Situated Reference in Language Acquisition: Visual and Emotional Information in L1 and L2 Language Comprehension, 2016

Understanding referential relations is a vital prerequisite to successful communication. This understanding emerges through a multi-modal sensory interaction with the environment and rests crucially on the ability to understand cues to other people's intentions and joint attention, e.g., eye-gaze and emotions. As language learning is largely input driven and adult language processing is modulated by visual and emotional information, it is reasonable to predict that these factors affect learner language processing and the emerging adult system, both in L1 and L2, in very important ways. Yet, there is very little research on how children process reference and no research on how this ability develops through the interaction of their linguistic and sensory experience. This project contributed to a more psychologically real understanding of how children process language in the world-context. Through cross-sectional design, they identified factors acting as predictors of children's performance later in language learning.

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