Lecture 3 Flashcards
Word learing
why is word learning hard
- point and name is not common and not universal: when pointing and naming, it is usually only nouns (e.g. apple not jumping)
- the mapping problem
- hard to get meaning right, often under-extension or over-extension
the mapping problem
- many components that it could be labeled with
- how do children know which topic we are talking about
under-extension
- they can’t extend the word e.g. ‘dog’ … how similar do things need to be to fit this… just the family dog? word may be used too narrowly
over-extension
over applying the word e.g. ‘dog’ to anything with 4 legs e.g. lion
- common
Early word knowledge: comprehension
- comprehension precedes production
- 6mo infants appear to start comprehending nouns
- ~10mo start to comprehend verbs
- 2 yr comprehend 2-3x as many words as they produce
early word knowledge: comprehension 2
- between 18-24 months infants get fast on the looking-while-listening task, better at mapping
- by 18 months they don’t need the full word, already orient to an object e.g. ‘a-‘ for ‘apple’
early word knowledge: production -first words
~12mo first words, 24-30mo ~500 words
- first words from: nouns (cat), verbs (get), social routines (hello), adjectives (cold)
- lack of articles e.g. ‘a’ or ‘the’
early noun bias
- cross-linguistically, predominance of nouns in early vocabularies e.g. 40% of englihs speaking children’s first 50 words - Nelson 1973
hypothesis for early noun bias (1)
natural partitions hypothesis
- early nouns denote concrete objects easily individuated from surroundings
- whereas actions/states apply to entities labelled by nouns and are less clearly defined in space + time
natural partition hypothesis - who
Gentner 1982
early noun bias hypothesis (2)
due to social learning (socially mediated)
- learning occurs in situations where easiest to read adult’s intentions, irrespective of word class e.g. labeling objects in shared attention over a ‘toy’
- also why children learn other kinds of words e.g. breakfast or hello but most common with nouns
socially mediation -early noun bias - who
Tomasello 2003
Early word knowledge: production errors
- under-extension: word use too specific to a context where it could be used in a wide range e.g. ‘bye’ on the phone (Bates et al 1979)
- over-extension: word use too general to a context e.g. apple for an orange
overextension errors
- frequent until ~2.5 years
- category error (ball and apple in same category to them as both round)
- vocabulary limitations (lack the alternative word (so go for closest?))
why word learning is hard key points
- pointing and naming issues
- mapping problem
early words: what do children know about their language key points
- comprehension
- production
early words: how children learn key points
- teaching words in the lab
- possible mechanisms to word learning:
1. innate constraints
2. structural cues in language
3. social-pragmatic approach
innate constraints on early word learning - early word learning key constraints
- Object constraint (Gentner 1982): assume word refers to an object, explains early noun bias
e.g. ‘gavagai’ = paw - whole-object constraint (Markman 1991): words refer to whole objects rather than their parts
e.g. ‘gavagai’ = whole animal
additional constraints on early word learning
- principle of contrast: no two words have the same meaning, explain how children overcome over-extension e.g. Rico + dog can’t mean the same thing
- mutual exclusivity: no object has more than one name, also helps children overcome ‘whole-object constraint’ and learn the names for parts of object
problem with constraint theories
- do they explain word learning or just describe it
- are constraints innate or learned via experience
- constraints might not be specific to language
structural cues to word meaning
words, nouns, adjectives occur at different places in sentences
- word order governed language (english)
- where word appears can indicate meaning
Syntactic bootstrapping hypothesis
where grammatical structure of sentence helps with the meaning of a word
Brown 1957
- supporting evidence for syntactic bootstrapping hypothesis
- 3-5yrs shows pictures of someone kneading a substance in a bowl, had to pick what they thought ‘sib’ was from a selection of pictures
- they were able to pick the right picture according to syntactic cues
nouns
refer to objects/categories
adjectives
refer to properties
structural cues to word meaning: noun/adjectives
differ in how they are used/ where they appear in sentences
Gelman and Markman 1985 - noun/adjectives study
study on structural cues to word meaning
- 4 yr-olds pick different objects of the same kind when asked to ‘find the fep one’, but a different object when asked to ‘find the fep’
(3 similar objects - one with spots, one oddly shaped one)
Waxman and Booth 2001 - nouns study
14 month olds extend novel nouns and adjectives
- with nouns children extend the noun to the category but not the property (e.g. purple house and blue horse given randomly - ‘blicket’ would be a noun referring to a category, therefore both horses fit category, despite all previous ‘blickets’ being purple - as they don’t think blicket is an adjective, its a noun of a category and they understand that)
Waxman and Booth 2001 - adjective study
- with adjectives children do not extend to the category or the property (‘blikish’) (give randomly between purple and blue horse when should be purple horse)
- they know its not a noun, but don’t really understand that its an adjective
structural cues to word meaning summary
structural cues to nouns learned early, but for other words (e.g. adjectives) words appear later
- 18mo show this (Booth & Waxman)
structural cues to word meaning: verbs
- SCs can be used to narrow down verb meanings for 2yr olds
issues involving structural cues to word meaning
- children are sensitive to some aspects of sentence structure, but not clear exactly what and when
- some knowledge of words and word categories is needed to understand their structure
- studies don’t necessarily show anything about long-term learning, only immediate problem-solving
- structural information can’t solve all problems: many different meanings, tells you the type not the specifics
social pragmatic approach - Tomasello
- children learn words and word meanings from pragmatic cues in the environment which remove ambiguities around word meaning
- word learning is constrained in two ways:
1) social world is structured (e.g. routines)
2) social-cognitive skills the infant has (e.g. joint attention)
scaffolding and routines as a part of the social-pragmatic approach
- children learn languages in familiar social contexts in repeated daily routines
- cross-culturally children are engaged in a wide range of social routines and learn most of their early words in familiar contexts
social-cognitive skills: the social-pragmatic approach
- social revolution around 9 mo
- during joint attention, adults use language and children attempt to interpret the communicative intent
- word learning occurs when children attempt to interpret communicative intentions
joint attention as a part of the social-pragmatic approach
- joint-attention means infants are more likely to learn names for objects
- gaze-following behaviour at 10 months predicts language skills at 18 months
social-pragmatic approach: intention reading
- children can use speakers intention to infer meaning
- e.g. emotional cue to associate new word with an object
- can differentiate between intended and accidental actions when learning new verbs
word learning summary
- language learning is not isolated: social, cognitive, environmental factors
- children show key patterns in how they use language: comprehension precedes production, early noun bias
- children have access to a variety of sources of information when learning word meanings: innate or learned constraints
- different theories to try to explain how children learn word meanings
