Julien Mayor
Biographic Data
| ID | 1020705 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Julien Mayor |
| GIVEN NAMES | Julien |
| FAMILY NAME | Mayor |
| SIGNATURE | MAYOR J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oslo |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9827-5421 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Same name, different representational levels? Misalignment of indirect parent-reported and direct alternative forced choice measures of emotion word comprehension in preschool children
This study assessed the relationship between preschoolers’ directly and indirectly assessed emotion word comprehension. Forty-nine two-to-five-year-old Norwegian children were assessed in a tablet-based 4-alternative forced choice (AFC) task on their comprehension of six basic and six complex emotions using facial expression photographs. Parents reported emotion word comprehension and production of the same words. Parent-reported emotion word pro…
Associations between shared book reading, daily screen time and infants’ vocabulary size
In the current pre-registered study, we examined the associations between shared book reading, daily screen time, and vocabulary size in 1,442 12- and 24-month-old Norwegian infants. Our results demonstrate a positive association between shared reading and vocabulary in both age groups, and a negative association between screen time and vocabulary in 24-month-olds. Exploratory analyses revealed that the positive relationship between shared readin…
Testing the relationship between preferences for infant-directed speech and vocabulary development: A multi-lab study
From early on, infants show a preference for infant-directed speech (IDS) over adult-directed speech (ADS), and exposure to IDS has been correlated with language outcome measures such as vocabulary. The present multi-laboratory study explores this issue by investigating whether there is a link between early preference for IDS and later vocabulary size. Infants’ preference for IDS was tested as part of the ManyBabies 1 project, and follow-up CDI d…
Norwegian parents do not modulate infant-directed speech based on their infants’ attributed word knowledge
Infant-directed speech (IDS), the register caregivers often use when interacting with infants, has been suggested to facilitate language learning. To assess its didactic role, we examined the acoustic modifications parents make in IDS for words they attribute to their infant as unknown, versus known, by analyzing data from three studies of Norwegian IDS with 8- to 18-month-old infants ( N = 132 infants, N = 182 parents). Parents' speech was recor…
Early Vocabulary Acquisition: From Birth Order Effect to Child-to-Caregiver Ratio
Growing up with multiple siblings might negatively affect language development. This study examined the associations between birth order, sibling characteristics and parent-reported vocabulary size in 6163 Norwegian 8- to 36-month-old children (51.4% female). Results confirmed that birth order was negatively associated with vocabulary, yet exhibited a U-shaped pattern. A data-driven measure of “child-to-caregiver ratio” in the household was devel…
Evidence for Infant-directed Speech Preference Is Consistent Across Large-scale, Multi-site Replication and Meta-analysis
There is substantial evidence that infants prefer infant-directed speech (IDS) to adult-directed speech (ADS). The strongest evidence for this claim has come from two large-scale investigations: i) a community-augmented meta-analysis of published behavioral studies and ii) a large-scale multi-lab replication study. In this paper, we aim to improve our understanding of the IDS preference and its boundary conditions by combining and comparing these…
Mothers’ and fathers’ infant-directed speech have similar acoustic properties, but these are not associated with direct or indirect measures of word comprehension in 8-month-old infants
Previous research on infant-directed speech (IDS) and its role in infants’ language development has largely focused on mothers, with fathers being investigated scarcely. Here we examine the acoustics of IDS as compared to adult-directed speech (ADS) in Norwegian mothers and fathers to 8-month-old infants, and whether these relate to direct (eye-tracking) and indirect (parental report) measures of infants’ word comprehension. Forty-five parent-inf…
Native and non-native vowel discrimination in 6-month-old Norwegian infants
In the current preregistered study, we tested n = 67 6-month-old Norwegian infants’ discrimination of a native vowel contrast /y-i/ and a non-native (British) vowel contrast /ʌ-æ/ in an eyetracking habituation paradigm. Our results showed that, on a group level, infants did not discriminate either contrast. Yet, exploratory analyses revealed a negative association between infants’ performance in each experiment, that is, better discrimination of …
Validation of an open source, remote web‐based eye‐tracking method (WebGazer) for research in early childhood
Measuring eye movements remotely via the participant's webcam promises to be an attractive methodological addition to in‐person eye‐tracking in the lab. However, there is a lack of systematic research comparing remote web‐based eye‐tracking with in‐lab eye‐tracking in young children. We report a multi‐lab study that compared these two measures in an anticipatory looking task with toddlers using WebGazer.js and jsPsych. Results of our remotely tes…
Active Language Modulates Color Perception in Bilinguals
Color terms divide the color spectrum differently across languages. Previous studies have reported that speakers of languages that have different words for light and dark blue (e.g., Russian siniy and goluboy) discriminate color chips sampled from these two linguistic categories faster than speakers of languages that use one basic color term for blue (e.g., English blue). This effect has been reported to be disrupted when participants engaged in …
Toddlers raised in multi-dialectal families learn words better in accented speech than those raised in monodialectal families
Multi-accent environments offer rich but inconsistent language input, as words are produced differently across accents. The current study examined, in two experiments, whether multi-accent variability affects infants’ ability to learn words and whether toddlers’ prior experience with accents modulates learning. In Experiment 1, two-and-a-half-year-old Norwegian toddlers were exposed, in their kindergarten, twice per day for one week, to a child-f…
Improvements of Statistical Learning Skills Allow Older Children to Go Beyond Single-Hypothesis Testing When Learning Words
Children learn words in ambiguous situations, where multiple objects can potentially be referents for a new word. Yet, researchers debate whether children maintain a single word-object hypothesis – and revise it if falsified by later information – or whether children establish a network of word-object associations whose relative strengths are modulated with experience. To address this issue, we presented 4- to 12-year-old children with sets of mu…
Syntactic Cues Help Disambiguate Objects Referred to With Count Nouns: Illustration With Malay Children
Children employ multiple cues to identify the referent of a novel word. Novel words are often embedded in sentences and children have been shown to use syntactic cues to differentiate between types of words (adjective vs. nouns) and between types of nouns (count vs. mass nouns). In this study, we show that children learning Malay (N = 67), a numeral classifier language, can use syntactic cues to perform even finer-grained disambiguation–between c…
Covid-19 first lockdown as a window into language acquisition: Associations between caregiver-child activities and vocabulary gains
The COVID-19 pandemic, and the resulting closure of daycare centers worldwide, led to unprecedented changes in children’s learning environments. This period of increased time at home with caregivers, with limited access to external sources (e.g., daycares) provides a unique opportunity to examine the associations between the caregiver-child activities and children’s language development. The vocabularies of 1742 children aged 8-36 months across 1…
Tablet assessment of word comprehension reveals coarse word representations in 18– 20‐month‐old toddlers
The present study explores the viability of using tablets in assessing early word comprehension by means of a two‐alternative forced‐choice task. Forty‐nine 18–20‐month‐old Norwegian toddlers performed a touch‐based word recognition task, in which they were prompted to identify the labeled target out of two displayed items on a touchscreen tablet. In each trial, the distractor item was either semantically related (e.g., dog–cat) or unrelated (e.g…
Extra-linguistic modulation of the English noun-bias: Evidence from Malaysian bilingual infants and toddlers
Co-activation of the L2 during L1 auditory processing: An ERP cross-modal priming study
Several studies have shown that unbalanced bilinguals activate both of their languages simultaneously during L2 processing; however, evidence for L2 activation while participants are tested exclusively in their L1 has been more tenuous. Here, we investigate whether bilingual participants implicitly activate the label for a picture in their two languages, and whether labels activated in L2 can prime activation of cross-linguistically related L1 le…
Quantifying Sources of Variability in Infancy Research Using the Infant-Directed-Speech Preference
Psychological scientists have become increasingly concerned with issues related to methodology and replicability, and infancy researchers in particular face specific challenges related to replicability: For example, high-powered studies are difficult to conduct, testing conditions vary across labs, and different labs have access to different infant populations. Addressing these concerns, we report on a large-scale, multisite study aimed at (a) as…
Active Language Modulates Color Perception in Bilinguals
Color terms divide the color spectrum differently across languages. Previous studies have reported that speakers of languages that have different words for light and dark blue (e.g., Russian siniy and goluboy) discriminate color chips sampled from these two linguistic categories faster than speakers of languages that use one basic color term for blue (e.g., English blue). This effect has been reported to be disrupted when participants engaged in …
Co-activation of the L2 during L1 auditory processing: An ERP cross-modal priming study
Several studies have shown that unbalanced bilinguals activate both of their languages simultaneously during L2 processing; however, evidence for L2 activation while participants are tested exclusively in their L1 has been more tenuous. Here, we investigate whether bilingual participants implicitly activate the label for a picture in their two languages, and whether labels activated in L2 can prime activation of cross-linguistically related L1 le…
Quantifying Sources of Variability in Infancy Research Using the Infant-Directed-Speech Preference
Psychological scientists have become increasingly concerned with issues related to methodology and replicability, and infancy researchers in particular face specific challenges related to replicability: For example, high-powered studies are difficult to conduct, testing conditions vary across labs, and different labs have access to different infant populations. Addressing these concerns, we report on a large-scale, multisite study aimed at (a) as…
Syntactic Cues Help Disambiguate Objects Referred to With Count Nouns: Illustration With Malay Children
Children employ multiple cues to identify the referent of a novel word. Novel words are often embedded in sentences and children have been shown to use syntactic cues to differentiate between types of words (adjective vs. nouns) and between types of nouns (count vs. mass nouns). In this study, we show that children learning Malay (N = 67), a numeral classifier language, can use syntactic cues to perform even finer-grained disambiguation–between c…
Covid-19 first lockdown as a window into language acquisition: Associations between caregiver-child activities and vocabulary gains
The COVID-19 pandemic, and the resulting closure of daycare centers worldwide, led to unprecedented changes in children’s learning environments. This period of increased time at home with caregivers, with limited access to external sources (e.g., daycares) provides a unique opportunity to examine the associations between the caregiver-child activities and children’s language development. The vocabularies of 1742 children aged 8-36 months across 1…
Tablet assessment of word comprehension reveals coarse word representations in 18– 20‐month‐old toddlers
The present study explores the viability of using tablets in assessing early word comprehension by means of a two‐alternative forced‐choice task. Forty‐nine 18–20‐month‐old Norwegian toddlers performed a touch‐based word recognition task, in which they were prompted to identify the labeled target out of two displayed items on a touchscreen tablet. In each trial, the distractor item was either semantically related (e.g., dog–cat) or unrelated (e.g…
Extra-linguistic modulation of the English noun-bias: Evidence from Malaysian bilingual infants and toddlers
Toddlers raised in multi-dialectal families learn words better in accented speech than those raised in monodialectal families
Multi-accent environments offer rich but inconsistent language input, as words are produced differently across accents. The current study examined, in two experiments, whether multi-accent variability affects infants’ ability to learn words and whether toddlers’ prior experience with accents modulates learning. In Experiment 1, two-and-a-half-year-old Norwegian toddlers were exposed, in their kindergarten, twice per day for one week, to a child-f…
Improvements of Statistical Learning Skills Allow Older Children to Go Beyond Single-Hypothesis Testing When Learning Words
Children learn words in ambiguous situations, where multiple objects can potentially be referents for a new word. Yet, researchers debate whether children maintain a single word-object hypothesis – and revise it if falsified by later information – or whether children establish a network of word-object associations whose relative strengths are modulated with experience. To address this issue, we presented 4- to 12-year-old children with sets of mu…
Evidence for Infant-directed Speech Preference Is Consistent Across Large-scale, Multi-site Replication and Meta-analysis
There is substantial evidence that infants prefer infant-directed speech (IDS) to adult-directed speech (ADS). The strongest evidence for this claim has come from two large-scale investigations: i) a community-augmented meta-analysis of published behavioral studies and ii) a large-scale multi-lab replication study. In this paper, we aim to improve our understanding of the IDS preference and its boundary conditions by combining and comparing these…
Mothers’ and fathers’ infant-directed speech have similar acoustic properties, but these are not associated with direct or indirect measures of word comprehension in 8-month-old infants
Previous research on infant-directed speech (IDS) and its role in infants’ language development has largely focused on mothers, with fathers being investigated scarcely. Here we examine the acoustics of IDS as compared to adult-directed speech (ADS) in Norwegian mothers and fathers to 8-month-old infants, and whether these relate to direct (eye-tracking) and indirect (parental report) measures of infants’ word comprehension. Forty-five parent-inf…
Native and non-native vowel discrimination in 6-month-old Norwegian infants
In the current preregistered study, we tested n = 67 6-month-old Norwegian infants’ discrimination of a native vowel contrast /y-i/ and a non-native (British) vowel contrast /ʌ-æ/ in an eyetracking habituation paradigm. Our results showed that, on a group level, infants did not discriminate either contrast. Yet, exploratory analyses revealed a negative association between infants’ performance in each experiment, that is, better discrimination of …
Validation of an open source, remote web‐based eye‐tracking method (WebGazer) for research in early childhood
Measuring eye movements remotely via the participant's webcam promises to be an attractive methodological addition to in‐person eye‐tracking in the lab. However, there is a lack of systematic research comparing remote web‐based eye‐tracking with in‐lab eye‐tracking in young children. We report a multi‐lab study that compared these two measures in an anticipatory looking task with toddlers using WebGazer.js and jsPsych. Results of our remotely tes…
Active Language Modulates Color Perception in Bilinguals
Color terms divide the color spectrum differently across languages. Previous studies have reported that speakers of languages that have different words for light and dark blue (e.g., Russian siniy and goluboy) discriminate color chips sampled from these two linguistic categories faster than speakers of languages that use one basic color term for blue (e.g., English blue). This effect has been reported to be disrupted when participants engaged in …
Same name, different representational levels? Misalignment of indirect parent-reported and direct alternative forced choice measures of emotion word comprehension in preschool children
This study assessed the relationship between preschoolers’ directly and indirectly assessed emotion word comprehension. Forty-nine two-to-five-year-old Norwegian children were assessed in a tablet-based 4-alternative forced choice (AFC) task on their comprehension of six basic and six complex emotions using facial expression photographs. Parents reported emotion word comprehension and production of the same words. Parent-reported emotion word pro…
Associations between shared book reading, daily screen time and infants’ vocabulary size
In the current pre-registered study, we examined the associations between shared book reading, daily screen time, and vocabulary size in 1,442 12- and 24-month-old Norwegian infants. Our results demonstrate a positive association between shared reading and vocabulary in both age groups, and a negative association between screen time and vocabulary in 24-month-olds. Exploratory analyses revealed that the positive relationship between shared readin…
Testing the relationship between preferences for infant-directed speech and vocabulary development: A multi-lab study
From early on, infants show a preference for infant-directed speech (IDS) over adult-directed speech (ADS), and exposure to IDS has been correlated with language outcome measures such as vocabulary. The present multi-laboratory study explores this issue by investigating whether there is a link between early preference for IDS and later vocabulary size. Infants’ preference for IDS was tested as part of the ManyBabies 1 project, and follow-up CDI d…
Norwegian parents do not modulate infant-directed speech based on their infants’ attributed word knowledge
Infant-directed speech (IDS), the register caregivers often use when interacting with infants, has been suggested to facilitate language learning. To assess its didactic role, we examined the acoustic modifications parents make in IDS for words they attribute to their infant as unknown, versus known, by analyzing data from three studies of Norwegian IDS with 8- to 18-month-old infants ( N = 132 infants, N = 182 parents). Parents' speech was recor…
Early Vocabulary Acquisition: From Birth Order Effect to Child-to-Caregiver Ratio
Growing up with multiple siblings might negatively affect language development. This study examined the associations between birth order, sibling characteristics and parent-reported vocabulary size in 6163 Norwegian 8- to 36-month-old children (51.4% female). Results confirmed that birth order was negatively associated with vocabulary, yet exhibited a U-shaped pattern. A data-driven measure of “child-to-caregiver ratio” in the household was devel…
Psychology (16 works) · Language Development and Disorders (13 works) · Linguistics (13 works) · Child and Animal Learning Development (12 works) · Developmental psychology (10 works) · Reading and Literacy Development (8 works) · Cognitive psychology (7 works) · Norwegian (7 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Vocabulary (6 works)