Cynthia Fisher
Biographic Data
| ID | 3843827 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Cynthia Fisher |
| GIVEN NAMES | Cynthia |
| FAMILY NAME | Fisher |
| SIGNATURE | FISHER C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6348-5349 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 8 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 25 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 8 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Situation models support referential prediction at 36 months of age.
115) did the same, using story-provided information to predict which character could plausibly be mentioned next. In critical sentences, such as "She asked the goose with the boots to play with her," children treated "the goose" as unambiguous even in a story with two geese, looking toward the target animal before disambiguating information arrived if one goose was described as having left the scene earlier in the story. Success in this task impl…
Syntactic Adaptation and Word Learning in 3- to 4-Year-Olds
In a recent study, preschoolers adapted their syntactic expectations about a familiar phrase in French; this adaptation affected later word learning. In two experiments, we probed the generality of this finding by replicating the experiment and extending it to a different expression in English. We examined the ambiguous phrase the baby, which can be followed by nouns (the baby monkeys) or verbs (the baby sleeps). In induction trials, the baby con…
How do the object-file and physical-reasoning systems interact? Evidence from priming effects with object arrays or novel labels
Toddlers Default to Canonical Surface-to-Meaning Mapping When Learning Verbs
Previous work has shown that toddlers readily encode each noun in the sentence as a distinct argument of the verb. However, languages allow multiple mappings between form and meaning that do not fit this canonical format. Two experiments examined French 28-month-olds' interpretation of right-dislocated sentences (nouni -verb, nouni) where the presence of clear, language-specific cues should block such a canonical mapping. Toddlers (N = 96) interp…
“Really? She Blicked the Baby?”
Children use syntax to guide verb learning. We asked whether the syntactic structure in which a novel verb occurs is meaningful to children even without a concurrent scene from which to infer the verb's semantic content. In two experiments, 2-year-olds observed dialogues in which interlocutors used a new verb in transitive (“Jane blicked the baby!”) or intransitive (“Jane blicked!”) sentences. The children later heard the verb in isolation (“Find…
Discourse prominence effects on 2.5-year-old children's interpretation of pronouns
Learning Words and Rules
Children quickly acquire basic grammatical facts about their native language. Does this early syntactic knowledge involve knowledge of words or rules? According to lexical accounts of acquisition, abstract syntactic and semantic categories are not primitive to the language-acquisition system; thus, early language comprehension and production are based on verb-specific knowledge. The present experiments challenge this account: We probed the abstra…
When it is better to receive than to give
We ask how children solve the mapping problem for verb acquisition: how they pair concepts with their phonological realizations in their language. There is evidence that nouns but not verbs can be acquired by pairing each sound (e.g., 'elephant') with a concept inferred from the world circumstances in which that sound occurs. Verb meanings pose problems for this word-world mapping procedure, motivating a model of verb mapping mediated by attentio…
When it is better to receive than to give
We ask how children solve the mapping problem for verb acquisition: how they pair concepts with their phonological realizations in their language. There is evidence that nouns but not verbs can be acquired by pairing each sound (e.g., 'elephant') with a concept inferred from the world circumstances in which that sound occurs. Verb meanings pose problems for this word-world mapping procedure, motivating a model of verb mapping mediated by attentio…
Discourse prominence effects on 2.5-year-old children's interpretation of pronouns
When it is better to receive than to give
We ask how children solve the mapping problem for verb acquisition: how they pair concepts with their phonological realizations in their language. There is evidence that nouns but not verbs can be acquired by pairing each sound (e.g., 'elephant') with a concept inferred from the world circumstances in which that sound occurs. Verb meanings pose problems for this word-world mapping procedure, motivating a model of verb mapping mediated by attentio…
Learning Words and Rules
Children quickly acquire basic grammatical facts about their native language. Does this early syntactic knowledge involve knowledge of words or rules? According to lexical accounts of acquisition, abstract syntactic and semantic categories are not primitive to the language-acquisition system; thus, early language comprehension and production are based on verb-specific knowledge. The present experiments challenge this account: We probed the abstra…
Discourse prominence effects on 2.5-year-old children's interpretation of pronouns
“Really? She Blicked the Baby?”
Children use syntax to guide verb learning. We asked whether the syntactic structure in which a novel verb occurs is meaningful to children even without a concurrent scene from which to infer the verb's semantic content. In two experiments, 2-year-olds observed dialogues in which interlocutors used a new verb in transitive (“Jane blicked the baby!”) or intransitive (“Jane blicked!”) sentences. The children later heard the verb in isolation (“Find…
Toddlers Default to Canonical Surface-to-Meaning Mapping When Learning Verbs
Previous work has shown that toddlers readily encode each noun in the sentence as a distinct argument of the verb. However, languages allow multiple mappings between form and meaning that do not fit this canonical format. Two experiments examined French 28-month-olds' interpretation of right-dislocated sentences (nouni -verb, nouni) where the presence of clear, language-specific cues should block such a canonical mapping. Toddlers (N = 96) interp…
How do the object-file and physical-reasoning systems interact? Evidence from priming effects with object arrays or novel labels
Syntactic Adaptation and Word Learning in 3- to 4-Year-Olds
In a recent study, preschoolers adapted their syntactic expectations about a familiar phrase in French; this adaptation affected later word learning. In two experiments, we probed the generality of this finding by replicating the experiment and extending it to a different expression in English. We examined the ambiguous phrase the baby, which can be followed by nouns (the baby monkeys) or verbs (the baby sleeps). In induction trials, the baby con…
Situation models support referential prediction at 36 months of age.
115) did the same, using story-provided information to predict which character could plausibly be mentioned next. In critical sentences, such as "She asked the goose with the boots to play with her," children treated "the goose" as unambiguous even in a story with two geese, looking toward the target animal before disambiguating information arrived if one goose was described as having left the scene earlier in the story. Success in this task impl…
Language Development and Disorders (8 works) · Psychology (7 works) · Linguistics (6 works) · Reading and Literacy Development (6 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Child and Animal Learning Development (4 works) · Natural language processing (3 works) · Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism (3 works) · Syntax (3 works) · Verb (3 works)