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Word Learning (word + learning)
Selected AbstractsFinding the Signal by Adding Noise: The Role of Noncontrastive Phonetic Variability in Early Word LearningINFANCY, Issue 6 2010Gwyneth C. Rost It is well attested that 14-month-olds have difficulty learning similar sounding words (e.g., bih/dih), despite their excellent phonetic discrimination abilities. By contrast, Rost and McMurray (2009) recently demonstrated that 14-month-olds' minimal-pair learning can be improved by the presentation of words by multiple talkers. This study investigates which components of the variability found in multitalker input improved infants' processing, assessing both the phonologically contrastive aspects of the speech stream and phonologically irrelevant indexical and suprasegmental aspects. In the first two experiments, speaker was held constant while cues to word-initial voicing were systematically manipulated. Infants failed in both cases. The third experiment introduced variability in speaker, but voicing cues were invariant within each category. Infants in this condition learned the words. We conclude that aspects of the speech signal that have been typically thought of as noise are in fact valuable information,signal,for the young word learner. [source] Computational Modeling of Statistical Learning: Effects of Transitional Probability Versus Frequency and Links to Word LearningINFANCY, Issue 5 2010Daniel Mirman Statistical learning mechanisms play an important role in theories of language acquisition and processing. Recurrent neural network models have provided important insights into how these mechanisms might operate. We examined whether such networks capture two key findings in human statistical learning. In Simulation 1, a simple recurrent network (SRN) performed much like human learners: it was sensitive to both transitional probability and frequency, with frequency dominating early in learning and probability emerging as the dominant cue later in learning. In Simulation 2, an SRN captured links between statistical segmentation and word learning in infants and adults, and suggested that these links arise because phonological representations are more distinctive for syllables with higher transitional probability. Beyond simply simulating general phenomena, these models provide new insights into underlying mechanisms and generate novel behavioral predictions. [source] Better Processing of Consonantal Over Vocalic Information in Word Learning at 16 Months of AgeINFANCY, Issue 4 2009Mélanie Havy Previous research using the name-based categorization task has shown that 20-month-old infants can simultaneously learn 2 words that only differ by 1 consonantal feature but fail to do so when the words only differ by 1 vocalic feature. This asymmetry was taken as evidence for the proposal that consonants are more important than vowels at the lexical level. This study explores this consonant-vowel asymmetry in 16-month-old infants, using an interactive word learning task. It shows that the pattern of the 16-month-olds is the same as that of the 20-month-olds. Infants succeeded with 1-feature consonantal contrasts (either place or voicing) but were at chance level with 1-feature vocalic contrasts (either place or height). These results thus contribute to a growing body of evidence establishing, from early infancy to adulthood, that consonants and vowels have different roles in lexical acquisition and processing. [source] Influence of First Language Orthographic Experience on Second Language Decoding and Word LearningLANGUAGE LEARNING, Issue 1 2008Megumi Hamada This study examined the influence of first language (L1) orthographic experiences on decoding and semantic information retention of new words in a second language (L2). Hypotheses were that congruity in L1 and L2 orthographic experiences determines L2 decoding efficiency, which, in turn, affects semantic information encoding and retention. College-level English L2 learners with typologically similar (Korean) and dissimilar (Chinese) L1 backgrounds were participants. Their decoding efficiency was measured by a pseudoword naming task with phonologically regular and irregular conditions. They learned the meaning of the pseudowords paired with pictures. Subsequent recall tasks showed that the Korean group had better overall retention but greater impairment with the irregular pseudowords. These findings suggest that L1 orthographic distance influences L2 word learning processes. [source] The Effect of Frequency of Input-Enhancements on Word Learning and Text ComprehensionLANGUAGE LEARNING, Issue 2 2007Susanne Rott Research on second language lexical development during reading has found positive effects for word frequency, the provision of glosses, and elaborative word processing. However, findings have been inconclusive regarding the effect of such intervention tasks on long-term retention. Likewise, few studies have looked at the cumulative effect of interventions on word learning or text comprehension. This investigation sought to assess the effect of increased frequency of target words (TWs) comparing lexical gain of words that occurred once (F1) or four times (F4) in the input passage. The study further investigated the combined effect of frequency (F4) and semantic or visual enhancements. It compared the following reading conditions: (a) TWs were glossed four times in the text (four-gloss: 4G); (b) TWs were first glossed, then retrieved in the first language, and bolded twice (gloss-retrieval: GR); and (c) TWs were first glossed and then bolded three times (gloss-bolding: GB). In addition, the study assessed the effect of these interventions on long-term retention (4,6 weeks) of lexical knowledge and on text comprehension. Findings revealed that the GR and 4G reading conditions resulted in more productive word gain than the GB condition or when readers encountered a TW only once. Repeated visual enhancements seemed to have no effect on strengthening word encoding. The comprehension of main ideas was highest when the TW was glossed four times followed by the gloss-bolding reading condition and the gloss-retrieval task. [source] Proper Names in Early Word Learning: Rethinking a Theoretical Account of Lexical DevelopmentMIND & LANGUAGE, Issue 4 2009D. GEOFFREY HALL There is evidence that children learn both proper names and count nouns from the outset of lexical development. Furthermore, children's first proper names are typically words for people, whereas their first count nouns are commonly terms for other objects, including artifacts. I argue that these facts represent a challenge for two well-known theoretical accounts of object word learning. I defend an alternative account, which credits young children with conceptual resources to acquire words for both individual objects and object categories, and conceptual biases to construe some objects (notably people) as individuals in their own right and most other objects as instances of their category. [source] The role of competition in word learning via referent selectionDEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE, Issue 5 2010Jessica S. Horst Previous research suggests that competition among the objects present during referent selection influences young children's ability to learn words in fast mapping tasks. The present study systematically explored this issue with 30-month-old children. Children first received referent selection trials with a target object and either two, three or four competitor objects. Then, after a short delay, children were tested on their ability to retain the newly fast-mapped names. Overall, the number of competitors did not affect children's ability to form the initial name,object mappings. However, only children who encountered few competitors during referent selection demonstrated significant levels of retention. Results and implications are discussed in terms of the role of competition in studies of children's fast mapping. The relationship between referent selection and full word learning is also discussed. [source] The first steps in word learning are easier when the shoes fit: comparing monolingual and bilingual infantsDEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE, Issue 1 2010Karen Mattock English, French, and bilingual English-French 17-month-old infants were compared for their performance on a word learning task using the Switch task. Object names presented a /b/ vs. /g/ contrast that is phonemic in both English and French, and auditory strings comprised English and French pronunciations by an adult bilingual. Infants were habituated to two novel objects labeled ,bowce' or ,gowce' and were then presented with a switch trial where a familiar word and familiar object were paired in a novel combination, and a same trial with a familiar word,object pairing. Bilingual infants looked significantly longer to switch vs. same trials, but English and French monolinguals did not, suggesting that bilingual infants can learn word,object associations when the phonetic conditions favor their input. Monolingual infants likely failed because the bilingual mode of presentation increased phonetic variability and did not match their real-world input. Experiment 2 tested this hypothesis by presenting monolingual infants with nonce word tokens restricted to native language pronunciations. Monolinguals succeeded in this case. Experiment 3 revealed that the presence of unfamiliar pronunciations in Experiment 2, rather than a reduction in overall phonetic variability was the key factor to success, as French infants failed when tested with English pronunciations of the nonce words. Thus phonetic variability impacts how infants perform in the switch task in ways that contribute to differences in monolingual and bilingual performance. Moreover, both monolinguals and bilinguals are developing adaptive speech processing skills that are specific to the language(s) they are learning. [source] Monolingual, bilingual, trilingual: infants' language experience influences the development of a word-learning heuristicDEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE, Issue 5 2009Krista Byers-Heinlein How infants learn new words is a fundamental puzzle in language acquisition. To guide their word learning, infants exploit systematic word-learning heuristics that allow them to link new words to likely referents. By 17 months, infants show a tendency to associate a novel noun with a novel object rather than a familiar one, a heuristic known as disambiguation. Yet, the developmental origins of this heuristic remain unknown. We compared disambiguation in 17- to 18-month-old infants from different language backgrounds to determine whether language experience influences its development, or whether disambiguation instead emerges as a result of maturation or social experience. Monolinguals showed strong use of disambiguation, bilinguals showed marginal use, and trilinguals showed no disambiguation. The number of languages being learned, but not vocabulary size, predicted performance. The results point to a key role for language experience in the development of disambiguation, and help to distinguish among theoretical accounts of its emergence. [source] Sensitivity to sampling in Bayesian word learningDEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE, Issue 3 2007Fei Xu We report a new study testing our proposal that word learning may be best explained as an approximate form of Bayesian inference (Xu & Tenenbaum, in press). Children are capable of learning word meanings across a wide range of communicative contexts. In different contexts, learners may encounter different sampling processes generating the examples of word,object pairings they observe. An ideal Bayesian word learner could take into account these differences in the sampling process and adjust his/her inferences about word meaning accordingly. We tested how children and adults learned words for novel object kinds in two sampling contexts, in which the objects to be labeled were sampled either by a knowledgeable teacher or by the learners themselves. Both adults and children generalized more conservatively in the former context; that is, they restricted the label to just those objects most similar to the labeled examples when the exemplars were chosen by a knowledgeable teacher, but not when chosen by the learners themselves. We discuss how this result follows naturally from a Bayesian analysis, but not from other statistical approaches such as associative word-learning models. [source] The origins and evolution of links between word learning and conceptual organization: new evidence from 11-month-oldsDEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE, Issue 2 2003Sandra Waxman How do infants map words to their meaning? How do they discover that different types of words (e.g. noun, adjective) refer to different aspects of the same objects (e.g. category, property)? We have proposed that (1) infants begin with a broad expectation that novel open-class words (both nouns and adjectives) highlight commonalities (both category- and property-based) among objects, and that (2) this initial expectation is subsequently fine-tuned through linguistic experience. We examine the first part of this proposal, asking whether 11-month-old infants can construe the very same set of objects (e.g. four purple animals) either as members of an object category (e.g. animals) or as embodying a salient object property (e.g. four purple things), and whether naming (with count nouns vs. adjectives) differentially influences their construals. Results support the proposal. Infants treated novel nouns and adjectives identically, mapping both types of words to both category- and property-based commonalities among objects. [source] Influences of Infant-Directed Speech on Early Word RecognitionINFANCY, Issue 6 2009Leher Singh When addressing infants, many adults adopt a particular type of speech, known as infant-directed speech (IDS). IDS is characterized by exaggerated intonation, as well as reduced speech rate, shorter utterance duration, and grammatical simplification. It is commonly asserted that IDS serves in part to facilitate language learning. Although intuitively appealing, direct empirical tests of this claim are surprisingly scarce. Additionally, studies that have examined associations between IDS and language learning have measured learning within a single laboratory session rather than the type of long-term storage of information necessary for word learning. In this study, 7- and 8-month-old infants' long-term memory for words was assessed when words were spoken in IDS and adult-directed speech (ADS). Word recognition over the long term was successful for words introduced in IDS, but not for those introduced in ADS, regardless of the register in which recognition stimuli were produced. Findings are discussed in the context of the influence of particular input styles on emergent word knowledge in prelexical infants. [source] Fast Mapping but Poor Retention by 24-Month-Old InfantsINFANCY, Issue 2 2008Jessica S. Horst Four experiments explored the processes that bridge between referent selection and word learning. Twenty-four-month-old infants were presented with several novel names during a referent selection task that included both familiar and novel objects and tested for retention after a 5-min delay. The 5-min delay ensured that word learning was based on retrieval from long-term memory. Moreover, the relative familiarity of objects used during the retention test was explicitly controlled. Across experiments, infants were excellent at referent selection, but very poor at retention. Although the highly controlled retention test was clearly challenging, infants were able to demonstrate retention of the first 4 novel names presented in the session when referent selection was augmented with ostensive naming. These results suggest that fast mapping is robust for reference selection but might be more transient than previously reported for lexical retention. The relations between reference selection and retention are discussed in terms of competitive processes on 2 timescales: competition among objects on individual referent selection trials and competition among multiple novel name,object mappings made across an experimental session. [source] Type of Maternal Object Motion During Synchronous Naming Predicts Preverbal Infants' Learning of Word,Object RelationsINFANCY, Issue 2 2008Dalit J. Matatyaho Mothers' use of specific types of object motion in synchrony with object naming was examined, along with infants' joint attention to the mother and object, as a predictor of word learning. During a semistructured 3-min play episode, mothers (N = 24) taught the names of 2 toy objects to their preverbal 6- to 8-month-old infants. The episodes were recoded from Gogate, Bolzani, and Betancourt (2006) to provide a more fine-grained description of object motions used by mothers during naming. The results indicated that mothers used forward/downward and shaking motions more frequently and upward and backward motions less frequently in temporal synchrony with the spoken words. These motions likely highlight novel word,object relations. Furthermore, maternal use of shaking motions in synchrony with the spoken words and infants' ability to switch gaze from mother to object contributed to infants' learning of the word,object relations, as observed on a posttest. Thus, preverbal infants' learn word,object relations within an embodied system involving tightly coupled interaction between infants' perception and joint attention, and specific properties of caregivers' naming. [source] Searching for the Hebb effect in Down syndrome: evidence for a dissociation between verbal short-term memory and domain-general learning of serial orderJOURNAL OF INTELLECTUAL DISABILITY RESEARCH, Issue 4 2010E. K. Mosse Abstract Background The Hebb effect is a form of repetition-driven long-term learning that is thought to provide an analogue for the processes involved in new word learning. Other evidence suggests that verbal short-term memory also constrains now vocabulary acquisition, but if the Hebb effect is independent of short-term memory, then it may be possible to demonstrate its preservation in a sample of individuals with Down syndrome, who typically show a verbal short-term memory deficit alongside surprising relative strengths in vocabulary. Methods In two experiments, individuals both with and without Down syndrome (matched for receptive vocabulary) completed immediate serial recall tasks incorporating a Hebb repetition paradigm in either verbal or visuospatial conditions. Results Both groups demonstrated equivalent benefit from Hebb repetition, despite individuals with Down syndrome showing significantly lower verbal short-term memory spans. The resultant Hebb effect was equivalent across verbal and visuospatial domains. Conclusions These studies suggest that the Hebb effect is essentially preserved within Down syndrome, implying that explicit verbal short-term memory is dissociable from potentially more implicit Hebb learning. The relative strength in receptive vocabulary observed in Down syndrome may therefore be supported by largely intact long-term as opposed to short-term serial order learning. This in turn may have implications for teaching methods and interventions that present new phonological material to individuals with Down syndrome. [source] The Effect of Frequency of Input-Enhancements on Word Learning and Text ComprehensionLANGUAGE LEARNING, Issue 2 2007Susanne Rott Research on second language lexical development during reading has found positive effects for word frequency, the provision of glosses, and elaborative word processing. However, findings have been inconclusive regarding the effect of such intervention tasks on long-term retention. Likewise, few studies have looked at the cumulative effect of interventions on word learning or text comprehension. This investigation sought to assess the effect of increased frequency of target words (TWs) comparing lexical gain of words that occurred once (F1) or four times (F4) in the input passage. The study further investigated the combined effect of frequency (F4) and semantic or visual enhancements. It compared the following reading conditions: (a) TWs were glossed four times in the text (four-gloss: 4G); (b) TWs were first glossed, then retrieved in the first language, and bolded twice (gloss-retrieval: GR); and (c) TWs were first glossed and then bolded three times (gloss-bolding: GB). In addition, the study assessed the effect of these interventions on long-term retention (4,6 weeks) of lexical knowledge and on text comprehension. Findings revealed that the GR and 4G reading conditions resulted in more productive word gain than the GB condition or when readers encountered a TW only once. Repeated visual enhancements seemed to have no effect on strengthening word encoding. The comprehension of main ideas was highest when the TW was glossed four times followed by the gloss-bolding reading condition and the gloss-retrieval task. [source] Proper Names in Early Word Learning: Rethinking a Theoretical Account of Lexical DevelopmentMIND & LANGUAGE, Issue 4 2009D. GEOFFREY HALL There is evidence that children learn both proper names and count nouns from the outset of lexical development. Furthermore, children's first proper names are typically words for people, whereas their first count nouns are commonly terms for other objects, including artifacts. I argue that these facts represent a challenge for two well-known theoretical accounts of object word learning. I defend an alternative account, which credits young children with conceptual resources to acquire words for both individual objects and object categories, and conceptual biases to construe some objects (notably people) as individuals in their own right and most other objects as instances of their category. [source] Mindreading, Communication and the Learning of Names for ThingsMIND & LANGUAGE, Issue 1-2 2002Paul Bloom Children are strikingly good at learning the meanings of names for things. There is considerable evidence that they solve this mapping problem through inferring the referential intentions of other people. This mindreading capacity might also underlie children's assumptions that words do not overlap in reference, and that new words are likely to refer to whole objects. Finally, there is some support for the view that the mindreading that underlies word learning is due to a general capacity to infer mental states, not a submodule that is dedicated to communication. [source] How an appreciation of conventionality shapes early word learningNEW DIRECTIONS FOR CHILD & ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT, Issue 115 2007Mark A. Sabbagh Children's sensitivity to the shared, conventional nature of word meanings makes their word learning more efficient and less prone to error. After reviewing the evidence in support of this claim, we suggest that children's earliest appreciation of conventionality might be rooted in limitations in their theory-of-mind skills. [source] Do children with autism spectrum disorders show a shape bias in word learning?AUTISM RESEARCH, Issue 4 2008Saime Tek Abstract Many children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) acquire a sizeable lexicon. However, these children also seem to understand and/or store the meanings of words differently from typically developing children. One of the mechanisms that helps typically developing children learn novel words is the shape bias, in which the referent of a noun is mapped onto the shape of an object, rather than onto its color, texture, or size. We hypothesized that children with autistic disorder would show reduced or absent shape bias. Using the intermodal preferential looking paradigm , we compared the performance of young children with ASD and typically developing children (TYP), across four time points, in their use of shape bias. Neither group showed a shape bias at Visit 1, when half of the children in both groups produced fewer than 50 count nouns. Only the TYP group showed a shape bias at Visits 2, 3, and 4. According to the growth curve analyses, the rate of increase in the shape bias scores over time was significant for the TYP children. The fact that the TYP group showed a shape bias at 24 months of age, whereas children with ASD did not demonstrate a shape bias despite a sizeable vocabulary, supports a dissociation between vocabulary size and principles governing acquisition in ASD children from early in language development. [source] The Effects of Feature-Label-Order and Their Implications for Symbolic LearningCOGNITIVE SCIENCE - A MULTIDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL, Issue 6 2010Michael Ramscar Abstract Symbols enable people to organize and communicate about the world. However, the ways in which symbolic knowledge is learned and then represented in the mind are poorly understood. We present a formal analysis of symbolic learning,in particular, word learning,in terms of prediction and cue competition, and we consider two possible ways in which symbols might be learned: by learning to predict a label from the features of objects and events in the world, and by learning to predict features from a label. This analysis predicts significant differences in symbolic learning depending on the sequencing of objects and labels. We report a computational simulation and two human experiments that confirm these differences, revealing the existence of Feature-Label-Ordering effects in learning. Discrimination learning is facilitated when objects predict labels, but not when labels predict objects. Our results and analysis suggest that the semantic categories people use to understand and communicate about the world can only be learned if labels are predicted from objects. We discuss the implications of this for our understanding of the nature of language and symbolic thought, and in particular, for theories of reference. [source] A One-to-One Bias and Fast Mapping Support Preschoolers' Learning About Faces and VoicesCOGNITIVE SCIENCE - A MULTIDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL, Issue 5 2010Mariko Moher Abstract A multimodal person representation contains information about what a person looks like and what a person sounds like. However, little is known about how children form these face-voice mappings. Here, we explored the possibility that two cognitive tools that guide word learning, a one-to-one mapping bias and fast mapping, also guide children's learning about faces and voices. We taught 4- and 5-year-olds mappings between three individual faces and voices, then presented them with new faces and voices. In Experiment 1, we found that children rapidly learned face-voice mappings from just a few exposures, and furthermore spontaneously mapped novel faces to novel voices using a one-to-one mapping bias (that each face can produce only one voice). In Experiment 2, we found that children's face-voice representations are abstract, generalizing to novel tokens of a person. In Experiment 3, we found that children retained in memory the face-voice mappings that they had generated via inference (i.e., they showed evidence of fast mapping), and used these newly formed representations to generate further mappings between new faces and voices. These findings suggest that preschoolers' rapid learning about faces and voices may be aided by biases that are similar to those that support word learning. [source] | ||||||||||||||||