Elissa L Newport
Biographic Data
| ID | 742560 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Elissa L Newport |
| GIVEN NAMES | Elissa L |
| FAMILY NAME | Newport |
| SIGNATURE | NEWPORT E L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Rochester |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2783-5062 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 230 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1984 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
The neural basis of emotional prosody processing: Development of lateralization
In most healthy adults, core language functions (e.g. sentence processing) rely predominantly on the left hemisphere (LH), whereas emotional prosody processing (EP) relies predominantly on the right (RH). After LH injury, adults exhibit lasting impairments of sentence processing. In contrast, infants with similar injury can acquire processes typically subserved by the damaged LH by utilizing the homotopic regions of the intact RH. This suggests e…
Learning a Language from Inconsistent Input: Regularization in Child and Adult Learners
' Deaf children learning American Sign Language from parents who are non-native users of the language regularize their parents' inconsistent usages (Singleton & Newport, 2004). In studies of artificial languages containing inconsistently used morphemes (Hudson Kam & Newport, 2005, 2009), children, but not adults, regularized these forms. However, little is known about the precise circumstances in which such regularization occurs. In three experim…
Distributional Language Learning: Mechanisms and Models of Category Formation
In the past 15 years, a substantial body of evidence has confirmed that a powerful distributional learning mechanism is present in infants, children, adults and (at least to some degree) in nonhuman animals as well. The present article briefly reviews this literature and then examines some of the fundamental questions that must be addressed for any distributional learning mechanism to operate effectively within the linguistic domain. In particula…
Getting it right by getting it wrong: When learners change languages
Acquiring and processing verb argument structure: Distributional learning in a miniature language
Mechanisms Underlying Language Acquisition: Benefits From a Comparative Approach
One of the longstanding issues in language research has been the extent to which the mechanisms underlying language acquisition are uniquely human. The primary goal of this article is to introduce the reader to some of the recent developments in comparative language research that have shed new light on this issue. To appreciate the significance of the new developments, we begin with a brief historical overview of language studies that have adopte…
Regularizing Unpredictable Variation: The Roles of Adult and Child Learners in Language Formation and Change
In this article we investigate what learners acquire when their input contains inconsistent grammatical morphemes such as those present in pidgins and incipient creoles. In particular, we ask if learners acquire variability veridically or if they change it, making the language more regular as they learn it. In Experiment 1 we taught adult participants an artificial language containing unpredictable variation in 1 grammatical feature. We manipulat…
When learners surpass their models: The acquisition of American Sign Language from inconsistent input
Learning at a distance I. Statistical learning of non-adjacent dependencies
The distributional structure of grammatical categories in speech to young children
We present a series of three analyses of young children's linguistic input to determine the distributional information it could plausibly offer to the process of grammatical category learning. Each analysis was conducted on four separate corpora from the CHILDES database (MacWhinney, 2000) of speech directed to children under 2;5. We showthat, in accord with other findings, a distributional analysis which categorizeswords based on their co-occurr…
Statistical learning of tone sequences by human infants and adults
Previous research suggests that language learners can detect and use the statistical properties of syllable sequences to discover words in continuous speech (e.g. Aslin, R.N., Saffran, J.R., Newport, E.L., 1998. Computation of conditional probability statistics by 8-month-old infants. Psychological Science 9, 321-324; Saffran, J.R., Aslin, R.N., Newport, E.L., 1996. Statistical learning by 8-month-old infants. Science 274, 1926-1928; Saffran, J.,…
Computation of Conditional Probability Statistics by 8-Month-Old Infants
A recent report demonstrated that 8-month-olds can segment a continuous stream of speech syllables, containing no acoustic or prosodic cues to word boundaries, into wordlike units after only 2 min of listening experience (Saffran, Aslin, & Newport, 1996). Thus, a powerful learning mechanism capable of extracting statistical information from fluent speech is available early in development. The present study extends these results by documenting the…
Incidental Language Learning: Listening (and Learning) Out of the Corner of Your Ear
Two experiments investigated the performance of first-grade children and adults on an incidental language-learning task. Learning entailed word segmentation from continuous speech, an initial and crucial component of language acquisition. Subjects were briefly exposed to an unsegmented artificial language, presented auditorily, in which the only cues to word boundaries were the transitional probabilities between syllables. Subjects were not told …
Statistical Learning by 8-Month-Old Infants
Learners rely on a combination of experience-independent and experience-dependent mechanisms to extract information from the environment. Language acquisition involves both types of mechanisms, but most theorists emphasize the relative importance of experience-independent mechanisms. The present study shows that a fundamental task of language acquisition, segmentation of words from fluent speech, can be accomplished by 8-month-old infants based s…
Word Segmentation: The Role of Distributional Cues
One of the infant's first tasks in language acquisition is to discover the words embedded in a mostly continuous speech stream. This learning problem might be solved by using distributional cues to word boundaries-for example, by computing the transitional probabilities between sounds in the language input and using the relative strengths of these probabilities to hypothesize word boundaries. The learner might be further aided by language-specifi…
Critical period effects on universal properties of language: The status of subjacency in the acquisition of a second language
Learnability and Cognition: The Acquisition of Argument Structure (Learning, Development, and Conceptual Change)
The Child's Theory of Mind
Wellman presents evidence that children as young as age three do possess a commonsense theory of mind—that they grasp the distinction between mental constructs and physical entities and that they have an understanding of the relationship between individuals' mental states and their overt actions. He delves in detail into questions about the nature of adults' commonsense theories of mind and about the nature of commonsense theories. Wellman then e…
Maturational Constraints on Language Learning
This paper suggests that there are constraints on learning required to explain the acquisition of language, in particular, maturational constraints. First, empirical evidence for this claim is reviewed. The evidence from several studies of both first and second language acquisition suggests that normal language learning occurs only when exposure to the language begins early in life. With exposure beginning later in life, asymptotic performance in…
Out of the Hands of Babes: On a Possible Sign Advantage in Language Acquisition
Recent research has examined the early stages of language development in signed and spoken language. In this paper we discuss claims that, in the timing of early language milestones, there is an advantage for the acquisition of signed languages. In particular, we will review the evidence that the emergence of the first signs and of the first twosign combinations is precocious in signing children as compared to the appearance of the first words an…
Critical period effects in second language learning: The influence of maturational state on the acquisition of English as a second language
Constraints on learning and their role in language acquisition: Studies of the acquisition of American sign language
The current status of the motherese hypothesis
Partially conflicting results from correlational studies of maternal speech style and its effects on child language learning motivate a comparative discussion of Newport, Gleitman & Gleitman (1977) and Furrow, Nelson & Benedict (1979), and a reanalysis of the original Newport et al. data. In the current analysis the data are from two groups of children equated for age, in response to the methodological questions raised by Furrow et al. ; but, in …
Maturational Constraints on Language Learning
This paper suggests that there are constraints on learning required to explain the acquisition of language, in particular, maturational constraints. First, empirical evidence for this claim is reviewed. The evidence from several studies of both first and second language acquisition suggests that normal language learning occurs only when exposure to the language begins early in life. With exposure beginning later in life, asymptotic performance in…
Word Segmentation: The Role of Distributional Cues
One of the infant's first tasks in language acquisition is to discover the words embedded in a mostly continuous speech stream. This learning problem might be solved by using distributional cues to word boundaries-for example, by computing the transitional probabilities between sounds in the language input and using the relative strengths of these probabilities to hypothesize word boundaries. The learner might be further aided by language-specifi…
Incidental Language Learning: Listening (and Learning) Out of the Corner of Your Ear
Two experiments investigated the performance of first-grade children and adults on an incidental language-learning task. Learning entailed word segmentation from continuous speech, an initial and crucial component of language acquisition. Subjects were briefly exposed to an unsegmented artificial language, presented auditorily, in which the only cues to word boundaries were the transitional probabilities between syllables. Subjects were not told …
The distributional structure of grammatical categories in speech to young children
We present a series of three analyses of young children's linguistic input to determine the distributional information it could plausibly offer to the process of grammatical category learning. Each analysis was conducted on four separate corpora from the CHILDES database (MacWhinney, 2000) of speech directed to children under 2;5. We showthat, in accord with other findings, a distributional analysis which categorizeswords based on their co-occurr…
Constraints on learning and their role in language acquisition: Studies of the acquisition of American sign language
Out of the Hands of Babes: On a Possible Sign Advantage in Language Acquisition
Recent research has examined the early stages of language development in signed and spoken language. In this paper we discuss claims that, in the timing of early language milestones, there is an advantage for the acquisition of signed languages. In particular, we will review the evidence that the emergence of the first signs and of the first twosign combinations is precocious in signing children as compared to the appearance of the first words an…
Distributional Language Learning: Mechanisms and Models of Category Formation
In the past 15 years, a substantial body of evidence has confirmed that a powerful distributional learning mechanism is present in infants, children, adults and (at least to some degree) in nonhuman animals as well. The present article briefly reviews this literature and then examines some of the fundamental questions that must be addressed for any distributional learning mechanism to operate effectively within the linguistic domain. In particula…
The current status of the motherese hypothesis
Partially conflicting results from correlational studies of maternal speech style and its effects on child language learning motivate a comparative discussion of Newport, Gleitman & Gleitman (1977) and Furrow, Nelson & Benedict (1979), and a reanalysis of the original Newport et al. data. In the current analysis the data are from two groups of children equated for age, in response to the methodological questions raised by Furrow et al. ; but, in …
Constraints on learning and their role in language acquisition: Studies of the acquisition of American sign language
Critical period effects in second language learning: The influence of maturational state on the acquisition of English as a second language
The Child's Theory of Mind
Wellman presents evidence that children as young as age three do possess a commonsense theory of mind—that they grasp the distinction between mental constructs and physical entities and that they have an understanding of the relationship between individuals' mental states and their overt actions. He delves in detail into questions about the nature of adults' commonsense theories of mind and about the nature of commonsense theories. Wellman then e…
Maturational Constraints on Language Learning
This paper suggests that there are constraints on learning required to explain the acquisition of language, in particular, maturational constraints. First, empirical evidence for this claim is reviewed. The evidence from several studies of both first and second language acquisition suggests that normal language learning occurs only when exposure to the language begins early in life. With exposure beginning later in life, asymptotic performance in…
Out of the Hands of Babes: On a Possible Sign Advantage in Language Acquisition
Recent research has examined the early stages of language development in signed and spoken language. In this paper we discuss claims that, in the timing of early language milestones, there is an advantage for the acquisition of signed languages. In particular, we will review the evidence that the emergence of the first signs and of the first twosign combinations is precocious in signing children as compared to the appearance of the first words an…
Critical period effects on universal properties of language: The status of subjacency in the acquisition of a second language
Learnability and Cognition: The Acquisition of Argument Structure (Learning, Development, and Conceptual Change)
Statistical Learning by 8-Month-Old Infants
Learners rely on a combination of experience-independent and experience-dependent mechanisms to extract information from the environment. Language acquisition involves both types of mechanisms, but most theorists emphasize the relative importance of experience-independent mechanisms. The present study shows that a fundamental task of language acquisition, segmentation of words from fluent speech, can be accomplished by 8-month-old infants based s…
Word Segmentation: The Role of Distributional Cues
One of the infant's first tasks in language acquisition is to discover the words embedded in a mostly continuous speech stream. This learning problem might be solved by using distributional cues to word boundaries-for example, by computing the transitional probabilities between sounds in the language input and using the relative strengths of these probabilities to hypothesize word boundaries. The learner might be further aided by language-specifi…
Incidental Language Learning: Listening (and Learning) Out of the Corner of Your Ear
Two experiments investigated the performance of first-grade children and adults on an incidental language-learning task. Learning entailed word segmentation from continuous speech, an initial and crucial component of language acquisition. Subjects were briefly exposed to an unsegmented artificial language, presented auditorily, in which the only cues to word boundaries were the transitional probabilities between syllables. Subjects were not told …
Computation of Conditional Probability Statistics by 8-Month-Old Infants
A recent report demonstrated that 8-month-olds can segment a continuous stream of speech syllables, containing no acoustic or prosodic cues to word boundaries, into wordlike units after only 2 min of listening experience (Saffran, Aslin, & Newport, 1996). Thus, a powerful learning mechanism capable of extracting statistical information from fluent speech is available early in development. The present study extends these results by documenting the…
Statistical learning of tone sequences by human infants and adults
Previous research suggests that language learners can detect and use the statistical properties of syllable sequences to discover words in continuous speech (e.g. Aslin, R.N., Saffran, J.R., Newport, E.L., 1998. Computation of conditional probability statistics by 8-month-old infants. Psychological Science 9, 321-324; Saffran, J.R., Aslin, R.N., Newport, E.L., 1996. Statistical learning by 8-month-old infants. Science 274, 1926-1928; Saffran, J.,…
The distributional structure of grammatical categories in speech to young children
We present a series of three analyses of young children's linguistic input to determine the distributional information it could plausibly offer to the process of grammatical category learning. Each analysis was conducted on four separate corpora from the CHILDES database (MacWhinney, 2000) of speech directed to children under 2;5. We showthat, in accord with other findings, a distributional analysis which categorizeswords based on their co-occurr…
When learners surpass their models: The acquisition of American Sign Language from inconsistent input
Learning at a distance I. Statistical learning of non-adjacent dependencies
Regularizing Unpredictable Variation: The Roles of Adult and Child Learners in Language Formation and Change
In this article we investigate what learners acquire when their input contains inconsistent grammatical morphemes such as those present in pidgins and incipient creoles. In particular, we ask if learners acquire variability veridically or if they change it, making the language more regular as they learn it. In Experiment 1 we taught adult participants an artificial language containing unpredictable variation in 1 grammatical feature. We manipulat…
Mechanisms Underlying Language Acquisition: Benefits From a Comparative Approach
One of the longstanding issues in language research has been the extent to which the mechanisms underlying language acquisition are uniquely human. The primary goal of this article is to introduce the reader to some of the recent developments in comparative language research that have shed new light on this issue. To appreciate the significance of the new developments, we begin with a brief historical overview of language studies that have adopte…
Acquiring and processing verb argument structure: Distributional learning in a miniature language
Getting it right by getting it wrong: When learners change languages
Distributional Language Learning: Mechanisms and Models of Category Formation
In the past 15 years, a substantial body of evidence has confirmed that a powerful distributional learning mechanism is present in infants, children, adults and (at least to some degree) in nonhuman animals as well. The present article briefly reviews this literature and then examines some of the fundamental questions that must be addressed for any distributional learning mechanism to operate effectively within the linguistic domain. In particula…
Learning a Language from Inconsistent Input: Regularization in Child and Adult Learners
' Deaf children learning American Sign Language from parents who are non-native users of the language regularize their parents' inconsistent usages (Singleton & Newport, 2004). In studies of artificial languages containing inconsistently used morphemes (Hudson Kam & Newport, 2005, 2009), children, but not adults, regularized these forms. However, little is known about the precise circumstances in which such regularization occurs. In three experim…
The neural basis of emotional prosody processing: Development of lateralization
In most healthy adults, core language functions (e.g. sentence processing) rely predominantly on the left hemisphere (LH), whereas emotional prosody processing (EP) relies predominantly on the right (RH). After LH injury, adults exhibit lasting impairments of sentence processing. In contrast, infants with similar injury can acquire processes typically subserved by the damaged LH by utilizing the homotopic regions of the intact RH. This suggests e…
Psychology (18 works) · Linguistics (16 works) · Language Development and Disorders (15 works) · Cognitive psychology (14 works) · Language acquisition (14 works) · Computer Science (10 works) · Mathematics education (10 works) · Developmental psychology (8 works) · Artificial Intelligence (7 works) · Speech and dialogue systems (7 works)