Virginia Valian
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 1719966 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Virginia Valian |
| PRENOMES | Virginia |
| SOBRENOME | Valian |
| ASSINATURA | VALIAN V |
| AFILIAÇÕES | The Graduate Center, CUNY |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2128-5856 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 30 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 78 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 30 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1980 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 5 |
Null subject comprehension and production revisited
This study will investigate how children acquire the option to drop the subject of a sentence, or null subjects (e.g., “Tickles me” instead of “He tickles me”). In languages that do not permit null subjects, children produce sentences with null subjects from 1 to 3 years of age. This non-adultlike production has been explained by two main accounts: first, the null subject sentences may accurately reflect the children’s linguistic knowledge, that …
Children’s early negative auxiliaries are true auxiliaries
This study investigates young children’s acquisition of functional categories through their use of negative words and negative auxiliaries in particular. Drawing from CHILDES, we analyze twelve months of spontaneous speech by 14 children (youngest age 1;9, oldest age 3;1) and their mothers, in order to assess whether children’s earliest negative productions are morphological combinations and reflect possession of abstract syntactic categories or …
Variability in Production is the Rule, Not the Exception, at the Onset of Multi-Word Speech
The first stage of combinatorial speech is better described as variable than uniform. Talk of variants obscures two different aspects of language (knowledge and use) and two different aspects of language development – acquisition of the grammar (competence) and deployment of the grammar in speaking and listening (performance). Null subjects and Determiners are examples in English of early variability. The limited data in other languages make it i…
Do bilinguals get the joke? Humor comprehension in mono- and bilinguals
Understanding jokes may differ between mono- and bilinguals because of differences in lexical access; fluency and sense of humor may also be relevant. Three experiments examined English-language joke comprehension in monolingual (n = 91) and bilingual (n = 111) undergraduates, Russian–English bilinguals (n = 39), and MTurk monolinguals (n = 77). Participants rated jokes and non-jokes in English as funny or not funny. We assessed the effects of bi…
Exposure is the proximal influence on second language acquisition
How infants' utterances grow
Who do you like? Who will you vote for? Political ideology and person perception in the 2020 U.S. presidential election
This work separately applies two psychology frameworks—the three dimensions along which people are evaluated (competence, morality, and warmth) and individual sociopolitical attitudes (modern sexism [MS], right‐wing authoritarianism [RWA], and social dominance orientation (SDO)—to explore voter evaluations of Donald Trump and Joseph Biden both prior to (Study 1), and in the month following (Study 2), the 2020 U.S. presidential election. At both t…
Gender, Modern Sexism, and the 2016 election
In the summer and fall of 2016, we examined how gender norms relate to perceptions of the ideal president as well as favorability toward Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Participants listed living examples of the “ideal” president and rated how typical masculine and feminine traits were of the ideal president (Studies 1a and 1b). Male exemplars and masculine traits were seen as more typical of the ideal president. Participants also rated the ave…
An Inclusive Academy
How colleges and universities can live up to their ideals of diversity, and why inclusivity and excellence go hand in hand. Most colleges and universities embrace the ideals of diversity and inclusion, but many fall short, especially in the hiring, retention, and advancement of faculty who would more fully represent our diverse world—in particular, women and people of color. In this book, Abigail Stewart and Virginia Valian argue that diversity a…
Putting together bilingualism and executive function
Three important issues bear on understanding the connection between bilingualism and executive function. The first is the absence of a fine-grained task analysis for executive functions and other cognitive processes. The second is the absence of a theory of the cognitive mechanisms underlying the deployment of two or more languages and thus the absence of a solid basis on which to make predictions about what domain-general performances, if any, b…
Bilingualism and cognition
The relation between bilingualism and cognition is informative about the connection between language and mind. From the perspective of language, the question is how bilingualism might help or hinder cognition – narrowly interpreted here as executive function. From the perspective of higher cognition, the question is what kinds of experiences improve executive function. Reported cognitive benefits from bilingualism range from none to substantial a…
Arguing about innateness
This paper lays out the components of a language acquisition model, the interconnections among the components, and the differing stances of nativism and empiricism about syntax. After demonstrating that parsimony cannot decide between the two stances, the paper analyzes nine examples of evidence that have been used to argue for or against nativism, concluding that most pieces of evidence are either irrelevant or suggest that language is special b…
Abstract categories or limited-scope formulae? The case of children's determiners
Six tests of the spontaneous speech of twenty-one English-speaking children (1 ; 10 to 2 ; 8; MLUs 1·53 to 4·38) demonstrate the presence of the syntactic category determiner from the start of combinatorial speech, supporting nativist accounts. Children use multiple determiners before a noun to the same extent as their mothers (1) when only a and the or (2) all determiners are analyzed, or (3) when children and mothers are matched on determiner a…
Direct object predictability
We hypothesize that the conceptual relation between a verb and its direct object can make a sentence easier (‘the cat is eating some food’) or harder (‘the cat is eating a sock’) to parse and understand. If children's limited performance systems contribute to the ungrammatical brevity of their speech, they should perform better on sentences that require fewer processing resources: children should imitate the constituents of sentences with highly …
When opportunity knocks twice
Why are young children's utterances short? This elicited imitation study used a new task – double imitation – to investigate the factors that contribute to children's failure to lexicalize sentence subjects. Two-year-olds heard a triad of sentences singly and attempted to imitate each; they then again heard the same triad singly and again attempted to imitate each. Comparisons between the two attempts showed that children's second passes were mor…
Beyond Gender Schemas
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
Beyond Gender Schemas
This report raises four issues: (1) why do so few women occupy positions of power and prestige in every field; (2) why might people fail to recognize that there is a gender equity problem; (3) how can gender equity be seen as a benefit to institutions; and (4) what can institutions do to increase gender equity
Young children's acquisition of wh -questions
Two-year-olds learn language quickly but how they exploit adult input remains obscure. Twenty-nine children aged 2;6 to 3;2, divided into three treatment groups, participated in an intervention experiment consisting of four sessions 1 week apart. Pre- and post-intervention sessions were identical for all children: children heard a wh -question and attempted to repeat it; a ‘talking bear’ answered. That same format was used for the two interventio…
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…
Rethinking learning
In his review of Rethinking innateness (Elman, Bates, Johnson, Karmiloff-Smith, Parisi & Plunkett, 1996; henceforth, RI), Rispoli (this volume) comments favourably on the dynamical change models presented in RI's Chapter 4. I think a more critical stance is warranted. In particular, I will argue that dynamical change models cannot in principle make reference to mental representation, that the models are stipulative, and that they fail as descript…
Why So Slow
Gender schemas at work gender begins - and continues - at home learning about gender biology and behaviour biology and cognition schemas that explain behaviour evaluating women and men effects on the self interpreting success and failure women in the professions women in academia professional performance and human values affirmative action and the law remedies
Why so Slow? The Advancement of Women
Why so slow?
Why do so few women occupy positions of power and prestige? Virginia Valian uses concepts and data from psychology, sociology, economics, and biology to explain the disparity in the professional advancement of men and women. According to Valian, men and women alike have implicit hypotheses about gender differences - gender schemas - that create small sex differences in characteristics, behaviors, perceptions, and evaluations of men and women. Tho…
The development of syntactic subjects in Portuguese-speaking children
In order to separate competence and performance factors in acquisition of knowledge of syntactic subjects, we audiotaped and analysed the spontaneous speech of 20 Portuguese-speaking two-year-olds in natural conversation with Portuguese-speaking adults. We separated the children into three groups based on Mean Length of Utterance in Words: 1·5–1·99; 2·0–2·99; 3·0–4·99. Our cross-sectional data demonstrated that Portuguese-speaking children increa…
Young children's imitation of sentence subjects
Elicited imitation was used to determine whether young children's inconsistent production of sentence subjects was due to limitations in their knowledge of English or in their ability to access and use that knowledge. Nineteen young children (age range = I year 10 months to 2 years 8 months ; Mean Length of Utterance [MLU] range = 1.28 to 4.93 ) repeated sentences that varied in length, structure, and type of subject. A competence-deficit hypothe…
Beyond Gender Schemas
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
Gender, Modern Sexism, and the 2016 election
In the summer and fall of 2016, we examined how gender norms relate to perceptions of the ideal president as well as favorability toward Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Participants listed living examples of the “ideal” president and rated how typical masculine and feminine traits were of the ideal president (Studies 1a and 1b). Male exemplars and masculine traits were seen as more typical of the ideal president. Participants also rated the ave…
Syntactic categories in the speech of young children
This article demonstrates that very young children have knowledge of a range of syntactic categories. Speech samples from six children aged 2 years to 2 years, 5 months, with Mean Lengths of Utterance (MLUs) ranging from 2.93 to 4.14, were examined for evidence of six syntactic categories: Determiner, Adjective, Noun, Noun Phrase, Preposition, and Prepositional Phrase. Performance was evaluated by the conformance of the children's speech to crite…
Why so Slow? The Advancement of Women
Young children's imitation of sentence subjects
Elicited imitation was used to determine whether young children's inconsistent production of sentence subjects was due to limitations in their knowledge of English or in their ability to access and use that knowledge. Nineteen young children (age range = I year 10 months to 2 years 8 months ; Mean Length of Utterance [MLU] range = 1.28 to 4.93 ) repeated sentences that varied in length, structure, and type of subject. A competence-deficit hypothe…
Aspects of a theory of language acquisition
This paper presents a hypothesis-testing theory of syntax acquisition. The first section presents our model. We claim that: (1) children learn a transformational grammar, including a set of phrase structure and transformational rules; (2) linguistic universals and Occam's razor constrain the initial hypothesis space available to the device; (3) hypotheses tested by the device consist of candidate phrase structure and transformational rules; (4) l…
Listening and clarity of syntactic structure
Memory for French Negation by Students of French
High school and college students of French recalled French sentences which varied two types of negation. Half the sentences used affirmative syntax and half negative syntax (ne... pas); half used positive verbs (e.g., manger); and half used negative verbs (e.g., oublier). One to two weeks later students performed the same task with English translations. In French, sentences with affirmative syntax and positive verbs were remembered best; either f…
Syntactic categories in the speech of young children
This article demonstrates that very young children have knowledge of a range of syntactic categories. Speech samples from six children aged 2 years to 2 years, 5 months, with Mean Lengths of Utterance (MLUs) ranging from 2.93 to 4.14, were examined for evidence of six syntactic categories: Determiner, Adjective, Noun, Noun Phrase, Preposition, and Prepositional Phrase. Performance was evaluated by the conformance of the children's speech to crite…
Syntactic subjects in the early speech of American and Italian children
The development of syntactic subjects in Portuguese-speaking children
In order to separate competence and performance factors in acquisition of knowledge of syntactic subjects, we audiotaped and analysed the spontaneous speech of 20 Portuguese-speaking two-year-olds in natural conversation with Portuguese-speaking adults. We separated the children into three groups based on Mean Length of Utterance in Words: 1·5–1·99; 2·0–2·99; 3·0–4·99. Our cross-sectional data demonstrated that Portuguese-speaking children increa…
Young children's imitation of sentence subjects
Elicited imitation was used to determine whether young children's inconsistent production of sentence subjects was due to limitations in their knowledge of English or in their ability to access and use that knowledge. Nineteen young children (age range = I year 10 months to 2 years 8 months ; Mean Length of Utterance [MLU] range = 1.28 to 4.93 ) repeated sentences that varied in length, structure, and type of subject. A competence-deficit hypothe…
Why so slow?
Why do so few women occupy positions of power and prestige? Virginia Valian uses concepts and data from psychology, sociology, economics, and biology to explain the disparity in the professional advancement of men and women. According to Valian, men and women alike have implicit hypotheses about gender differences - gender schemas - that create small sex differences in characteristics, behaviors, perceptions, and evaluations of men and women. Tho…
Rethinking learning
In his review of Rethinking innateness (Elman, Bates, Johnson, Karmiloff-Smith, Parisi & Plunkett, 1996; henceforth, RI), Rispoli (this volume) comments favourably on the dynamical change models presented in RI's Chapter 4. I think a more critical stance is warranted. In particular, I will argue that dynamical change models cannot in principle make reference to mental representation, that the models are stipulative, and that they fail as descript…
Why So Slow
Gender schemas at work gender begins - and continues - at home learning about gender biology and behaviour biology and cognition schemas that explain behaviour evaluating women and men effects on the self interpreting success and failure women in the professions women in academia professional performance and human values affirmative action and the law remedies
Why so Slow? The Advancement of Women
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…
Young children's acquisition of wh -questions
Two-year-olds learn language quickly but how they exploit adult input remains obscure. Twenty-nine children aged 2;6 to 3;2, divided into three treatment groups, participated in an intervention experiment consisting of four sessions 1 week apart. Pre- and post-intervention sessions were identical for all children: children heard a wh -question and attempted to repeat it; a ‘talking bear’ answered. That same format was used for the two interventio…
Beyond Gender Schemas
This report raises four issues: (1) why do so few women occupy positions of power and prestige in every field; (2) why might people fail to recognize that there is a gender equity problem; (3) how can gender equity be seen as a benefit to institutions; and (4) what can institutions do to increase gender equity
When opportunity knocks twice
Why are young children's utterances short? This elicited imitation study used a new task – double imitation – to investigate the factors that contribute to children's failure to lexicalize sentence subjects. Two-year-olds heard a triad of sentences singly and attempted to imitate each; they then again heard the same triad singly and again attempted to imitate each. Comparisons between the two attempts showed that children's second passes were mor…
Beyond Gender Schemas
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
Direct object predictability
We hypothesize that the conceptual relation between a verb and its direct object can make a sentence easier (‘the cat is eating some food’) or harder (‘the cat is eating a sock’) to parse and understand. If children's limited performance systems contribute to the ungrammatical brevity of their speech, they should perform better on sentences that require fewer processing resources: children should imitate the constituents of sentences with highly …
Abstract categories or limited-scope formulae? The case of children's determiners
Six tests of the spontaneous speech of twenty-one English-speaking children (1 ; 10 to 2 ; 8; MLUs 1·53 to 4·38) demonstrate the presence of the syntactic category determiner from the start of combinatorial speech, supporting nativist accounts. Children use multiple determiners before a noun to the same extent as their mothers (1) when only a and the or (2) all determiners are analyzed, or (3) when children and mothers are matched on determiner a…
Arguing about innateness
This paper lays out the components of a language acquisition model, the interconnections among the components, and the differing stances of nativism and empiricism about syntax. After demonstrating that parsimony cannot decide between the two stances, the paper analyzes nine examples of evidence that have been used to argue for or against nativism, concluding that most pieces of evidence are either irrelevant or suggest that language is special b…
Bilingualism and cognition
The relation between bilingualism and cognition is informative about the connection between language and mind. From the perspective of language, the question is how bilingualism might help or hinder cognition – narrowly interpreted here as executive function. From the perspective of higher cognition, the question is what kinds of experiences improve executive function. Reported cognitive benefits from bilingualism range from none to substantial a…
Putting together bilingualism and executive function
Three important issues bear on understanding the connection between bilingualism and executive function. The first is the absence of a fine-grained task analysis for executive functions and other cognitive processes. The second is the absence of a theory of the cognitive mechanisms underlying the deployment of two or more languages and thus the absence of a solid basis on which to make predictions about what domain-general performances, if any, b…
An Inclusive Academy
How colleges and universities can live up to their ideals of diversity, and why inclusivity and excellence go hand in hand. Most colleges and universities embrace the ideals of diversity and inclusion, but many fall short, especially in the hiring, retention, and advancement of faculty who would more fully represent our diverse world—in particular, women and people of color. In this book, Abigail Stewart and Virginia Valian argue that diversity a…
Gender, Modern Sexism, and the 2016 election
In the summer and fall of 2016, we examined how gender norms relate to perceptions of the ideal president as well as favorability toward Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Participants listed living examples of the “ideal” president and rated how typical masculine and feminine traits were of the ideal president (Studies 1a and 1b). Male exemplars and masculine traits were seen as more typical of the ideal president. Participants also rated the ave…
Who do you like? Who will you vote for? Political ideology and person perception in the 2020 U.S. presidential election
This work separately applies two psychology frameworks—the three dimensions along which people are evaluated (competence, morality, and warmth) and individual sociopolitical attitudes (modern sexism [MS], right‐wing authoritarianism [RWA], and social dominance orientation (SDO)—to explore voter evaluations of Donald Trump and Joseph Biden both prior to (Study 1), and in the month following (Study 2), the 2020 U.S. presidential election. At both t…
Do bilinguals get the joke? Humor comprehension in mono- and bilinguals
Understanding jokes may differ between mono- and bilinguals because of differences in lexical access; fluency and sense of humor may also be relevant. Three experiments examined English-language joke comprehension in monolingual (n = 91) and bilingual (n = 111) undergraduates, Russian–English bilinguals (n = 39), and MTurk monolinguals (n = 77). Participants rated jokes and non-jokes in English as funny or not funny. We assessed the effects of bi…
Psychology (27 obras) · Linguistics (19 obras) · Language Development and Disorders (16 obras) · Computer Science (12 obras) · Developmental psychology (10 obras) · Cognitive psychology (9 obras) · Philosophy (8 obras) · Reading and Literacy Development (8 obras) · Social Psychology (8 obras) · Cognition (7 obras)