Research

A major part of the research focusses on the understanding of motion, in particular paths of motion and biological motion patterns. Experimental data are obtained to investigate motion categorization, the development of the motion lexicon, and the role of context in perceiving motion. Depending on what aspect of motion understanding an experiment is designed to elicit, different stimuli can be presented to experimental groups of different ages.

Some of the key areas that we investigate are spatial prepositions (such as 'to', 'towards', 'via', and '(away) from') that relate to the path of a motion, and verbs (like 'to walk' and 'to crawl') that relate to (basic-level) motion manner. The use of these and other words depends on categorisation. We investigate how infants and adults categorise motion patterns, if typical instances are preferred to atypical instances, and the interactions between naming and typicality of motion. What is going on when understanding the word 'to run'? What is this word connected to? The velocity of the movement? The repetitive cycles displayed with two legs? The erect posture in which it may occur?

The acquisition of these and other words depends on children's categorisation competence. What is going on in children's minds when they show evidence for understanding the word 'to run'? How soon do they learn to connect atypical running like four-legged animal gaits with the word 'running'? Thus, by examining the linguistic development of children we hope to gain insight into the psychological processes involved in the development of understanding, the early categorization of motion patterns and trajectories as well as word learning relating to these categories.

Moving objects are a natural part of the environment of children. We therefore also try to understand how infants track moving objects, and if they understand others intentions and actions (i.e. the goal of motion). We hope to gain more knowledge about how small children categorise the world and how their conceptual abilities develop.

In categorization studies with adults, a Tobii eye-tracker can be used analogous to the preferential looking experiments described in the section on research with children. The goal of experiments with adults is not to measure if they understand a verbal cue like 'to run', but to find out what is their preferred interpretation of such a cue. These experiments thus tap more directly into categorisation processes: What are typical and atypical instances of 'running'?

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