Annette Karmiloff‐Smith
Biographic Data
| ID | 6212974 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Annette Karmiloff‐Smith |
| GIVEN NAMES | Annette |
| FAMILY NAME | Karmiloff‐Smith |
| SIGNATURE | SMITH A K |
| AFFILIATIONS | Birkbeck, University of London |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 6 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1977 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Williams Syndrome
‘Microgenetics’: No Single Method Can Elucidate Human Learning
In the mid-1950s, Heinz Werner introduced the notion of Aktualgenese to cover a new approach to psychology which aimed to capture the temporal dynamics of immediate experience, referring to the fine-grained details of the sequence of events assumed to occur in the temporal period between presentation of a stimulus and the formation of a stabilized cognitive response to that stimulus [Werner, 1956, 1957]. Some 20 years later, Bärbel Inhelder and h…
Long-term effects of preterm birth on language and literacy at eight years
The aims of this study were to investigate whether specific linguistic difficulties in preterm children persist at eight years and to examine the interrelationships between language and literacy in this population, compared with a control group of full-term children. Sixty-eight monolingual Italian preterms and 26 chronologically matched controls were recruited. Language (grammar comprehension, lexical production and phonological awareness), lite…
Are We Misconstruing Children or Scientists
Multiple Trajectories to Human Language Acquisition: Domain-Specific or Domain-General
Constraints on the Timing of Infant Cognitive Change: Domain-Specific or Domain-General
Most studies of infant cognition focus on group data from single domains. Yet, without the multi-domain testing of the same infants longitudinally, such data cannot be used to evaluate whether the timing of cognitive change occurs in a domain-general
Nativism versus neuroconstructivism: Rethinking the study of developmental disorders
This article argues that one dominant position in psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, and philosophy about how genetic disorders point to the innate specification of dissociated modules in the human brain should be replaced by a dynamic, neuroconstructivist approach in which genes, brain, cognition, and environment interact multidirectionally. The article challenges current thinking about a series of questions: (a) Do significantly better scor…
A Longitudinal Study of Perceptual Grouping by Proximity, Luminance and Shape in Infants at Two, Four and Six Months
Grouping by luminance and shape similarity has previously been demonstrated in neonates and at 4 months, respectively. By contrast, grouping by proximity has hitherto not been investigated in infancy. This is also the first study to chart the developmental emergence of perceptual grouping longitudinally. Sixty-one infants were presented with a matrix of local stimuli grouped horizontally or vertically by luminance, shape or proximity at 2, 4, and…
The Development of Perceptual Grouping in Infants with Williams Syndrome
Perceptual grouping by luminance similarity and by proximity was investigated in infants with Williams syndrome (WS) aged between 6 and 36 months (visit 1, N=29). WS infants who were still under 36 months old, 8 months later, repeated the testing procedure (visit 2, N=15). Performance was compared to typically developing (TD) infants aged from 2 to 20 months (N=63). Consistent with the literature, TD participants showed grouping by luminance at t…
Asynchrony in the cognitive and lexical development of young children with Williams syndrome
The present study investigates whether five-to-six-year-old children with Williams syndrome (N=8) can form new object categories based on naming information alone, and compares them with five groups of typically developing children aged 2;0 to 6;0 (N=34 children). Children were presented with triads of dissimilar objects; all objects in a triad were labelled, two of them with the same pseudoname. Name-based categorization was evaluated through ob…
Early Word Segmentation by Infants and Toddlers With Williams Syndrome
This study tested the ability of English infants and toddlers with Williams syndrome to segment, that is, to extract from fluent speech, bisyllabic nouns that had either a strong–‐weak stress pattern (predominant in English), or a weak–‐strong stress pattern. The testing procedure was the same for both types of words: Children were familiarized with instances of isolated nouns, and then tested on their recognition of these nouns embedded in passa…
A study of relative clauses in Williams syndrome
Despite growing empirical evidence to the contrary, claims continue to be made that the grammar of people with Williams syndrome (WS) is intact. We show that even in a simple elicited imitation task examining the syntax of relative clauses, older children and adults with WS (n = 14, mean age = 17;0 years) only reach the level of typical five-year-old controls. When tested systematically in a number of different laboratories, all aspects of WS lan…
Contents Vol. 42, 1999
Taking Development Seriously
Development itself is the key to understanding developmental disorders
Word learning in a special population: Do individuals with Williams syndrome obey lexical constraints
Williams syndrome (WS), a rare neurodevelopmental disorder, is of special interest to developmental psycholinguists because of its uneven linguistico-cognitive profile of abilities and deficits. One proficiency manifest in WS adolescents and adults is an unusually large vocabulary despite serious deficits in other domains. In this paper, rather than focus on vocabulary size, we explore the processes underlying vocabulary acquisition, i.e. how new…
Rethinking Innateness: A Connectionist Perspective on Development
Rethinking Innateness asks the question, "What does it really mean to say that a behavior is innate?" The authors describe a new framework in which interactions, occurring at all levels, give rise to emergent forms and behaviors. These outcomes often may be highly constrained and universal, yet are not themselves directly contained in the genes in any domain-specific way. One of the key contributions of Rethinking Innateness is a taxonomy of ways…
From sentential to discourse functions: Detection and explanation of speech repairs by children and adults
Although it has been established that children progressively develop metalinguistic awareness about certain aspects of the linguistic system, nothing is known about their awareness of discourse functions. We distinguish between textual coherence and textual cohesion and present a new methodology for studying children's and adults’ metalinguistic knowledge of the cohesive, discourse‐level properties of spoken language. Discourse‐level properties (…
Beyond Modularity: A Developmental Perspective on Cognitive Science
Taking a stand midway between Piaget's constructivism and Fodor's nativism, Annette Karmiloff-Smith offers an exciting new theory of developmental change that embraces both approaches. She shows how each can enrich the other and how both are necessary to a fundamental theory of human cognition. Karmiloff-Smith shifts the focus from what cognitive science can offer the study of development to what a developmental perspective can offer cognitive sc…
Situational factors and thought processes associated with unprotected intercourse in heterosexual students
Heterosexual students were asked to recall two sexual encounters from the preceding six months: one in which they had unprotected intercourse ('unsafe' encounter) and one in which they resisted a strong temptation to have unprotected intercourse ('safe' encounter). The aims were to record justifications for unprotected intercourse that respondents had given themselves during the unsafe encounter and to identify factors that distinguished between …
Piaget and Chomsky on language acquisition: Divorce or marriage
From meta-processes to conscious access: Evidence from children's metalinguistic and repair data
Does metalinguistic awareness have any function in language acquisition processes
Language and cognitive processes from a developmental perspective
This study concerns children's use of cohesive devices in discourse production. A distinction is drawn between 'coherence', the focus of work by story grammarians, and 'cohesion', a more strictly linguistic problem which holds for narrative and non-narrative discourse. The analysis not only covers changes in surface output, but focuses on underlying representations with respect to changes in the organization of linguistic entries in memory outsid…
Margaret Donaldson, Children's minds. Glasgow: Fontana/Collins, 1978. pp. 156
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Nativism versus neuroconstructivism: Rethinking the study of developmental disorders
This article argues that one dominant position in psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, and philosophy about how genetic disorders point to the innate specification of dissociated modules in the human brain should be replaced by a dynamic, neuroconstructivist approach in which genes, brain, cognition, and environment interact multidirectionally. The article challenges current thinking about a series of questions: (a) Do significantly better scor…
From sentential to discourse functions: Detection and explanation of speech repairs by children and adults
Although it has been established that children progressively develop metalinguistic awareness about certain aspects of the linguistic system, nothing is known about their awareness of discourse functions. We distinguish between textual coherence and textual cohesion and present a new methodology for studying children's and adults’ metalinguistic knowledge of the cohesive, discourse‐level properties of spoken language. Discourse‐level properties (…
More about the same: Children's understanding of post-articles
An experiment on children between 2; 0 and 7; 0 showed that they initially interpret the same X to mean ‘same kind’ in contexts where it actually means ‘same one’. This led to a critical evaluation of Piaget's implicit contention that young children are using determiners anaphorically. Stress is placed on the linguistic rather than conceptual component of children's behaviour in experiments involving questions of the type: Is it the same X? It is…
Margaret Donaldson, Children's minds. Glasgow: Fontana/Collins, 1978. pp. 156
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Language and cognitive processes from a developmental perspective
This study concerns children's use of cohesive devices in discourse production. A distinction is drawn between 'coherence', the focus of work by story grammarians, and 'cohesion', a more strictly linguistic problem which holds for narrative and non-narrative discourse. The analysis not only covers changes in surface output, but focuses on underlying representations with respect to changes in the organization of linguistic entries in memory outsid…
From meta-processes to conscious access: Evidence from children's metalinguistic and repair data
Does metalinguistic awareness have any function in language acquisition processes
Piaget and Chomsky on language acquisition: Divorce or marriage
Beyond Modularity: A Developmental Perspective on Cognitive Science
Taking a stand midway between Piaget's constructivism and Fodor's nativism, Annette Karmiloff-Smith offers an exciting new theory of developmental change that embraces both approaches. She shows how each can enrich the other and how both are necessary to a fundamental theory of human cognition. Karmiloff-Smith shifts the focus from what cognitive science can offer the study of development to what a developmental perspective can offer cognitive sc…
Situational factors and thought processes associated with unprotected intercourse in heterosexual students
Heterosexual students were asked to recall two sexual encounters from the preceding six months: one in which they had unprotected intercourse ('unsafe' encounter) and one in which they resisted a strong temptation to have unprotected intercourse ('safe' encounter). The aims were to record justifications for unprotected intercourse that respondents had given themselves during the unsafe encounter and to identify factors that distinguished between …
From sentential to discourse functions: Detection and explanation of speech repairs by children and adults
Although it has been established that children progressively develop metalinguistic awareness about certain aspects of the linguistic system, nothing is known about their awareness of discourse functions. We distinguish between textual coherence and textual cohesion and present a new methodology for studying children's and adults’ metalinguistic knowledge of the cohesive, discourse‐level properties of spoken language. Discourse‐level properties (…
Rethinking Innateness: A Connectionist Perspective on Development
Rethinking Innateness asks the question, "What does it really mean to say that a behavior is innate?" The authors describe a new framework in which interactions, occurring at all levels, give rise to emergent forms and behaviors. These outcomes often may be highly constrained and universal, yet are not themselves directly contained in the genes in any domain-specific way. One of the key contributions of Rethinking Innateness is a taxonomy of ways…
Word learning in a special population: Do individuals with Williams syndrome obey lexical constraints
Williams syndrome (WS), a rare neurodevelopmental disorder, is of special interest to developmental psycholinguists because of its uneven linguistico-cognitive profile of abilities and deficits. One proficiency manifest in WS adolescents and adults is an unusually large vocabulary despite serious deficits in other domains. In this paper, rather than focus on vocabulary size, we explore the processes underlying vocabulary acquisition, i.e. how new…
Development itself is the key to understanding developmental disorders
Contents Vol. 42, 1999
Taking Development Seriously
A study of relative clauses in Williams syndrome
Despite growing empirical evidence to the contrary, claims continue to be made that the grammar of people with Williams syndrome (WS) is intact. We show that even in a simple elicited imitation task examining the syntax of relative clauses, older children and adults with WS (n = 14, mean age = 17;0 years) only reach the level of typical five-year-old controls. When tested systematically in a number of different laboratories, all aspects of WS lan…
Early Word Segmentation by Infants and Toddlers With Williams Syndrome
This study tested the ability of English infants and toddlers with Williams syndrome to segment, that is, to extract from fluent speech, bisyllabic nouns that had either a strong–‐weak stress pattern (predominant in English), or a weak–‐strong stress pattern. The testing procedure was the same for both types of words: Children were familiarized with instances of isolated nouns, and then tested on their recognition of these nouns embedded in passa…
Asynchrony in the cognitive and lexical development of young children with Williams syndrome
The present study investigates whether five-to-six-year-old children with Williams syndrome (N=8) can form new object categories based on naming information alone, and compares them with five groups of typically developing children aged 2;0 to 6;0 (N=34 children). Children were presented with triads of dissimilar objects; all objects in a triad were labelled, two of them with the same pseudoname. Name-based categorization was evaluated through ob…
The Development of Perceptual Grouping in Infants with Williams Syndrome
Perceptual grouping by luminance similarity and by proximity was investigated in infants with Williams syndrome (WS) aged between 6 and 36 months (visit 1, N=29). WS infants who were still under 36 months old, 8 months later, repeated the testing procedure (visit 2, N=15). Performance was compared to typically developing (TD) infants aged from 2 to 20 months (N=63). Consistent with the literature, TD participants showed grouping by luminance at t…
A Longitudinal Study of Perceptual Grouping by Proximity, Luminance and Shape in Infants at Two, Four and Six Months
Grouping by luminance and shape similarity has previously been demonstrated in neonates and at 4 months, respectively. By contrast, grouping by proximity has hitherto not been investigated in infancy. This is also the first study to chart the developmental emergence of perceptual grouping longitudinally. Sixty-one infants were presented with a matrix of local stimuli grouped horizontally or vertically by luminance, shape or proximity at 2, 4, and…
Nativism versus neuroconstructivism: Rethinking the study of developmental disorders
This article argues that one dominant position in psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, and philosophy about how genetic disorders point to the innate specification of dissociated modules in the human brain should be replaced by a dynamic, neuroconstructivist approach in which genes, brain, cognition, and environment interact multidirectionally. The article challenges current thinking about a series of questions: (a) Do significantly better scor…
Long-term effects of preterm birth on language and literacy at eight years
The aims of this study were to investigate whether specific linguistic difficulties in preterm children persist at eight years and to examine the interrelationships between language and literacy in this population, compared with a control group of full-term children. Sixty-eight monolingual Italian preterms and 26 chronologically matched controls were recruited. Language (grammar comprehension, lexical production and phonological awareness), lite…
Are We Misconstruing Children or Scientists
Multiple Trajectories to Human Language Acquisition: Domain-Specific or Domain-General
Constraints on the Timing of Infant Cognitive Change: Domain-Specific or Domain-General
Most studies of infant cognition focus on group data from single domains. Yet, without the multi-domain testing of the same infants longitudinally, such data cannot be used to evaluate whether the timing of cognitive change occurs in a domain-general
‘Microgenetics’: No Single Method Can Elucidate Human Learning
In the mid-1950s, Heinz Werner introduced the notion of Aktualgenese to cover a new approach to psychology which aimed to capture the temporal dynamics of immediate experience, referring to the fine-grained details of the sequence of events assumed to occur in the temporal period between presentation of a stimulus and the formation of a stabilized cognitive response to that stimulus [Werner, 1956, 1957]. Some 20 years later, Bärbel Inhelder and h…
Psychology (24 works) · Developmental psychology (16 works) · Cognitive psychology (14 works) · Cognition (12 works) · Language Development and Disorders (12 works) · Linguistics (12 works) · Cognitive science (9 works) · Williams Syndrome Research (9 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Neuroscience (7 works)