Lecture 3

Question 1

why is word learning hard

Answer 1

• 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

Question 2

the mapping problem

Answer 2

• many components that it could be labeled with
• how do children know which topic we are talking about

Question 3

under-extension

Answer 3

• 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

Question 4

over-extension

Answer 4

over applying the word e.g. ‘dog’ to anything with 4 legs e.g. lion
- common

Question 5

Early word knowledge: comprehension

Answer 5

• 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

Question 6

early word knowledge: comprehension 2

Answer 6

• 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’

Question 7

early word knowledge: production -first words

Answer 7

~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’

Question 8

early noun bias

Answer 8

• cross-linguistically, predominance of nouns in early vocabularies e.g. 40% of englihs speaking children’s first 50 words - Nelson 1973

Question 9

hypothesis for early noun bias (1)

Answer 9

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

Question 10

natural partition hypothesis - who

Answer 10

Gentner 1982

Question 11

early noun bias hypothesis (2)

Answer 11

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

Question 12

socially mediation -early noun bias - who

Answer 12

Tomasello 2003

Question 13

Early word knowledge: production errors

Answer 13

• 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

Question 14

overextension errors

Answer 14

• 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?))

Question 15

why word learning is hard key points

Answer 15

• pointing and naming issues
• mapping problem

Question 16

early words: what do children know about their language key points

Answer 16

• comprehension
• production

Question 17

early words: how children learn key points

Answer 17

• teaching words in the lab
• possible mechanisms to word learning:
  1. innate constraints
  2. structural cues in language
  3. social-pragmatic approach

Question 18

innate constraints on early word learning - early word learning key constraints

Answer 18

1. Object constraint (Gentner 1982): assume word refers to an object, explains early noun bias
   e.g. ‘gavagai’ = paw
2. whole-object constraint (Markman 1991): words refer to whole objects rather than their parts
   e.g. ‘gavagai’ = whole animal

Question 19

additional constraints on early word learning

Answer 19

1. 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
2. mutual exclusivity: no object has more than one name, also helps children overcome ‘whole-object constraint’ and learn the names for parts of object

Question 20

problem with constraint theories

Answer 20

• do they explain word learning or just describe it
• are constraints innate or learned via experience
• constraints might not be specific to language

Question 21

structural cues to word meaning

Answer 21

words, nouns, adjectives occur at different places in sentences
- word order governed language (english)
- where word appears can indicate meaning

Question 22

Syntactic bootstrapping hypothesis

Answer 22

where grammatical structure of sentence helps with the meaning of a word

Question 23

Brown 1957

Answer 23

• 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

Question 24

nouns

Answer 24

refer to objects/categories

Question 25

adjectives

Answer 25

refer to properties

Question 26

structural cues to word meaning: noun/adjectives

Answer 26

differ in how they are used/ where they appear in sentences

Question 27

Gelman and Markman 1985 - noun/adjectives study

Answer 27

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)

Question 28

Waxman and Booth 2001 - nouns study

Answer 28

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)

Question 29

Waxman and Booth 2001 - adjective study

Answer 29

• 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

Question 30

structural cues to word meaning summary

Answer 30

structural cues to nouns learned early, but for other words (e.g. adjectives) words appear later
- 18mo show this (Booth & Waxman)

Question 31

structural cues to word meaning: verbs

Answer 31

• SCs can be used to narrow down verb meanings for 2yr olds

Question 32

issues involving structural cues to word meaning

Answer 32

• 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

Question 33

social pragmatic approach - Tomasello

Answer 33

• 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)

Question 34

scaffolding and routines as a part of the social-pragmatic approach

Answer 34

• 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

Question 35

social-cognitive skills: the social-pragmatic approach

Answer 35

• 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

Question 36

joint attention as a part of the social-pragmatic approach

Answer 36

• joint-attention means infants are more likely to learn names for objects
• gaze-following behaviour at 10 months predicts language skills at 18 months

Question 37

social-pragmatic approach: intention reading

Answer 37

• 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

Question 38

word learning summary

Answer 38

• 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