Dr. Carmel Houston-Price School of Psychology & Clinical Language Sciences University of Reading Earley Gate, Whiteknights Reading RG6 6AL, UK Tel: +44 (0)118 378 5378 Fax: +44 (0)118 931 6715 c.houston-price@reading.ac.uk

Carmel Houston-Price Main Research Interests Word learning My research primarily concerns how infants acquire the vocabulary of the language in which they are raised, especially the names of objects. One question that interests me is whether (and how) children use information provided by the learning environment to discover the meanings of new words in ambiguous situations. For example, some of my studies have investigated whether infants will assume, on hearing a new word, that it must refer to an object that stands out in some way, rather than to a less salient object. Other studies have examined infants' ability to use the statistical covariation of words and referents across situations to work out which pairings to learn. If we assume that words and their referents tend to co-occur, and that infants have the attention and memory capacities to notice and remember the frequency of occurrence of such pairings, they may be able to work out, over time, which words and referents ‘go together’. These questions have been explored using an adaptation of the intermodal preferential looking paradigm, in collaboration with Kim Plunkett (University of Oxford) and Emily Mather (University of Oxford) and funded by the ESRC and the Experimental Psychology Society. Gaze-following and word learning In a similar vein, I am interested in how infants use social cues provided by an adult to determine a word’s meaning. For example, if an adult looks towards one of two objects when a new word is heard, will infants assume that the word refers to the object towards which the adult is looking? Research funded by the ESRC has demonstrated that such social cues need not be provided by a real adult who is interacting with the child, and that a recording of an adult looking towards an object is sufficient. Further work funded by the University of Reading RETF has investigated whether infants will follow the gaze direction of a ‘non-intentional’ partner. For example, will infants look in the same direction as a pointing object, and will they use such a cue to infer the meaning of a new word? We have also investigated the role of reward and reinforcement in gaze-following behaviour, and whether infants can learn, through reinforcement, to use cues to reference that would otherwise not be considered useful. Current work undertaken by Natalie Reynolds (funded by an ESRC studentship), in collaboration with Graham Schafer (University of Reading) is examining in detail the nature of infants’ ability to learn new words by following gaze in a naturalistic setting. Accuracy of parental vocabulary reports Researchers employ a variety of methods to establish which words young children understand, including their parents’ reports. In a project funded by the British Academy, we explored the accuracy of parents’ reports of their children’s vocabulary using a British English adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory. We used the preferential looking paradigm to assess infants' understanding of words rated as known and unknown by their parents. Studies involving two separate UK populations showed that British parents systematically underestimate the number of words their child understands, if their reports are compared to the level of understanding seen in the laboratory task. Our findings suggest that this is true throughout the child’s second year. Children of 15, 18 and 21-month-old infants showed robust comprehension of words that their parents reported were unknown by them in the laboratory task. The development of food preferences The Wellcome Trust and Nuffield Foundation have supported the development of a new area of research in our laboratory – the manipulation of toddlers’ food preferences. Work in our lab has shown that repeated visual exposure to pictures of fruit and vegetables increases toddlers’ visual preferences for exposed foods. Picture-book exposure to foods similarly impacts on children’s willingness to taste new foods. For example, toddlers are more willing to taste previously unfamiliar fruits if they have been read a book about these fruits every day for a fortnight than if they have been read a book about a different set of foods. Current work by Pippa Heath (funded by a University of Reading RETF studentship) is investigating the long-term effects of visual exposure to healthy foods on children’s diets. Recent Publications Houston-Price, C., Butler, L. & Shiba, P. (in press). Visual exposure impacts on toddlers’ willingness to taste fruit and vegetables. Appetite. Houston-Price, C., Caloghiris, Z. & Raviglion, E. (in press). Language experience shapes the development of the mutual exclusivity bias. Infancy. Houston-Price, C., Burton, E., Hickinson, R., Inett, J., Moore, E., Salmon, K. & Shiba, P. (2009). Picture book exposure elicits positive visual preferences in toddlers. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 104, 89-104. Farran, E.K., Brown, J.H., Cole, V.L., Houston-Price, C. & Karmiloff-Smith, A. (2008). A longitudinal study of perceptual grouping by proximity, luminance and shape in infants at two, four and six months. European Journal of Developmental Science, 2(4), 353-369. Farran, E.K., Brown, J.H., Cole, V.L., Houston-Price, C. & Karmiloff-Smith, A. (2007). The development of perceptual grouping in infants with Williams Syndrome. European Journal of Developmental Science, 1 (3), 253-271. Houston-Price, C., Mather, E. & Sakkalou, E. (2007). Discrepancy between parental reports of infants’ receptive vocabulary and infants’ behaviour in a preferential looking task. Journal of Child Language, 34 (4), 701-724. Houston-Price, C. (2006). Beyond nature-nurture: Essays in honor of Elizabeth Bates. Infant and Child Development, 16 (2), 224-226. Houston-Price, C., Plunkett, K. & Duffy, H. (2006). The use of social and salience cues in early word learning. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 95 (1), 27-55. Houston-Price, C., Plunkett, K. & Harris, P. (2005). 'Word-learning wizardry' at 1;6. Journal of Child Language, 32, 175-189.   Saxton, M., Houston-Price, C., & Dawson, N. (2005). The prompt hypothesis: Clarification requests as corrective input for grammatical errors. Applied Psycholinguistics, 26 (3), 393-414. Houston-Price, C. & Nakai, S. (2004). Distinguishing novelty and familiarity effects in infant preference procedures. Infant and Child Development, 13, 341-348. Houston-Price, C. & Nakai, S. (2004). Response to commentaries by Leslie B. Cohen and Alan Slater. Infant and Child Development, 13, 357-359. Recent Presentations Houston-Price, C., Burton, E., Hickinson, R., Inett, J., Moore, E., Salmon, K. & Shiba, P. (2009, September). Visual exposure elicits positive visual preferences in toddlers. Poster presented to the British Psychological Society, Nottingham. Houston-Price, C., Caloghiris, Z. & Raviglione, E. (2009, September). The origins of the mutual exclusivity bias in word learning. Paper presented to the British Psychological Society, Nottingham. Houston-Price, C. (2009, April). How infants learn to learn words: The role of experience over time. Seminar given to the Department of Psychology, University of Lincoln. Houston-Price, C., Burton, E., Hickinson, R., Inett, J., Moore, E., Salmon, K. & Shiba, P. (2009, April). Visual exposure elicits positive visual preferences in toddlers. Poster presented to the Society for Research in Child Development, Denver. Houston-Price, C., Caloghiris, Z. & Raviglione, E. (2009, April). Bilingual infants show no evidence of mutual exclusivity at 18 – 21 months. Poster presented to the Society for Research in Child Development, Denver. Houston-Price, C. (2009, March). How infants learn how to learn words: The role of experience over time. Seminar given to the Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Birkbeck College. Houston-Price, C. (2009, February). The role of exposure in preference formation. Seminar given to the Department of Psychology, University of Sussex. Houston-Price, C. (2009, January). How exposure to words and pictures shapes development. Seminar given to the Department of Psychology, University of Sussex. Houston-Price, C., Caloghiris, Z. & Raviglione, E. (2009, January). The origins of the mutual exclusivity bias in word learning. Paper presented to the Experimental Psychology Society, University College London. Houston-Price, C., Reynolds, N. & Worsfold, N. (2008, September). Infants use the communicative context to learn to follow gaze-direction. Paper presented to the British Psychological Society Developmental Section meeting, Oxford Brookes.