SRCLD Presentation Details
  Title  
       
    Changes in visual object recognition and in early object name learning  
Author(s)
Linda B. Smith - Indiana University

SRCLD Info
SRCLD Year: 2010
Presentation Type: Invited Speaker
Presentation Time: (na)
Abstract
Development in any domain is a self-organizing process that is connected to changes in other domains. The period during 12 to 24 months is one of dramatic change in the words children use and comprehend. Recent research suggests that this early vocabulary growth is also connected to changes in object categorization and perhaps more fundamentally to quite dramatic changes in visual object recognition. This talk will present evidence on object name learning and visual object recognition in typically developmentally children and also in children on a slower word learning trajectory (below the 20th per centile for normative measures of vocabulary size). The evidence indicates co-development in these two domains, that delay in object name learning (and in learning object categories) is both dependent on changes in visual object recognition and may cause an altered developmental trajectory in visual object recognition.
The research is supported by NICHHD HD028675.
Author Biosketch(es)

Linda B. Smith, Ph.D., is a Distinquished Professor and the Chancellor's Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences and Cognitive Science at Indiana University - Bloomington. She received her B.S. degree in 1973 from the University of Wisconsin - Madison and her Ph.D. in psychology from the Universityof Pennsylvania in 1977. She joined the faculty at Indiana University in 1977. Her research is directed to understanding developmental processes especially at it applies to early cognitive development and to the interaction of perception, action and language in that developmental process. She has published over 120 research articles and is co-author with Esther Thelen of A Dynamical Systems Approach to the Development of Cognition and Action. Her research is supported by grants from the National Institutes of Child Health and Development and the National Institute of Mental Health. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Cognitive Science Society, and the Association for Psychological Science. You may find out more about her research and laboratory at www.iub.edu/~cogdev