Week 3 Lecture 3 - Word learning

Question 1

What is the mapping problem? (Quine, 1960)

Answer 1

issue of getting the meaning of a word right

may under-extend or over-extend the word use

Question 2

Which comes first: comprehension or production?

Answer 2

comprehension

Question 3

How many more words do 2 yo comprehend compared to produce?

Answer 3

2-3x more

Question 4

at what age do infants start to comprehend nouns?

Answer 4

6mns

Question 5

At what age do infants start to comprehend verbs?

Answer 5

10 mns

Question 6

when do infants get faster at the looking-while-listening task?

Answer 6

18-24 mns
don’t even need to hear the full word at 18 mns

Question 7

at what age do infants tend to say their first words?

Answer 7

12 mns

Question 8

at 24-30 mns, how many words can an infant produce?

Answer 8

500 words (however, lots of variability)

Question 9

What types of words are and aren’t produced in first words?

Answer 9

Are: nouns, verbs, social routines (e.g., bye, hello), adjectives

Aren’t: articles (e.g., a, the)

Question 10

What is the early noun bias?

Answer 10

cross-linguistically, there is a predominance of nouns in early vocab

Question 11

What is the natural partitions hypothesis? (Gentner, 1982)

Answer 11

• Early nouns denote concrete objects easily individuated from surroundings
• Actions, states etc. tend to apply TO entities labelled by nouns, less clearly defined in space & time

Question 12

What is socially mediated word learning? (Tomasello, 2003)

Answer 12

• Not all early words are nouns (hello, bye)
• Not all early nouns are discrete objects (breakfast)
• Learning occurs in situations where easiest to read adult’s intentions, irrespective of word class
• Happens often with nouns

Question 13

What is under-extension?

Answer 13

• word used only in specific context or specific exemplar
• words used in specific contexts where adults would use in a wide range of contexts

Question 14

What is over-extension?

Answer 14

word used beyond its true meaning

happens frequently

Question 15

What are 4 innate constraints on early word learning?

Answer 15

• object constraint
• whole-object constraint
• principle of contrast
• mutual exclusivity

Question 16

What is object constraint?

Answer 16

Words refer to objects
Explains early noun bias

Question 17

What is whole-object constraint?

Answer 17

Words refer to whole objects rather than their parts

Gavagai = whole animal, not tail, ears, legs

Question 18

What is the principle of contrast?

Answer 18

No two words have exactly the same meaning
Explains how the child overcomes overextension

Question 19

What is mutual exclusivity?

Answer 19

No object has more than one name

Helps children override the ‘whole object constraint’ and learn the names for parts of objects.

Question 20

What are some problems with constraint theories?

Answer 20

Do constraints explain word learning or just describe it?

Are constraints innate or learned via experience?

Are constraints specific to language? .

Question 21

What is the syntactic bootstrapping hypothesis?

Answer 21

proposes that children learn word meanings by recognizing syntactic categories (such as nouns, adjectives, etc.) and the structure of their language

Question 22

What did Gelman and Markman find?

Answer 22

4yrolds pick different object of same kind when asked to find the fep one , but a different object when asked to find the fep

Shows difference between word categories with “fep one” suggesting an adjective but “the fep” suggesting a noun

Question 23

Waxman and Booth (2001) looked at how 14 mns extend novel nouns and adjectives

What did they find?

Answer 23

With nouns, children extend the noun to the category but not the property

With adjectives, children do not extend to the category or the property

Question 24

True or false?

Structural cues to nouns seemed to be learned early, but structural cues to other words appear later

Answer 24

true

Question 25

At what age do infants use structural cues to narrow down verb meanings? (Naigles, 1990)

Answer 25

2 yo

Question 26

Who proposed the social-pragmatic approach?

Answer 26

Tomasello

Question 27

What is the social-pragmatic approach? (Tomasello, 2003)

Answer 27

Children learn words and word meaning from pragmatic cues in the environment which remove ambiguities around word meaning

Question 28

In what 2 ways is word learning constrained under the social-pragmatic approach? (Tomasello, 2003)

Answer 28

The social world is structured:
Routines, games, patterned social interactions

Social-cognitive skills the infant has:
joint attention, intention reading.

Question 29

In what social context do children learn language under the social-pragmatic approach?

Answer 29

in familiar social contexts in repeated daily routines

Question 30

Under the social-pragmatic approach, when children attempt to interpret the communicative intentions as expressed in an utterance, what occurs?

Answer 30

word learning

Question 31

Children use the speaker’s intentions to do what?

Answer 31

infer meaning

Question 32

At what age do infants understand that t a novel referent refers to object adult looking for rather than objects they have rejected? - intention reading (Tomasello & Barton, 1994)

Answer 32

2 yo

Question 33

How do children acquire understanding of verbs?

Answer 33

children are able to interpret adult’s anticipation of what will happen and learn verbs which relate to forthcoming action

Question 34

Are children able to differentiate between intended and accidental actions when learning new verbs

Answer 34

yes