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16:30 - 18:00
Parallel sessions 3
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16:30 - 18:00
Room: HSZ - 7E02
Chair/s:
Kirsten Stark, Rasha Abdel Rahman
Language production––far from happening in the vacuum––is shaped by socio-emotional and thematic contexts and the goals and qualities of social interactions. This symposium explores how semantic, social, and emotional aspects shape language production at different levels of granularity, from the access to the mental lexicon to free verbal interactions. The symposium kicks off with three talks exploring the continuous naming paradigm, known to induce cumulative semantic interference (CSI), i.e., slower naming with each additional member of a (semantic) category being named. Marisha Herb presents pooled analyses of seven experiments and introduces cosine similarity as a unifying measure to quantify different types of semantic relations. The next two talks use browser-based applications of the same paradigm to examine subtypes of thematic relations that have received comparably little empirical attention so far: Dimitra Tsiapou investigates emotional language production, exploring how emotional action verbs (related to basic emotions happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, surprise) elicit an emotion-specific CSI effect. Annika Speckhahn examines social context in language production, demonstrating how words from associatively related social categories (children’s play, conflict, parenthood) shape the CSI effect. Shifting focus to interactive language use, Kirsten Stark presents findings from three online experiments on verbal deception and honesty. She shows that while lying is slower than truth-telling, truth-telling is far from being immune to the social-deceptive context, highlighting the role of planning, control, and monitoring processes involved. Finally, Giusy Cirillo takes a further turn towards real-life interactions and explores how early vocabulary acquirement is shaped by social alignment between toddlers and caregivers: Using a multiphase experimental paradigm with free interaction, referential, and object recognition tasks, she explores how 22- and 30 month-old toddlers’ early language acquisition is modulated by the way caregivers adapt their language to the toddler’s age and knowledge. Throughout these talks, the symposium aims to showcase innovative experimental, browser-based, and response-time sensitive methods for studying language production in both experimental and real-life contexts and various age groups.

The symposium will be chaired by Kirsten Stark and Prof. Dr. Rasha Abdel Rahman1 (rasha.abdel.rahman@hu-berlin.de). Prof. Abdel Rahman will not give a talk herself.
Submission 363
Social Interaction and Vocabulary Learning: An Experimental Approach to Link Linguistic Alignment and Vocabulary Outcomes in Young Children.
SymposiumTalk-05
Presented by: Giusy Cirillo
Giusy Cirillo 1, Cristina Baus 1, 2
1 Department of Cognition, Development and Educational Psychology, University of Barcelona, Spain
2 Institute of Neurosciences, University of Barcelona, Spain
Children acquire language rapidly, yet their development depends on the quality of caregiver input shaped through dynamic, multimodal interactions. This project examines how caregivers adjust their language to children’s age and knowledge, and how these adjustments promote learning. To test this, we designed an experiment with two age groups of parent–child dyads. After a phase of free interaction, children and parents engage in a referential game, pairing words for either familiar (frequent) or novel (infrequent) objects with corresponding images. The next day, children complete an object recognition task using the same items. We expect stronger linguistic alignment in younger compared to older dyads, and for novel compared to familiar words, with alignment predicting better vocabulary learning. This work introduces an experimental approach to studying linguistic alignment in parent–child interactions and its contribution to early word acquisition.