Research
Language Acquisition
How do young children learn the vocabulary and grammar of their first language? How do children and adults track distributional data at multiple levels of linguistic input to continuously update their existing verb and syntactic knowledge?
Infant Object Cognition
How do infants represent and reason about the interactions between objects in simple physical events, such as occlusion, containment, and support?
Spatial Cognition and Language
How can we use language to uncover the developmental origins of abstract geometry? How might the language we use to talk about geometry affect our geometric reasoning? How do infants and young children link language to different domains of information, such as objects and places, and use language and geometry to learn in these domains?
Number Word Learning How do young children learn the meaning of number words? What can young children’s learning tell us about the cognitive origins of natural number?
How do young children learn the vocabulary and grammar of their first language? How do children and adults track distributional data at multiple levels of linguistic input to continuously update their existing verb and syntactic knowledge?
- Lin, Y. (2020). Linking verbs to syntax (Doctoral dissertation).
- Wang, C., Lin, Y., & Fisher, C. (July 2022). Does verb-bias learning transfer from comprehension to production? International Workshop on Language Production, Pittsburgh, PA.
- Lin, Y., & Fisher, C. (2017). Error-based learning: A mechanism for linking verbs to syntax. In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society.
- Trueswell, J. C., Lin, Y., Armstrong, B., Cartmill, E. A., Goldin-Meadow, S., & Gleitman, L. R. (2016). Perceiving referential intent: Dynamics of reference in natural parent-child interactions. Cognition, 148, 117-135.
Infant Object Cognition
How do infants represent and reason about the interactions between objects in simple physical events, such as occlusion, containment, and support?
- Lin, Y., Stavans, M., Li, X., Baillargeon, R. (2024). Infants can use many types of categorical information to individuate objects, including former event roles and memberships in category-based arrays. Cognitive Psychology, 149, 101640.
- Dasgupta, A., Duan, J., Ang, M. H., Lin, Y., Wang, S., Baillargeon, R., & Tan, C. (2023). A benchmark for modeling violation-of-expectation in physical reasoning across event categories. In Culbertson, J., Perfors, A., Rabagliati, H., & Ramenzoni, V. (Eds.), Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Vol. 45, 1755-1762.
- Lin, Y., Stavans, M., & Baillargeon, R. (2022). Infants’ physical reasoning and the cognitive architecture that supports it. To appear in O. Houdé & G. Borst (Eds.-in-chief), Cambridge handbook of cognitive development. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
- Lin, Y., Li, J., Gertner, Y., Ng, W., Fisher, C. L., & Baillargeon, R. (2021). How do the object-file and physical-reasoning systems interact? Evidence from priming effects with object arrays or novel labels. Cognitive Psychology, 125, 101368.
- Lin, Y., Stavans, M., & Baillargeon, R. (March 2019). Infants can use many types of categorical descriptors to individuate objects. The Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Baltimore, MD.
Spatial Cognition and Language
How can we use language to uncover the developmental origins of abstract geometry? How might the language we use to talk about geometry affect our geometric reasoning? How do infants and young children link language to different domains of information, such as objects and places, and use language and geometry to learn in these domains?
- Lin, Y., & Dillon, M. (invited revision). Seeing the forest but naming the trees: An object-over-place bias in word learning.
- Lin, Y., & Dillon, M. (2024). We Are Wanderers: Adult abstract geometry reflects spatial navigation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 153(2), 386-398.
- Lin, Y., & Dillon, M. (2023). Young children and adults extend novel nouns to objects not places. In Culbertson, J., Perfors, A., Rabagliati, H., & Ramenzoni, V. (Eds.), Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Vol. 45, 1371-1378.
- Lin, Y., Bochynska, A., Dilks, D., & Dillon, M. (April 2022). Scene and heard: Infants categorize scenes with language. The Biennial Meeting of the Cognitive Development Society, Madison, WI.
Number Word Learning How do young children learn the meaning of number words? What can young children’s learning tell us about the cognitive origins of natural number?
- Lin, Y., Baillargeon, R. & Hyde, D. (April 2017). 21-month-olds can rapidly learn the meaning of ‘four’. The Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Austin, TX.