Reiko Mazuka
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 744053 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Reiko Mazuka |
| NOMBRES | Reiko |
| APELLIDO | Mazuka |
| FIRMA | MAZUKA R |
| AFILIACIONES | RIKEN Center for Brain Science |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7862-7768 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 27 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 33 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 27 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1989 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 4 |
Ethical and epistemic costs of a lack of geographical and cultural diversity in developmental science
Increasing geographical and cultural diversity in research participation has been a key priority for psychological researchers. In this article, we track changes in participant diversity in developmental science over the past decade. These analyses reveal surprisingly modest shifts in global diversity of research participants over time, calling into question the generalizability of our empirical foundation. We provide examples from the study of e…
How much does prosody help word segmentation? A simulation study on infant-directed speech
Developmental differences in the hemodynamic response to changes in lyrics and melodies by 4- and 12-month-old infants
Does Infant‐Directed Speech Help Phonetic Learning? A Machine Learning Investigation
A prominent hypothesis holds that by speaking to infants in infant-directed speech (IDS) as opposed to adult-directed speech (ADS), parents help them learn phonetic categories. Specifically, two characteristics of IDS have been claimed to facilitate learning: hyperarticulation, which makes the categories more separable, and variability, which makes the generalization more robust. Here, we test the separability and robustness of vowel category lea…
Prosodic Bootstrapping
This chapter covers theoretical frameworks and experimental findings showing that young infants are already sensitive to language prosody prenatally and can use it to learn about the lexical and morphosyntactic features of their native language(s). Specifically, the chapter first summarizes how prosody relates to the lexicon and the grammar in different languages. It then reviews empirical evidence about prosodic perception in infants. Subsequent…
When context is and isn’t helpful
Are Words Easier to Learn From Infant‐ Than Adult‐Directed Speech? A Quantitative Corpus‐Based Investigation
We investigate whether infant-directed speech (IDS) could facilitate word form learning when compared to adult-directed speech (ADS). To study this, we examine the distribution of word forms at two levels, acoustic and phonological, using a large database of spontaneous speech in Japanese. At the acoustic level we show that, as has been documented before for phonemes, the realizations of words are more variable and less discriminable in IDS than …
Emergence of Japanese infants’ prosodic preferences in infant-directed vocabulary
The article examines the role of infant-directed vocabulary (IDV) in infants language acquisition, specifically addressing the question of whether IDV forms that are not prominent in adult language may nonetheless be useful to the process of acquisition. Japanese IDV offers a good test case, as IDV characteristically takes a bisyllabic H(eavy)-L(ight) form that is rare in adult speech. In 5 experiments using the Headturn Preference Procedure (HPP…
Language-general biases and language-specific experience contribute to phonological detail in toddlers’ word representations
Although toddlers in their 2nd year of life generally have phonologically detailed representations of words, a consistent lack of sensitivity to certain kinds of phonological changes has been reported. The origin of these insensitivities is poorly understood, and uncovering their cause is crucial for obtaining a complete picture of early phonological development. The present study explored the origins of the insensitivity to the change from coron…
Mothers Speak Less Clearly to Infants Than to Adults
Infants learn language at an incredible speed, and one of the first steps in this voyage is learning the basic sound units of their native languages. It is widely thought that caregivers facilitate this task by hyperarticulating when speaking to their infants. Using state-of-the-art speech technology, we addressed this key theoretical question: Are sound categories clearer in infant-directed speech than in adult-directed speech? A comprehensive e…
Segmental distributions and consonant-vowel association patterns in Japanese infant- and adult-directed speech
Japanese infant-directed speech (IDS) and adult-directed speech (ADS) were compared on their segmental distributions and consonant-vowel association patterns. Consistent with findings in other languages, a higher ratio of segments that are generally produced early was found in IDS compared to ADS: more labial consonants and low-central vowels, but fewer fricatives. Consonant-vowel associations also favored the early produced labial-central, coron…
Effect of Repeated Evaluation and Repeated Exposure on Acceptability Ratings of Sentences
What hinders child semantic computation
Recent studies on the acquisition of semantics have argued that knowledge of the universal quantifier is adult-like throughout development. However, there are domains where children still exhibit non-adult-like universal quantification, and arguments for the early mastery of relevant semantic knowledge do not explain what causes such non-adult-like interpretations. The present study investigates Japanese four- and five-year-old children's atypica…
Development of single/geminate obstruent discrimination by Japanese infants
The Japanese language has single/geminate obstruents characterized by durational difference in closure/frication as part of the phonemic repertoire used to distinguish word meanings. We first evaluated infants' abilities to discriminate naturally uttered single/geminate obstruents (/pata/ and /patta/) using the visual habituation-dishabituation method. The results revealed that 9.5-month-old Japanese infants were able to make this discrimination,…
The development of a phonological illusion
In adults, native language phonology has strong perceptual effects. Previous work has shown that Japanese speakers, unlike French speakers, break up illegal sequences of consonants with illusory vowels: they report hearing abna as abuna. To study the development of phonological grammar, we compared Japanese and French infants in a discrimination task. In Experiment 1, we observed that 14-month-old Japanese infants, in contrast to French infants, …
Discrimination of phonemic vowel length by Japanese infants
Japanese has a vowel duration contrast as one component of its language-specific phonemic repertory to distinguish word meanings. It is not clear, however, how a sensitivity to vowel duration can develop in a linguistic context. In the present study, using the visual habituation-dishabituation method, the authors evaluated infants' abilities to discriminate Japanese long and short vowels embedded in two-syllable words (/mana/ vs. /ma:na/). The re…
Development of Executive Control and Language Processing
Research in executive function development has shown that children have poor control of inhibition functions, including the inhibition of prepotent responses, control of attention, and flexibility at rule-shifting. To date, links between the development of executive function and children's language development have not been investigated explicitly. Yet, recent studies on children's sentence processing report that children tend to perseverate duri…
Effects of verbal working memory and cumulative linguistic knowledge on reading comprehension 1
In the present study, the effects of verbal working memory (VWM) and cumulative linguistic knowledge (CLK) on reading comprehension were investigated using an individual difference approach. We examined whether VWM and CLK are distinct verbal factors and whether each has independent influences on reading comprehension. VWM was tested using the Japanese Reading Span Test (RST). CLK was assessed using information, vocabulary, and similarity subtest…
Young Children's Use of Prosody in Sentence Parsing
The Development of Language Processing Strategies
Ever since the notion of explanatory adequacy was promoted by Chomsky in his 1965 Aspects, linguists and psycholinguists have been in pursuit of a psychologically valid theory of grammar. To be explanatorily adequate, a theory of grammar can not only describe the general characteristics of a language but can also account for the underlying psychological processes of acquiring and processing that language. To be considered psychologically valid, a…
Japanese Sentence Processing
Effects and Limitations of Prosodic and Semantic Biases on Syntactic Disambiguation
Processing Down the Garden Path in Japanese
Prosodic planning while reading aloud
The Binding Theory Module
This paper offers a critical review of a series of experimental studies of first-language acquisition of anaphora. These studies provide converging evidence that children acquiring English respect Principle C of the Binding Theory—specifically, a form of Principle C in which an r-expression is pronoun free. Principle C is respected continuously across overt syntax development (from 3 to 7 years). Although knowledge of Principle C interacts signif…
Development of Executive Control and Language Processing
Research in executive function development has shown that children have poor control of inhibition functions, including the inhibition of prepotent responses, control of attention, and flexibility at rule-shifting. To date, links between the development of executive function and children's language development have not been investigated explicitly. Yet, recent studies on children's sentence processing report that children tend to perseverate duri…
Processing of empty categories in Japanese
Discrimination of phonemic vowel length by Japanese infants
Japanese has a vowel duration contrast as one component of its language-specific phonemic repertory to distinguish word meanings. It is not clear, however, how a sensitivity to vowel duration can develop in a linguistic context. In the present study, using the visual habituation-dishabituation method, the authors evaluated infants' abilities to discriminate Japanese long and short vowels embedded in two-syllable words (/mana/ vs. /ma:na/). The re…
Young Children's Use of Prosody in Sentence Parsing
Prosodic planning while reading aloud
Ethical and epistemic costs of a lack of geographical and cultural diversity in developmental science
Increasing geographical and cultural diversity in research participation has been a key priority for psychological researchers. In this article, we track changes in participant diversity in developmental science over the past decade. These analyses reveal surprisingly modest shifts in global diversity of research participants over time, calling into question the generalizability of our empirical foundation. We provide examples from the study of e…
Processing Down the Garden Path in Japanese
The Binding Theory Module
This paper offers a critical review of a series of experimental studies of first-language acquisition of anaphora. These studies provide converging evidence that children acquiring English respect Principle C of the Binding Theory—specifically, a form of Principle C in which an r-expression is pronoun free. Principle C is respected continuously across overt syntax development (from 3 to 7 years). Although knowledge of Principle C interacts signif…
Effect of Repeated Evaluation and Repeated Exposure on Acceptability Ratings of Sentences
Development of single/geminate obstruent discrimination by Japanese infants
The Japanese language has single/geminate obstruents characterized by durational difference in closure/frication as part of the phonemic repertoire used to distinguish word meanings. We first evaluated infants' abilities to discriminate naturally uttered single/geminate obstruents (/pata/ and /patta/) using the visual habituation-dishabituation method. The results revealed that 9.5-month-old Japanese infants were able to make this discrimination,…
Effects and Limitations of Prosodic and Semantic Biases on Syntactic Disambiguation
Cross-linguistic studies of directionality in first language acquisition
Elsewhere we have argued on the basis of cross linguistic studies of directionality effects on anaphora in child language, that there is no universal ‘forward directionality preference (FDP)’; rather such a preference is linked to languages with specific grammatical properties. Although such a preference has been attested in English acquisition, matched experimental designs in Japanese, Chinese and Sinhalese, for example, do not show this effect.…
Processing of empty categories in Japanese
The Binding Theory Module
This paper offers a critical review of a series of experimental studies of first-language acquisition of anaphora. These studies provide converging evidence that children acquiring English respect Principle C of the Binding Theory—specifically, a form of Principle C in which an r-expression is pronoun free. Principle C is respected continuously across overt syntax development (from 3 to 7 years). Although knowledge of Principle C interacts signif…
Prosodic planning while reading aloud
Japanese Sentence Processing
Effects and Limitations of Prosodic and Semantic Biases on Syntactic Disambiguation
Processing Down the Garden Path in Japanese
The Development of Language Processing Strategies
Ever since the notion of explanatory adequacy was promoted by Chomsky in his 1965 Aspects, linguists and psycholinguists have been in pursuit of a psychologically valid theory of grammar. To be explanatorily adequate, a theory of grammar can not only describe the general characteristics of a language but can also account for the underlying psychological processes of acquiring and processing that language. To be considered psychologically valid, a…
Young Children's Use of Prosody in Sentence Parsing
Effects of verbal working memory and cumulative linguistic knowledge on reading comprehension 1
In the present study, the effects of verbal working memory (VWM) and cumulative linguistic knowledge (CLK) on reading comprehension were investigated using an individual difference approach. We examined whether VWM and CLK are distinct verbal factors and whether each has independent influences on reading comprehension. VWM was tested using the Japanese Reading Span Test (RST). CLK was assessed using information, vocabulary, and similarity subtest…
Development of Executive Control and Language Processing
Research in executive function development has shown that children have poor control of inhibition functions, including the inhibition of prepotent responses, control of attention, and flexibility at rule-shifting. To date, links between the development of executive function and children's language development have not been investigated explicitly. Yet, recent studies on children's sentence processing report that children tend to perseverate duri…
The development of a phonological illusion
In adults, native language phonology has strong perceptual effects. Previous work has shown that Japanese speakers, unlike French speakers, break up illegal sequences of consonants with illusory vowels: they report hearing abna as abuna. To study the development of phonological grammar, we compared Japanese and French infants in a discrimination task. In Experiment 1, we observed that 14-month-old Japanese infants, in contrast to French infants, …
Discrimination of phonemic vowel length by Japanese infants
Japanese has a vowel duration contrast as one component of its language-specific phonemic repertory to distinguish word meanings. It is not clear, however, how a sensitivity to vowel duration can develop in a linguistic context. In the present study, using the visual habituation-dishabituation method, the authors evaluated infants' abilities to discriminate Japanese long and short vowels embedded in two-syllable words (/mana/ vs. /ma:na/). The re…
What hinders child semantic computation
Recent studies on the acquisition of semantics have argued that knowledge of the universal quantifier is adult-like throughout development. However, there are domains where children still exhibit non-adult-like universal quantification, and arguments for the early mastery of relevant semantic knowledge do not explain what causes such non-adult-like interpretations. The present study investigates Japanese four- and five-year-old children's atypica…
Development of single/geminate obstruent discrimination by Japanese infants
The Japanese language has single/geminate obstruents characterized by durational difference in closure/frication as part of the phonemic repertoire used to distinguish word meanings. We first evaluated infants' abilities to discriminate naturally uttered single/geminate obstruents (/pata/ and /patta/) using the visual habituation-dishabituation method. The results revealed that 9.5-month-old Japanese infants were able to make this discrimination,…
Effect of Repeated Evaluation and Repeated Exposure on Acceptability Ratings of Sentences
Segmental distributions and consonant-vowel association patterns in Japanese infant- and adult-directed speech
Japanese infant-directed speech (IDS) and adult-directed speech (ADS) were compared on their segmental distributions and consonant-vowel association patterns. Consistent with findings in other languages, a higher ratio of segments that are generally produced early was found in IDS compared to ADS: more labial consonants and low-central vowels, but fewer fricatives. Consonant-vowel associations also favored the early produced labial-central, coron…
Mothers Speak Less Clearly to Infants Than to Adults
Infants learn language at an incredible speed, and one of the first steps in this voyage is learning the basic sound units of their native languages. It is widely thought that caregivers facilitate this task by hyperarticulating when speaking to their infants. Using state-of-the-art speech technology, we addressed this key theoretical question: Are sound categories clearer in infant-directed speech than in adult-directed speech? A comprehensive e…
Language-general biases and language-specific experience contribute to phonological detail in toddlers’ word representations
Although toddlers in their 2nd year of life generally have phonologically detailed representations of words, a consistent lack of sensitivity to certain kinds of phonological changes has been reported. The origin of these insensitivities is poorly understood, and uncovering their cause is crucial for obtaining a complete picture of early phonological development. The present study explored the origins of the insensitivity to the change from coron…
Emergence of Japanese infants’ prosodic preferences in infant-directed vocabulary
The article examines the role of infant-directed vocabulary (IDV) in infants language acquisition, specifically addressing the question of whether IDV forms that are not prominent in adult language may nonetheless be useful to the process of acquisition. Japanese IDV offers a good test case, as IDV characteristically takes a bisyllabic H(eavy)-L(ight) form that is rare in adult speech. In 5 experiments using the Headturn Preference Procedure (HPP…
Are Words Easier to Learn From Infant‐ Than Adult‐Directed Speech? A Quantitative Corpus‐Based Investigation
We investigate whether infant-directed speech (IDS) could facilitate word form learning when compared to adult-directed speech (ADS). To study this, we examine the distribution of word forms at two levels, acoustic and phonological, using a large database of spontaneous speech in Japanese. At the acoustic level we show that, as has been documented before for phonemes, the realizations of words are more variable and less discriminable in IDS than …
Prosodic Bootstrapping
This chapter covers theoretical frameworks and experimental findings showing that young infants are already sensitive to language prosody prenatally and can use it to learn about the lexical and morphosyntactic features of their native language(s). Specifically, the chapter first summarizes how prosody relates to the lexicon and the grammar in different languages. It then reviews empirical evidence about prosodic perception in infants. Subsequent…
When context is and isn’t helpful
Developmental differences in the hemodynamic response to changes in lyrics and melodies by 4- and 12-month-old infants
Does Infant‐Directed Speech Help Phonetic Learning? A Machine Learning Investigation
A prominent hypothesis holds that by speaking to infants in infant-directed speech (IDS) as opposed to adult-directed speech (ADS), parents help them learn phonetic categories. Specifically, two characteristics of IDS have been claimed to facilitate learning: hyperarticulation, which makes the categories more separable, and variability, which makes the generalization more robust. Here, we test the separability and robustness of vowel category lea…
Psychology (25 obras) · Linguistics (24 obras) · Language Development and Disorders (18 obras) · Computer Science (16 obras) · Phonetics and Phonology Research (12 obras) · Reading and Literacy Development (12 obras) · Cognitive psychology (11 obras) · Natural language processing (11 obras) · Artificial Intelligence (10 obras) · Speech and dialogue systems (10 obras)