Learning Acquisition 2

Question 1

What is fast mapping?

Answer 1

Carey (1978)
Ability to quickly link (map) a new name to a new object ( applying known info)
o 13/14 kids brought olive green tray after being asked to bring the ‘chromium tray, not the blue one, the chromium one.’
o 1 wk later = 9/13 children chose green or olive green when asked which tray was chromium

Question 2

How is word learning a dynamic system?

Answer 2

Samuelson and Horst (2008)
Is a product of nested time scales
o What is the child seeing/doing now
o what the child just did
o the child’s developmental history

Question 3

Name examples of word learning now

Answer 3

Gordon & McGregor (2014) = It’s easier to point to something than to say a new word

Axelsson & Horst (2013) = It’s easier to choose the correct object if nothing else was named

Perry & Saffran (2017) = it’s harder to choose a known
object in an unfamiliar colour

Question 4

Name examples of recent past impacting word learning

Answer 4

Flack & Horst (2018) = It’s harder to learn words from books with more illustrations

Twomey et al. (2014) = t’s easier to remember object names if you were exposed to several examples from the category

Goldenberg & Sandhofer (2013) = It’s harder to do well if the
experimenter changes

Question 5

Name examples of past impacting word learning

Answer 5

Horst et al. (2011) study = do children learn better from same words across diff. stories or same word same story repeatedly

Method
o read 3.5yr children story books 3x in 1wk
o tested immediate recall for novel words
o tested retention for novel words

o created 9 books = 2 novel objects shown 4x/ per book
o story order + which story = counterbalanced across children
o all children tested on immediate recall + retention D1 + D2

Result
o Same story children = significantly better than children in diff. stories condition + retained words significantly better

Horst (2014) = do children learn better from naptime stories?
o read 3.5yr children story books 3x in 1wk
o tested immediate recall for novel words
o tested retention for novel words
 retention = 2.5hrs, 24hrs + 7 days after nap

Results
o repetition + sleep facilitated word learning

Question 6

Why does repetition help in learning words?

Answer 6

Know what to expect
Chance to focus on finer details on repeated readings

Question 7

When does babbling start?

Answer 7

~6 months

Question 8

what happens to infants who start babbling and trying to talk?

Answer 8

Oller, (2000) = Canonical babbling is a string of adult-like consonant-vowel sequences

McGilllion, et al. (2017) =Onset of canonical babbling predicts onset of first words

Keren-Portnoy, et al. (2009) = Children who begin babbling later have smaller productive vocabularies relative to their peers

Question 9

What is a vocabulary explosion?

Answer 9

Children = 18-20mths

During word spurt = 20/words a week (Mitchell and McMurray, 2009)

H/E ‘sudden increase’ = learning ↑ words @ same time + some words ↑ diff. than others + take ↑ to learn (McMurray, 2007)

Question 10

When do children start combining words?

Answer 10

24mths = start first sentences

Showing signs of syntax w/ ‘telegraphic speech’
 Simple sentences
 Usually 2 words (noun + noun or noun + verb)
 No function words

Question 11

What happen to children who are late talkers?

Answer 11

Late talkers = Some diagnosed w/ Developmental Language Disorder

Weaker language skills = children @ risk of ↓ social abilities, self-regulation, victimization and poor self-esteem

Capone Singleton, 2018 = @24mths = fewer than 50 words and/or do not combine words + Some late bloomers = nearly catch up to their peers before they start school

Norbury et al. (2016) = 2 children per reception class have clinically significant language delays – often undiagnosed

Question 12

What are overextensions?

Answer 12

When children don’t know the right word = extend a known word to something beyond current vocab

Occurs between 12-30mths

There are 3 types… (Rescorla, 1980)
o Categorical relation (taxonomy)
o Analogical relation (perception)
o Predicate-based relation (co-occurance)

Question 13

What is syntax?

Answer 13

how do words go together

Question 14

What is morphology?

Answer 14

how to change words to change meanings e.g panda and pandas

Question 15

What is grammar usage?

Answer 15

the rules are about putting together what children say about something abstract and nouns, verbs, adjectives

Question 16

How do children use English past tense verbs?

Answer 16

Verbs children learn early = come/came, do/did, get/go…

English-learning children show U-shaped trend in past-tense morphology = highly accurate  make errors accurate

Question 17

What are irregular verbs?

Answer 17

Doesn’t end in -ed e.g bought

Question 18

What do overgeneralisations of English past tense irregular verbs mean?

Answer 18

When children say ‘hurted’ instead of hurt

Question 19

Why do children overgeneralise irregular verbs?

Answer 19

Maslen et al. (2004)
* brain = overgeneralised 14% of irregular verbs overall
* most overgeneralised verbs = ‘go’ but he heard ‘went’ correctly more than 1000 times before making an error

• many connectionist, neural networks = same pattern of behaviour as children
• regularisation occurs bc it is the most common/abstract pattern

Question 20

What is the language summary?

Answer 20

Language is a system of rules with patterns

Children begin learning language very early in development but there is a lot of variability

Toddlers can guess, remember (retain) and extend meanings (e.g., shape bias), but there is still a lot to learn

Children’s domain general learning processes support this learning

Language proficiency is the product of nested timescales