Francesco Antilici

Bio: Francesco Antilici is an academic researcher. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 3 citations.

Can Infants Reason About Beliefs

Abstract: At what point in development does the capacity to reason about what people think emerge? While developmental psychologists have been investigating this question for more than thirty years, the evidence they have gained so far is conflicting. On the one hand, the results of traditional, direct false-beliefs tests, which involve asking participants how a person with a false belief will act, suggest that most children under four years of age are still unaware that beliefs can be false. On the other hand, false-belief tests using indirect measures, such as, for example, looking times or anticipatory looking, suggest that even infants ascribe false beliefs to other people. As many have noted, these results pose a deep developmental puzzle. In this work, I defend the claim that infants can already reason about beliefs. On the one hand, I argue that alternative interpretations of indirect false-belief tests fall short of the mark. On the other, I argue that the fact that young children fail direct false-belief tests can be explained in either of two ways, both of which are compatible with the claim that the capacity to reason about beliefs emerges early on. The first option is to maintain that young children fail because of performance difficulties. This type of position has been defended by other authors, but I argue that the particular proposal I put forward (which I call the processing-time account) offers a better account of the evidence. In contrast, the second option (which I call they hybrid approach) is one that, to the best of my knowledge, no one else has defended so far. This consists in arguing that direct and indirect false-belief tests recruit distinct cognitive systems, each of which can independently sustain the ability to reason about beliefs, but which follow different developmental trajectories. After exploring these two options, I consider which is best supported by the evidence.

How Children Learn the Meanings of Words

Abstract: How Children Learn the Meanings of Words by Paul Bloom. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2000, xii+300 pp. Reviewed by Masahiko Minami San Francisco State University How do children learn the meanings of words? In his new book, Paul Bloom examines a variety of issues associated with children's word learning, a process intricately connected with other aspects of language acquisition. Bloom claims that children learn words via cognitive abilities that already exist for other pur- poses, such as the ability to infer others' intentions, the ability to acquire concepts, and an appreciation of syntactic In structure. Bloom's book provides a series of el- egant and convincing arguments concerning how children learn words. briefly Chapter First Words, Bloom lays out the plan for the book and describes issues surrounding the overall topic. In Chapter 2 the author explores fast mapping, in which children make a quick guess about a word's denotation on the basis of limited experience. Chapter 3, Theory of Mind, deals with a wide range of topics, including the listener's ability to determine the references made by his or her interlocutor's choice of words; here also, Bloom investigates children's appreciation of the mental states of others, through which children acquire lexical items (and syntax as well) by means of associative acquire are nouns, learning. Because the majority of words that children initially Bloom gives special treatment to nouns and pronouns: Common nouns are discussed in Chapter 4, and pronouns and proper names are dealt with in Chapter 5. In Chapter 6, Concepts and Categories, Bloom extends his analysis to the conceptual foundations of word learning. In Chapter Naming Representations, he discusses a case study important to any theory of concepts and naming visual representations. From here, Bloom moves to other parts of speech: In Chapter 8, Learning Words through Linguistic Context, he offers an account of how chil- dren learn verbs and adjectives, as the development of syntactic abilities cannot be dissociated from the development of lexical abilities. Chapter 9 deals with learn the how we numbers and Chapter 10 with how the words we learn affect our mental life. In Chapter 11, Final Words, Bloom provides a brief summary and some general remarks. Throughout the book, the author weaves in ideas pro- posed by such linguists, psychologists, and philosophers as B. F. Skinner, Noam Chomsky, and Jean Piaget, who, through different lenses, have closely observed words for and analyzed how human beings develop and around them. issue long relevant to how they conceptualize the world As with most language acquisition texts, Bloom makes early reference to an human development: the nature/nurture debate. These alter- ISSN 1050-4273 Vol. 12 Issues in Applied Linguistics © 2001, Regents of the University of California No.

What's Within. Nativism Reconsidered

Abstract: Book Information What's Within. Nativism Reconsidered. What's Within. Nativism Reconsidered F. Cowie New York/Oxford Oxford University Press 1999 xvii + 334 Hardback US$35.00 By F. Cowie. Oxford University Press. New York/Oxford. Pp. xvii + 334. Hardback:US$35.00,