Language and Meaning Flashcards
What does it mean to learn the meaning of a word?
To associate a mental representation/ concept with a word form
What is sentential context?
A challenge of word learning.
Concerns the fact that most words are not used in isolation, but rather in a multi-word utterance
What is referential uncertainty?
A challenge of word learning.
Learners may perceive aspects of a scene that are unrelated to the utterance they hear
What is noise?
A challenge of word learning.
Error in perception/ interpretation of the heard utterance or the observed scene
What is associative learning?
Simple associative mechanisms that are used to map a word form with a concept
What is referential learning?
A variety of attentional mechanisms that are used to narrow down the intended meaning of a word sequence.
What is cross-situational learning?
Learning mechanism where you infer correct word-meaning mappings by observing regularities across usages of a word
What is cross-situational learning?
Learning mechanism where you infer correct word-meaning mappings by observing regularities across usages of a word
What is a problem with modeling cross-situational learning?
Knowing what a child is paying attention to (perceptually), and how they interpret what they see
In Fazly et al. (2008) model, what is the meaning of a word and what is the word acquisition score?
Meaning of a word: probability distribution over all semantic features
Word acquisition score: a measure of how closely the meaning of a word resembles its true meaning
What is the vocabulary spurt?
A developmental pattern where vocabulary learning is slow in the early stages but proceeds to a rapid stage
What is fast mapping?
A developmental pattern where young children map novel words to a novel object in a familiar context
What is second labels (developmental pattern)?
A developmental pattern where early on, children have a hard time learning homonymous and synonymous words
