Julien Mayor

• Ackermann, Lena; Lo, Chang Huan; Mani, Nivedita & Mayor, Julien (2020). Word learning from a tablet app: Toddlers perform better in a passive context. PLOS ONE.  ISSN 1932-6203. . doi: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240519 Full text in Research Archive.
• Althaus, Nadja; Gliozzi, Valentina; Mayor, Julien & Plunkett, Kim (2020). Infant categorization as a dynamic process linked to memory. Royal Society Open Science.  ISSN 2054-5703.  7(200328) . doi: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.200328 Full text in Research Archive.
• Bobb, Susan; Von Holzen, Katie; Mayor, Julien; Mani, Nivedita & Carreiras, Manuel (2020). Co-activation of the L2 during L1 auditory processing: An ERP cross-modal priming study. Brain and Language.  ISSN 0093-934X.  203, s 104739 . doi: 10.1016/j.bandl.2019.104739 Full text in Research Archive. Show summary

  Several studies have shown that unbalanced bilinguals activate both of their languages simultaneously during L2 processing; however, evidence for L2 activation while participants are tested exclusively in their L1 has been more tenuous. Here, we investigate whether bilingual participants implicitly activate the label for a picture in their two languages, and whether labels activated in L2 can prime activation of cross-linguistically related L1 lexical targets. We tested highly proficient early Spanish-Basque bilinguals on an ERP cross-modal priming task conducted only in their L1, Spanish. Participants activated prime picture labels in both Spanish and Basque. More importantly, participants activated Basque translations of Spanish auditory targets, even in a Spanish experimental environment with no reference to Basque. Results provide strong evidence for non-selective bilingual lexical access, showing co-activation extending to lexical levels beyond phonological overlap. Our results add to the growing body of evidence for the interconnective nature of bilingual language activation.

• Chai, Jun Ho; Lo, Chang Huan & Mayor, Julien (2020). A Bayesian-Inspired Item Response Theory–Based Framework to Produce Very Short Versions of MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventories. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research.  ISSN 1092-4388. . doi: 10.1044/2020_JSLHR-20-00361 Full text in Research Archive.
• Frank, Michael; Alcock, Katherine; Arias-Trejo, Natalia; Ascherslegen, Gisa; Baldwin, Dare; Barbu, Stephanie; Bergelson, Elika; Bergmann, Christina; Kartushina, Natalia; Mayor, Julien; Trøan, Anna Stigum; Black, Alexis; Blything, Ryan; Böhland, Maximilian; Borovsky, Arielle; Byers-Heinlein, Krista; Cristia, Alejandrina; Durier, Virginie; Fennel, Christopher; Ferry, Alissa; Fikkert, Paula; Floccia, Caroline; Fritzsche, Tom; Gampe, Anja; Judith, Gervain; Gonzalez-Gomez, Nayeli; Havron, Naomi; Höhle, Barbara; Houston, Derek; Ishikawa, Mitsuhiko; Itakura, Shoji; Johnson, Scott; Junge, Caroline; Kellier, Danielle; Kline, Melissa; Kominsky, Jonathan; Lany, Jill; Levelt, Claartje; Lew-Williams, Casey; Liu, Liquan; Mani, Nivedita; Moriguchi, Yusuke; Nazzi, Thierry; Paulus, Markus; Polka, Linda; Saffran, Jenny; Sato, Ayumi; Schreiner, Melanie; Singh, Leher; Sundara, Megha; Twomey, Katherine; Von Holzen, Katie; Waxman, Sandra; Werker, Janet; Yurovsky, Daniel & Soderstrom, Melanie (2020). Quantifying sources of variability in infancy research using the infant-directed speech preference. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science (AMPPS).  ISSN 2515-2459. . doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/2515245919900809 Show summary

  The field of psychology has become increasingly concerned with issues related to methodology and replicability. Infancy researchers face specific challenges related to replicability: high-powered studies are difficult to conduct, testing conditions vary across labs, and different labs have access to different infant populations, amongst other factors. Addressing these concerns, we report on a large-scale, multi-site study aimed at 1) assessing the overall replicability of a single theoretically-important phenomenon and 2) examining methodological, situational, cultural, and developmental moderators. We focus on infants’ preference for infant-directed speech (IDS) over adult-directed speech (ADS). Stimuli of mothers speaking to their infants and to an adult were created using semi-naturalistic laboratory-based audio recordings in North American English. Infants’ relative preference for IDS and ADS was assessed across 67 laboratories in North America, Europe, and Asia using the three commonly-used infant discrimination methods (head-turn preference, central fixation, and eye tracking). The overall meta-analytic effect size (Cohen’s d) was 0.35 [0.29 - 0.42], which was reliably above zero but smaller than that found in a previous meta-analysis (0.72). The IDS preference was significantly stronger in older children, in those children for whom the stimuli matched their native language and dialect, and in data from labs using the head-turn preference procedure. Together these findings replicate the infant-directed speech preference but suggest that its magnitude is modulated by development, native language experience, and testing procedure.

• Sia, Ming Yean & Mayor, Julien (2020). Syntactic cues help disambiguate objects referred to with count nouns: Illustration with Malay children. Child Development.  ISSN 0009-3920.  92(1), s 101- 114 . doi: doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13401 Full text in Research Archive. Show summary

  Children employ multiple cues to identify the referent of a novel word. Novel words are often embedded in sentences and children have been shown to use syntactic cues to differentiate between types of words (adjective vs. nouns) and between types of nouns (count vs. mass nouns). In this study, we show that children learning Malay (N = 67), a numeral classifier language, can use syntactic cues to perform even finer‐grained disambiguation–between count nouns. The manipulation of congruence between lexical and syntactic cues reveals a clear developmental trajectory: while 5‐year‐olds use predominantly lexical cues, older children increasingly rely on syntactic cues, such that by 7 years of age, they disambiguate between objects referred to with count nouns using syntactic rather than lexical cues.

• Kartushina, Natalia & Mayor, Julien (2019). Word knowledge in six- to nine-month-old Norwegian infants? Not without additional frequency cues. Royal Society Open Science.  ISSN 2054-5703.  6(9) . doi: 10.1098/rsos.180711 Full text in Research Archive.
• Mayor, Julien; Arias-Trejo, Natalia & Alva, Elda (2018). The Impact of Household Size on Lexical Typicality: An Early Link Between Language and Social Cognition?. Frontiers in Psychology.  ISSN 1664-1078.  9, s 1445 . doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01445 Full text in Research Archive. Show summary

  To communicate successfully, speakers need to use words that are understood by their listeners; they thus need to understand that others have vocabularies different than their own. A key question is whether this social cognition skill is already present in infancy, and whether it can have an impact on early language production. Analysis of the vocabularies of 550 Mexican children revealed that, at 24 months of age, but not at 18 nor at 30 months of age, those who were raised in households with larger numbers of children had more stereotypical vocabularies than those with fewer children. This finding is discussed in light of the hypothesis that communicative pressure may shape early word production; it suggests that bidirectional effects between social cognition and language acquisition are present at two years of age.

• Mayor, Julien & Mani, Nivedita (2018). A short version of the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventories with high validity. Behavior Research Methods.  ISSN 1554-351X.  51, s 1- 2248 . doi: 10.3758/s13428-018-1146-0 Full text in Research Archive. Show summary

  The MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDIs) are among the most widely used evaluation tools for early language development. CDIs are filled in by the parents or caregivers of young children by indicating which of a prespecified list of words and/or sentences their child understands and/or produces. Despite the success of these instruments, their administration is time-consuming and can be of limited use in clinical settings, multilingual environments, or when parents possess low literacy skills. We present a new method through which an estimation of the full-CDI score can be obtained, by combining parental responses on a limited set of words sampled randomly from the full CDI with vocabulary information extracted from the WordBank database, sampled from age-, gender-, and language-matched participants. Real-data simulations using versions of the CDI-WS for American English, German, and Norwegian as examples revealed the high validity and reliability of the instrument, even for tests having just 25 words, effectively cutting administration time to a couple of minutes. Empirical validations with new German-speaking participants confirmed the robustness of the test.

• Klinger, Joern; Mayor, Julien & Colin, Bannard (2016). Children’s faithfulness in imitating language use varies cross-culturally, contingent on prior experience. Child Development.  ISSN 0009-3920.  87(3), s 820- 833 . doi: 10.1111/cdev.12503
• Mayor, Julien & Plunkett, Kim (2014). Infant Word Recognition: Insights from TRACE Simulations. Journal of Memory and Language.  ISSN 0749-596X.  71(1), s 89- 123 . doi: 10.1016/j.jml.2013.09.009
• Mayor, Julien & Plunkett, Kim (2014). Shared Understanding and Idiosyncratic Expression in Early Vocabularies. Developmental Science.  ISSN 1363-755X.  17(3), s 412- 423 . doi: 10.1111/desc.12130
• Mayor, Julien & Plunkett, Kim (2011). A statistical estimate of infant and toddler vocabulary size from CDI analysis. Developmental Science.  ISSN 1363-755X.  14(4), s 769- 785 . doi: 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2010.01024.x
• Mayor, Julien (2010). Are Scientists Nearsighted Gamblers? The Misleading Nature of Impact Factors. Frontiers in Psychology.  ISSN 1664-1078.  1(215)
• Mayor, Julien & Plunkett, Kim (2010). A neurocomputational account of taxonomic responding and fast mapping in early word learning. Psychological review.  ISSN 0033-295X.  117(1), s 1
• Gliozzi, Valentina; Mayor, Julien; Hu, Jon-Fan & Plunkett, Kim (2009). Labels as features (not names) for infant categorization: A neurocomputational approach. Cognitive Science.  ISSN 0364-0213.  33(4), s 709- 738
• Mayor, Julien & Gerstner, Wulfram (2005). Noise-enhanced computation in a model of a cortical column. NeuroReport.  ISSN 0959-4965.  16(11), s 1237- 1240
• Mayor, Julien & Gerstner, Wulfram (2005). Signal buffering in random networks of spiking neurons: Microscopic versus macroscopic phenomena. Physical Review E. Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics.  ISSN 1539-3755.  72(5)
• Mayor, Julien & Gerstner, Wulfram (2004). Transient information flow in a network of excitatory and inhibitory model neurons: Role of noise and signal autocorrelation. Journal of Physiology - Paris.  ISSN 0928-4257.  98(4-6), s 417- 428

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• Mayor, Julien; Gomez, Pablo; Chang, Franklin & Lupyan, Gary (2014). Connectionism coming of age: legacy and future challenges. Frontiers in Psychology.  ISSN 1664-1078.  5(187)

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