Dev wk 3 Flashcards
Word learning is hard
why is it not just pointing and naming
Point and name is not common (and not universal)
- Usually only nouns
The mapping problem
under and over extension
under-extension. when a child uses a word too narrowly. e.g. dog is the name for family dog only.
over extension: too broadly. e.g. dog refers to horses, lions etc.
The mapping problem
How do children know what a word refers to when there are many stimuli. Also what other situations do these words apply to
infants appear to comprehend nouns as early as..
they start to comprehend verbs when
6 months
~10 months
Comprehension precedes production
e.g.
2 yr olds comprehend 2-3x more words than they can produce
common first word categories
what is there a lack of
Nouns
verbs
social routines ( bye, hello, please)
Adjectives
Lack of things like Articles (the, a)
what age do infants usually speak their first words
when do they produce around 500 words
Around 12 months
by 24-30 months know 500 words
HOWEVER
loads of variability
is infants first word production predictive of later language ability?
not necessarily.
Language comprehension is more indicative
early noun bias. Socially mediated word learning
learning occours in situations where it is easiest to read adults intentions, regardless of word class.
This happens often with nouns.
Not all are nouns, not all are discrete objects.
Early noun bias
what is it
what cross linguistic evidence supports this bias
what hypothesis explains this bias
Cross-linguistically, predominance of nouns in early vocabularies (e.g. 40% of english-speaking children’s first 50 words - Nelson, 1973)
-more nouns even in verb-friendly languages.
Natural partitions hypothesis explains this bias.
Early nouns denote concrete objects easily individuated from surroundings.
Actions, states etc. tend to entities labelled by nouns, less clearly defined in space and time.
words are often used in a variety of situations include
- names for people and objects (stay same across diff contexts)
- Names for actions - e.g. open jar, open door
- Names for properties - gone, more dirty
generally, children make over extension errors until what age
2.5 years.
Some possible mechanisms for word learning
- Innate constraints
- Structural cues in language
- The social pragmatic approach
innate constraints on early word learning
2 types of constraints
Constraints as in reducing hte number of hypotheses a word could be refering to
- Object constraint
- words refer to objects
- Explains early noun bias - Whole object constraint.
- refer to whole objects rather than parts
- Gavagai = whole animal, not tail, ears, legs
innate constraints on early word learning
2 additional constraints
Constraints as in, narrowing down hypotheses of word learning
.3. Principle of Contrast
- no two words have exactly the same meaning
- explains how overcomes over extension
4. Mutual exclusivity
- No object has more than one name.
- helps child overcome whole object constraint and learn words for parts of objects.
problem with constraint theories
- unanswered questions:
- do constraints explain lang learning or just describe it?
! - are constraints innate or learned ? (little research on infants)
! - Are constraints specific to language?
e.g. more about figuring out the intentions and what they are trying to communicate.
study =
cildren shown object “this is the one my uncle gave me”.
put down in array of objects.
ASk “find tthe one my dog likes to play with”. ]
children chose a new toy. constraint of intntions, and not one of words.
structural cues to word learning
what is it.
what
evidence is available
where the word is placed in a sentence suggests it’s meaning.
e.g. asked 3-5 yr olds
do you know what a sib is
do you know what it means to sib?
have you seen any sib?
Task = pick out pictures of action, substance, containers
child accuratly chose
sibbing = picture of kneading
a sib = picture of a bowl
sib = pic of substance
what evidence is there that structural cues to word learning are learned
- children are good at using structural cues to apply nonsense words to Nouns , but are not good at applying to adjectives (at 14 months)
*
e.g. Blickit (novel noun/category) vs Blickish (novel adjective/property).
didn’t assign the noun blicket to a property (colour) but could to a category (animal)
couldn’t assign Blickish to any condition (gave randomly) so they knew it wasn’t a noun but didn’t know exactly how it worked
issues with structural cues to word learning
- Do experimental studies reveal smth ab long term learning or immediate problem solving? e.g. applying tamming as a word isn’t really learning
- structural info can’t solve all problems
The man is tamming over the bridge. Does tamming mean walking, strolling etc - children sensitive to some aspects of sentence structure. Not sure what and when.
- Chicken and egg problem. need to understand words to understand structure to understand words..
The social pragmatic approach
this is made easier for the infant through
Children are learning words and word meaning based from the pragmatic cues in the environment (e.g. what they think the adult is trying to mean/convey).
figure out these intentions easily through
- social world is structured
- routines, games, patterned social interactions. - Social-cognitive skills the infant has.
- Joint attention, intention reading
Social revolution begins at around what age
9 months. childs become really good at intention reading , interpreting communicative contexts
Intention reading e.g.
what age do they show this
child already knows the name of the familiar object on the table and knows the adult knows them too.
- so can assume (using intention reading) that that the adult intends to ask about the novel object when adult asks her to “show the modi”.
2 years
Acquisition of verbs The social-pragmatic approach: intention reading
children are capable of mapping the verb onto the action by intention reading.
children able to interpret adults anticipation of what will happen and learn verbs which relate to forthcoming action
Children can differentiate between intended and accidental actions.
e.g. swinging, acidentally let go.
Can you meek the string.
they will swing it, not throw it.
evidence for the social-pragmatic approach
children use things like eye-gaze and joint attention to identify referents from adults:
- 18-20mnth olds learn names for objects better when the speaker and infant are jointly attending to the object. (evidence for jA).
Gaze-following at 10 months predicts language skills at 18 months
Evidence that children are using intention reading :
the social-pragmatic approach
- if child already knows one referent and knows mother knows it. When asked: show the modi, they will get new object.
- 2 yr olds understand that when adult rejects 3 objects (make hmm noise) and accept one ( ooooh noise), and adult asked “show modi” (novel object) , adult is not referring to rejected objects
problems with the social-pragmatic approach
- what kinds of inferential skills does the child bring to the task of language acquisition?
- can this process of learning account for the acquisition of complex syntax.
