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Dr. Carmel Houston-Price Tel: +44 (0)118 378 5378 c.houston-price@reading.ac.uk |
Primary 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 and funded by
the ESRC and the Experimental Psychology Society. 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 Other ongoing
projects are exploring how early language abilities are related to language
outcome. A current PhD student, Beth Law (funded by a University of Reading
Social Sciences studentship, and in collaboration with Tom Loucas, University of Reading), is investigating which of
the strategies children use to learn new words in the lab is predictive of
later vocabulary size in both typically-developing children and those with
autism. Emily Mason-Apps (supported by an ESRC CASE studentship, in
partnership with DownsEd) is looking at early
cognitive and linguistic predictors of vocabulary size in children with Down
Syndrome, under the supervision of Vesna Stojanovik (University of Reading) and myself.
My interest in
vocabulary development extends to preschool and primary school aged
populations. Recent work by my group (in collaboration with Kathryn
Wilkinson, National Foundation for Educational Research) has investigated children’s
ability to pick up new vocabulary by listening to stories in the classroom,
and has shown that long-term learning of new words can occur in this way. 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 The development of food preferences The Wellcome Trust and Nuffield Foundation 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, in collaboration with Dr Orla
Kennedy, University of Reading) is investigating the impact of visual
exposure to healthy foods that are originally liked, disliked or unfamiliar
to children on their uptake of these foods.
Funding from the
ESRC has enabled us to further our work in this area by elucidating the
difficulties parents face when attempting to introduce new or disliked fruits
and vegetables in the home. This project, run by Dr Laura Owen (University of
Reading), in collaboration with Dr Orla Kennedy and
Dr Claire Hill, will establish whether an initial period of picture-book
exposure to foods eases their introduction into children’s diets, and if so,
whether there are any long-term effects on children’s consumption of the
food. A Knowledge Transfer Partnership with Ella’s Kitchen, a local baby food
manufacturer (supported by the Technology Strategy Board) has allowed us to
further probe the impact of food familiarity on toddlers’ willingness to
taste fruits and vegetables. In a further
development to my work on food choice, and with Dr Nick Holmes (University of
Reading) and Dr Andy Bremner (Goldsmiths),
Katherine Naish (funded by a University of Reading
Life Sciences studentship and an ERC grant to Andy Bremner)
is exploring the role of the mirror system in supporting the imitation of
food-directed actions. Some Recent Publications For access to my publications, please see
the list at http://www.reading.ac.uk/pcls/people/c-houston~price.aspx Heath, P., Houston-Price, C. & Kennedy, O.B. (in press). Increasing food familiarity without the tears: A role for visual exposure? Appetite, DOI: 10.1016/j.appet.2011.05.315 Mather, E.,
Schafer, G.W. & Houston-Price, C. (in press). The impact of novel labels
on visual processing during infancy. British
Journal of Developmental Psychology, DOI: 10.1348/2044-835X.002008 Wilkinson, K.S.
& Houston-Price, C. (in press). Once upon a time there was a
pulchritudinous princess: The role of word definitions and multiple story
contexts in children’s learning of difficult vocabulary. Applied Psycholinguistics. Houston-Price, C.,
Goddard, K., Seclier, C., Grant, S., Reid, C.J.B.,
Boyden, L.E. & Williams, R (2011). Tracking speakers’ false beliefs: Is
Theory of Mind available earlier for word learning? Developmental
Science, 14, 623-634. Heath, P.M., Houston-Price, C. & Kennedy, O.B. (2010). Can visual exposure impact on children’s visual preferences for fruit and vegetables? Proceedings of the Nutrition Society, 69 (OCE6), E422.Houston-Price, C., Caloghiris,
Z. & Raviglione, E. (2010). Language experience
shapes the development of the mutual exclusivity bias. Infancy, 15(2), 125-150. Houston-Price, C.,
Burton, E., Hickinson, R., Inett,
J., Moore, E., Salmon, K., & Shiba, P. (2009).
Visual exposure elicits positive visual preferences in toddlers. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology,
104, 89-104. Houston-Price, C.,
Butler, L. & Shiba, P. (2009). Visual exposure
impacts on toddlers’ willingness to taste fruit and vegetables. Appetite, 53 (3), 450-453. Some
Recent Presentations Houston-Price, C., Owen, L.H., Hill, C.E. & Kennedy, O.B. (2011, April). Picture-book exposure increases children’s liking of disliked vegetables. British Feeding & Drinking Group, Belfast. Houston-Price, C., Hlil, C.E., Kennedy, O.B. & Owen, L.H. (2010, September). The impact of picture-book exposure on parents’ and children’s food-related behaviours. British Psychological Society Developmental Section, Goldsmiths University. Houston-Price, C. (2010, June). How infants learn how to learn words. City & Hackney SLI SIG. Houston-Price, C. (2010, May). How infants learn how to learn words. Language Development & Cognition Colloquia, Bangor University.Houston-Price, C. & Kennedy, O.B. (2010, March). The impact of visual exposure on children’s willingness to try new foods. VIVA Consortium Workshop, Aberdeen.Houston-Price, C. (2009, December). How infants learn how to learn words. Department of Language & Communication Sciences, City University. Houston-Price, C., Caloghiris, Z. & Raviglione, E. (2009, September). The origins of the mutual exclusivity bias in word learning. British Psychological Society Developmental Section, Nottingham.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. (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, 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, 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, Houston-Price, C. (2009, February). The role of exposure in preference formation. Seminar given to the Department of Psychology, Houston-Price, C. (2009, January). How exposure to words and pictures shapes development. Seminar given to the Department of Psychology, University of Surrey.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.
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