opaque phonetic structure of Danish, which features an unusually large number of non-consonantal sounds (i.e., vowels and semivowels/glides). The large number of vocalic sounds in speech is thought to provide fewer cues to word segmentation and to make language processing harder, thus hindering the acquisition p…
Using Utterance Recall to Assess Second Language Proficiency
Obtaining quick and reliable evidence regarding the proficiency of learners is a perennial issue in second language (L2) learning research. In this study, we examined naturalistic utterance recall as a measure of L2 learning proficiency that can be easily extracted from videos and automatically scored using the video's captions. In our recall task, learners listen to audio clips and write down as much of the utterance as they can remember. We eva…
Statistical learning research
Statistical learning (SL) is involved in a wide range of basic and higher-order cognitive functions and is taken to be an important building block of virtually all current theories of information processing. In the last 2 decades, a large and continuously growing research community has therefore focused on the ability to extract embedded patterns of regularity in time and space. This work has mostly focused on transitional probabilities, in visio…
Primed From the Start
New linguistic information must be integrated into our existing language system. Using a novel experimental task that incorporates a syntactic priming paradigm into artificial language learning, we investigated how new grammatical regularities and words are learned. This innovation allowed us to control the language input the learner received, while the syntactic priming paradigm provided insight into the nature of the underlying syntactic proces…
Segmentation of Highly Vocalic Speech Via Statistical Learning
Research has shown that contoids (phonetically defined consonants) may provide more robust and reliable cues to syllable and word boundaries than vocoids (phonetically defined vowels). Recent studies of Danish, a language characterized by frequent long sequences of vocoids in speech, have suggested that the reduced occurrence of contoids may make speech in it intrinsically harder to segment than in closely related languages such as Norwegian. We …
Individual Differences in Language Acquisition and Processing
Humans differ in innumerable ways, with considerable variation observable at every level of description, from the molecular to the social. Traditionally, linguistic and psycholinguistic theory has downplayed the possibility of meaningful differences in language across individuals. However, it is becoming increasingly evident that there is significant variation among speakers at any age as well as across the lifespan. Here, we review recent resear…
Towards an integrated science of language
The Now-or-Never bottleneck
Memory is fleeting. New material rapidly obliterates previous material. How, then, can the brain deal successfully with the continual deluge of linguistic input? We argue that, to deal with this “Now-or-Never” bottleneck, the brain must compress and recode linguistic input as rapidly as possible. This observation has strong implications for the nature of language processing: (1) the language system must “eagerly” recode and compress linguistic in…
Concurrent Statistical Learning of Adjacent and Nonadjacent Dependencies
When children learn their native language, they have to deal with a confusing array of dependencies between various elements in an utterance. The dependent elements may be adjacent to one another or separated by intervening material. Prior studies suggest that nonadjacent dependencies are hard to learn when the intervening material has little variability, which may be due to a trade-off between adjacent and nonadjacent learning. In this study, we…
Implicit learning of non-adjacent dependencies
Language and other higher-cognitive functions require structured sequential behavior including non-adjacent relations. A fundamental question in cognitive science is what computational machinery can support both the learning and representation of such non-adjacencies, and what properties of the input facilitate such processes. Learning experiments using miniature languages with adult and infants have demonstrated the impact of high variability (G…
Arbitrariness, Iconicity, and Systematicity in Language
Domain generality versus modality specificity
How arbitrary is language?
It is a long established convention that the relationship between sounds and meanings of words is essentially arbitrary—typically the sound of a word gives no hint of its meaning. However, there are numerous reported instances of systematic sound–meaning mappings in language, and this systematicity has been claimed to be important for early language development. In a large-scale corpus analysis of English, we show that sound–meaning mappings are …
Cultural Evolution of Language
This chapter argues that an evolutionary cultural approach to language not only has already proven fruitful, but it probably holds the key to understand many puzzling aspects of language, its change and origins.The chapter begins by highlighting several still common misconceptions about language that might seem to call into question a cultural evolutionary approach.It explores the antiquity of language and sketches a general evolutionary approach…
Cultural evolution
Over the past few decades, a growing body of research has emerged from a variety of disciplines to highlight the importance of cultural evolution in understanding human behavior. Wider application of these insights, however, has been hampered by traditional disciplinary boundaries. To remedy this, in this volume leading researchers from theoretical biology, developmental and cognitive psychology, linguistics, anthropology, sociology, religious st…
Statistical Learning and Language
Although statistical learning and language have been assumed to be intertwined, this theoretical presupposition has rarely been tested empirically. The present study investigates the relationship between statistical learning and language using a within-subject design embedded in an individual-differences framework. Participants were administered separate statistical learning tasks involving adjacent and nonadjacent dependencies, along with a lang…
Biological Adaptations for Functional Features of Language in the Face of Cultural Evolution
Although there may be no true language universals, it is nonetheless possible to discern several family resemblance patterns across the languages of the world. Recent work on the cultural evolution of language indicates the source of these patterns is unlikely to be an innate universal grammar evolved through biological adaptations for arbitrary linguistic features. Instead, it has been suggested that the patterns of resemblance emerge because la…
Language Is a Complex Adaptive System
Language has a fundamentally social function. Processes of human interaction along with domain-general cognitive processes shape the structure and knowledge of language. Recent research in the cognitive sciences has demonstrated that patterns of use strongly affect how language is acquired, is used, and changes. These processes are not independent of one another but are facets of the same complex adaptive system (CAS). Language as a CAS involves …
Statistical Learning and Language
Although statistical learning and language have been assumed to be intertwined, this theoretical presupposition has rarely been tested empirically. The present study investigates the relationship between statistical learning and language using a within-subject design embedded in an individual-differences framework. Participants were administered separate statistical learning tasks involving adjacent and nonadjacent dependencies, along with a lang…
A Usage-Based Approach to Recursion in Sentence Processing
Most current approaches to linguistic structure suggest that language is recursive, that recursion is a fundamental property of grammar, and that independent performance constraints limit recursive abilities that would otherwise be infinite. This article presents a usage-based perspective on recursive sentence processing, in which recursion is construed as an acquired skill and in which limitations on the processing of recursive constructions ste…
Concurrent Statistical Learning of Adjacent and Nonadjacent Dependencies
When children learn their native language, they have to deal with a confusing array of dependencies between various elements in an utterance. The dependent elements may be adjacent to one another or separated by intervening material. Prior studies suggest that nonadjacent dependencies are hard to learn when the intervening material has little variability, which may be due to a trade-off between adjacent and nonadjacent learning. In this study, we…
Using Utterance Recall to Assess Second Language Proficiency
Obtaining quick and reliable evidence regarding the proficiency of learners is a perennial issue in second language (L2) learning research. In this study, we examined naturalistic utterance recall as a measure of L2 learning proficiency that can be easily extracted from videos and automatically scored using the video's captions. In our recall task, learners listen to audio clips and write down as much of the utterance as they can remember. We eva…
Segmentation of Highly Vocalic Speech Via Statistical Learning
Research has shown that contoids (phonetically defined consonants) may provide more robust and reliable cues to syllable and word boundaries than vocoids (phonetically defined vowels). Recent studies of Danish, a language characterized by frequent long sequences of vocoids in speech, have suggested that the reduced occurrence of contoids may make speech in it intrinsically harder to segment than in closely related languages such as Norwegian. We …
When Too Many Vowels Impede Language Processing
Research has suggested that Danish-learning children lag behind in early language acquisition. The phenomenon has been attributed to the opaque phonetic structure of Danish, which features an unusually large number of non-consonantal sounds (i.e., vowels and semivowels/glides). The large number of vocalic sounds in speech is thought to provide fewer cues to word segmentation and to make language processing harder, thus hindering the acquisition p…
Towards an integrated science of language
Reassessing working memory
M. A. Just and P. A. Carpenter's (1992) capacity theory of comprehension posits a linguistic working memory functionally separated from the representation of linguistic knowledge. G. S. Waters and D. Caplan's (1996) critique of this approach retained the notion of a separate working memory. In this article, the authors present an alternative account motivated by a connectionist approach to language comprehension. In their view, processing capacit…
Processing of relative clauses is made easier by frequency of occurrence
Experience and sentence processing
From sound to syntax
Two studies examined the role of phonological cues in the lexical categorization of new words when children could also rely on learning by exclusion and whether the role of phonology depends on extensive experience with a language. Phonological cues were assessed via phonological typicality – an aggregate measure of the relationship between the phonology of a word and the phonology of words in the same lexical class. Experiment 1 showed that when…
A Usage-Based Approach to Recursion in Sentence Processing
Most current approaches to linguistic structure suggest that language is recursive, that recursion is a fundamental property of grammar, and that independent performance constraints limit recursive abilities that would otherwise be infinite. This article presents a usage-based perspective on recursive sentence processing, in which recursion is construed as an acquired skill and in which limitations on the processing of recursive constructions ste…
Language Is a Complex Adaptive System
Language has a fundamentally social function. Processes of human interaction along with domain-general cognitive processes shape the structure and knowledge of language. Recent research in the cognitive sciences has demonstrated that patterns of use strongly affect how language is acquired, is used, and changes. These processes are not independent of one another but are facets of the same complex adaptive system (CAS). Language as a CAS involves …
Words in puddles of sound
There are numerous models of how speech segmentation may proceed in infants acquiring their first language. We present a framework for considering the relative merits and limitations of these various approaches. We then present a model of speech segmentation that aims to reveal important sources of information for speech segmentation, and to capture psycholinguistic constraints on children's language perception. The model constructs a lexicon bas…
Biological Adaptations for Functional Features of Language in the Face of Cultural Evolution
Although there may be no true language universals, it is nonetheless possible to discern several family resemblance patterns across the languages of the world. Recent work on the cultural evolution of language indicates the source of these patterns is unlikely to be an innate universal grammar evolved through biological adaptations for arbitrary linguistic features. Instead, it has been suggested that the patterns of resemblance emerge because la…
Statistical Learning and Language
Although statistical learning and language have been assumed to be intertwined, this theoretical presupposition has rarely been tested empirically. The present study investigates the relationship between statistical learning and language using a within-subject design embedded in an individual-differences framework. Participants were administered separate statistical learning tasks involving adjacent and nonadjacent dependencies, along with a lang…
Cultural Evolution of Language
This chapter argues that an evolutionary cultural approach to language not only has already proven fruitful, but it probably holds the key to understand many puzzling aspects of language, its change and origins.The chapter begins by highlighting several still common misconceptions about language that might seem to call into question a cultural evolutionary approach.It explores the antiquity of language and sketches a general evolutionary approach…
Cultural evolution
Over the past few decades, a growing body of research has emerged from a variety of disciplines to highlight the importance of cultural evolution in understanding human behavior. Wider application of these insights, however, has been hampered by traditional disciplinary boundaries. To remedy this, in this volume leading researchers from theoretical biology, developmental and cognitive psychology, linguistics, anthropology, sociology, religious st…
How arbitrary is language?
It is a long established convention that the relationship between sounds and meanings of words is essentially arbitrary—typically the sound of a word gives no hint of its meaning. However, there are numerous reported instances of systematic sound–meaning mappings in language, and this systematicity has been claimed to be important for early language development. In a large-scale corpus analysis of English, we show that sound–meaning mappings are …
Implicit learning of non-adjacent dependencies
Language and other higher-cognitive functions require structured sequential behavior including non-adjacent relations. A fundamental question in cognitive science is what computational machinery can support both the learning and representation of such non-adjacencies, and what properties of the input facilitate such processes. Learning experiments using miniature languages with adult and infants have demonstrated the impact of high variability (G…
Arbitrariness, Iconicity, and Systematicity in Language
Domain generality versus modality specificity
The Now-or-Never bottleneck
Memory is fleeting. New material rapidly obliterates previous material. How, then, can the brain deal successfully with the continual deluge of linguistic input? We argue that, to deal with this “Now-or-Never” bottleneck, the brain must compress and recode linguistic input as rapidly as possible. This observation has strong implications for the nature of language processing: (1) the language system must “eagerly” recode and compress linguistic in…
Concurrent Statistical Learning of Adjacent and Nonadjacent Dependencies
When children learn their native language, they have to deal with a confusing array of dependencies between various elements in an utterance. The dependent elements may be adjacent to one another or separated by intervening material. Prior studies suggest that nonadjacent dependencies are hard to learn when the intervening material has little variability, which may be due to a trade-off between adjacent and nonadjacent learning. In this study, we…
Towards an integrated science of language
Individual Differences in Language Acquisition and Processing
Humans differ in innumerable ways, with considerable variation observable at every level of description, from the molecular to the social. Traditionally, linguistic and psycholinguistic theory has downplayed the possibility of meaningful differences in language across individuals. However, it is becoming increasingly evident that there is significant variation among speakers at any age as well as across the lifespan. Here, we review recent resear…
Statistical learning research
Statistical learning (SL) is involved in a wide range of basic and higher-order cognitive functions and is taken to be an important building block of virtually all current theories of information processing. In the last 2 decades, a large and continuously growing research community has therefore focused on the ability to extract embedded patterns of regularity in time and space. This work has mostly focused on transitional probabilities, in visio…
Primed From the Start
New linguistic information must be integrated into our existing language system. Using a novel experimental task that incorporates a syntactic priming paradigm into artificial language learning, we investigated how new grammatical regularities and words are learned. This innovation allowed us to control the language input the learner received, while the syntactic priming paradigm provided insight into the nature of the underlying syntactic proces…
Segmentation of Highly Vocalic Speech Via Statistical Learning
Research has shown that contoids (phonetically defined consonants) may provide more robust and reliable cues to syllable and word boundaries than vocoids (phonetically defined vowels). Recent studies of Danish, a language characterized by frequent long sequences of vocoids in speech, have suggested that the reduced occurrence of contoids may make speech in it intrinsically harder to segment than in closely related languages such as Norwegian. We …
Integrating statistical learning into cognitive science
Over the last two decades statistical learning (SL) has evolved into a key explanatory mechanism underlying the incidental learning of regularities across different domains of cognition, such as language, visual and auditory perception, and memory. Yet SL has mainly been investigated as an independent research area, separated from the primary study of the relevant cognitive domains. The aim of this special issue is to foster a bilateral integrati…
When Too Many Vowels Impede Language Processing
Research has suggested that Danish-learning children lag behind in early language acquisition. The phenomenon has been attributed to the opaque phonetic structure of Danish, which features an unusually large number of non-consonantal sounds (i.e., vowels and semivowels/glides). The large number of vocalic sounds in speech is thought to provide fewer cues to word segmentation and to make language processing harder, thus hindering the acquisition p…
Using Utterance Recall to Assess Second Language Proficiency
Obtaining quick and reliable evidence regarding the proficiency of learners is a perennial issue in second language (L2) learning research. In this study, we examined naturalistic utterance recall as a measure of L2 learning proficiency that can be easily extracted from videos and automatically scored using the video's captions. In our recall task, learners listen to audio clips and write down as much of the utterance as they can remember. We eva…
Psychology (26 works) · Linguistics (22 works) · Computer Science (15 works) · Language Development and Disorders (15 works) · Cognitive psychology (14 works) · Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism (12 works) · Language and cultural evolution (11 works) · Cognitive science (10 works) · Cognition (9 works) · Reading and Literacy Development (9 works)