Conceptual precursors to language

By Susan J. Hespos, Elizabeth S. Spelke. 2004

314 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Cultural Studies, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Language and Linguistics, Linguistics

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Citations in the corpus

Experience Grounds Language (2020, background): “Hespos and Spelke (2004) show pre-linguistic category formation within children that are then later codiﬁed by social constructs.”
PIQA: Reasoning about Physical Commonsense in Natural Language (2019, background): “Before children learn language, they already start forming categories and concepts based on the physical properties of objects around them (Hespos and Spelke 2004).”
Language‐dependent memory in bilingual learning (2006, background): “…relationship between language and memory is embedded in theoretical discussions about the extent to which thought is linguistic (e.g. Chomsky, 1980; Hespos & Spelke, 2004; Pinker, 1994; Whorf, 1956) and the degree to which cognitive processes vary according to the language one speaks (e.g.…”
Sex differences in intrinsic aptitude for mathematics and science?: a critical review. (2005, background): “Infants also begin to represent objects that move fully out of view, to make inferences about mechanical interactions between objects, and to group objects into categories (e.g., Baillargeon , 2004; Hespos & Spelke, 2004; Quinn & Eimas, 1996).”
Mind Games: Game Engines as an Architecture for Intuitive Physics. (2017, background): “As an example, the notion of containment appears relatively early in human development [50, 51].”
The Centrality of Language in Human Cognition (2016, background): “…show sensitivity to notions of spatial relations such as top/bottom/front/back (E. V. Clark, 1980; Kuczaj & Maratsos, 1975; Levine & Carey, 1982) and notions of physical support and containment (Hespos & Baillargeon, 2008; Hespos & Spelke, 2004) before they fully know the corresponding words.”
Dimensions and their poles: A metric and topological approach to opposites (2011, unknown): “…HORIZONTAL VERTICAL, TIGHT LOOSE, OPENING CLOSING, LEFT RIGHT, and UP DOWN before they acquire spatial language (Casasola, 2008; Casasola, Cohen, & Chiarello, 2003; Hespos & Spelke, 2004; McDonough, Choi, & Mandler, 2003; Quinn & Bhatt, 2005; Quinn, Cummins, Kase, Martin, & Weisman, 1996).”
Learning from others: children's construction of concepts. (2009, background): “Interestingly, 5-month-old infants exposed to English successfully categorized both contrasts (Hespos & Spelke 2004).”
PROST: Physical Reasoning about Objects through Space and Time (2021, background): “Children grab, push, and play with the objects around them to form concepts about the world they live in even before learning to talk (Hespos and Spelke, 2004).”
The Development of Infants' Spatial Categories (2008, unknown): “Similarly, English-learning 5-month-olds generalize a tight-fit support relation to a tight-fit containment relation (Hespos & Spelke, 2004).”
Why some spatial semantic categories are harder to learn than others: The typological prevalence hypothesis (2009, background): “Past research has demonstrated that cognitive predispositions cannot be the whole story, since children learn language-specific spatial semantic categories even before age 2 (e.g., Bowerman & Choi, 2001; Casasola, 2005; Hespos & Spelke, 2004).”