Word Learning

Question 1

What is meant by a production study when investigating word learning?

Answer 1

This is when we ask a child to name things (e.g produce words)
- recording how they speak in naturalistic settings

Question 2

Why does pointing and naming things not work when learning words?

Answer 2

Only really applies to nouns
doesn’t convey meaning

Question 3

Why is word learning difficult for young children?

Answer 3

Usually because it is difficult to accurately understand the meaning of something.

Question 4

What is meant by underextension in regards to language?

Answer 4

This is when a child does not understand and use a word for another relevant cases.
E.g not realising that Kitty doesn’t just apply to their own cat but all other baby cats.

Question 5

What is meant by the term “ The Mapping problem” ?

Answer 5

This is a problem of child language acquisition. There is an infinite number of possibilities of mapping between a word and what it stands for.

Question 6

over-extension of words means

Answer 6

to over apply or use words beyond the scope of its meanings e.g referring to all four legged animals as Doggy

Question 7

According to Bergelson and Swingley (2012,2013) What will a toddler begin to understand first, a noun or a verb?

Answer 7

A noun

Question 8

Comprehension will come before a child is able to do what?

Answer 8

Produce a word. Meaning they can understand words before they start to actually speak them.

Question 9

What is a looking whilst listening task? And at what age does it begin to increase?

Answer 9

This measures the time course of a child’s gaze in response to speech
18 - 24 months

Question 10

A child’s first word will often not include what types of words?

Answer 10

Articles such as A or the

Question 11

What form does a child’s first word commonly take?

Answer 11

noun, verbs, social routines (hello) , adjectives/describing words

Question 12

the early noun bias refers to the idea that across cultures and langauge babies have a preference for

Answer 12

Nouns in early speech even in verb-friendly languages

Question 13

Getner (1982) explains the early noun bias using his Natural partitions hypothesis suggesting what?

Answer 13

early nouns will denote concrete objects that can be easily segmented or spotted from a person’s surroundings.

Question 14

Tomsello (2003) suggested his idea of socially mediated word learning which suggested that learning occurs when?

Answer 14

In a situation where it is easy for a baby to read and comprehend the intentions of their adult/caregiver.
- this can explain why often nouns are learnt early on

Question 15

What is a production error in speech ?

Answer 15

This is when children make common errors when first learning language and speaking.
Over and Under- extension

Question 16

What age does these production errors cease?

Answer 16

2.5 years

Question 17

Why do babies often produce these production errors?

Answer 17

Category errors ( improperly categorising things can cause over and under extensions of words)
Vocabulary limitations.

Question 18

What are the 4 types of innate constraint theories on a child’s early word learning?

Answer 18

1. Object Constraint
2. Whole-Object constraint
3. Principle of Contrast
4. Mutual Exclusivity

Question 19

What is meant by an object constraint?

Answer 19

This is when a child believes a word refers to objects and can explain the early noun bias.

Question 20

What is a whole object constraint in early word learning?

Answer 20

This is when a child believes that a word only refers to a whole object rather than it’s parts.
e.g Gavagi = the whole dog not it’s legs or ears

Question 21

explain what the principle of contrast means for children learning words? What production error does it explain?

Answer 21

Since no two words have exactly the same meaning.
Explains how a child can overcome Over-Extension of words.

Question 22

How do children overcome the Whole Object constraint issue?

Answer 22

Via Mutual exclusivity, understanding that no object has more than one name, it helps them learn names for parts of objects.

Question 23

What are some issues with constraint theories?

Answer 23

Not sure if they actually explain word learning or whether it just describes how it happens.
- Doesn’t really explain non-noun word learning and comprehension.
- We don’t understand whether the constraints are innate or learnt
- Are they specific to language?

Question 24

What is meant by the syntactic bootstrapping hypothesis?

Answer 24

This is the idea that children will use the syntax of the sentences in order to learn word meaning.
- e.g by understanding the categories and structure of langauge they begin to learn it.

Question 25

The syntactic bootstrapping idea is an example of a what?

Answer 25

Structural cue to word meaning

Question 26

Brown 1957 produce a study into what?

Answer 26

Testing the Syntactic bootstrapping hypothesis.

Question 27

What was the process of the Brown (1957) study?

Answer 27

3-5 year olds were shown a picture of a substance in a bowl.
Asked questions such as :
- Do you know what a sib is?
- Do you know how to sib?
- Have you seen any sib?
In this study sib was used in different linguistic contexts, and the child was then asked to pick Sib, Sibbing or A sib from different pictures.
- the different pictures would depict different word types e.g Sibbing as a verb, noun or substance etc.
Children would pick out different pictures when asked to find different forms of the word sib.

Question 28

Gelman and Markman (1985) investigated what when they asked 4 year olds to find “a fep” and “the fep one”?

Answer 28

Syntactic bootstrapping
- Children would choose different objects even though the same word was used
- because they observed how the word was used in sentence, observing the syntactic rules

Question 29

What did Waxman and Booth investigate ? Using the ‘Blickett’ test

Answer 29

How 14 month-olds tend to over extend novel nouns and adjectives.

• Found that a child can extend a noun to a category
• but cannot extend a noun to a property
• They can not extend adjectives to categories or properties.
• suggesting they understand words that are not nouns, but at that age do not understand what it does

Question 30

What word types do children earliest lean their structural cues?

Answer 30

Nouns, other word types such as adjectives come later.

Question 31

Structural cues can also be applied to verbs. A child can use structural cues to distinguish/ narrow down a verb meaning. Who conducted research into this?

Answer 31

Naigles (1990) gave the example to 2 year olds.
A man is running with a dog behind him.
“the dog is meeking the man”
or
“The man is meeking the dog”

Question 32

What are some issues with Structural cues to word meaning?

Answer 32

It is not clear how well a child understand some aspects of sentence structure.
- It is unclear whether studies into structural cues to word learning such as syntactic bootstrapping indicate they have learn the words meaning, or whether they are just problem solving e.g by choosing the correct fitting word.

Question 33

What is meant by the social pragmatic approach? And who Suggested it?

Answer 33

Tomasello (2003)
- Suggested it as an explanation as to how child learn words and meaning.
- They learn word meaning from ‘pragmatic cues’ in the environment which surrounds them
- This cues remove ambiguities around word meaning.

Question 34

How is word learning constraints/structured according to the social pragmatic approach?

Answer 34

1. The social world is structured e.g by games, rules and routines.
2. Social Cognitive skills the infant has will accommodate word learning (shared attention, intention/emotion reading abilities)

Question 35

Ratner and Bruner (1978) suggested the children learn most of their language in what?

Answer 35

their cultural routines and familiar contexts.

Question 36

Word learning will begin when a child attempts to do what?

Answer 36

Interpret the communicative intentions that their caregiver or adult expresses in speech to them.

Question 37

children will use a speaker’s intentions to do what?

Answer 37

Infer meaning of words.

Question 38

How will a child begin to learn verbs according to Tomasello and Kruger (1992)?

Answer 38

By interpreting their adults anticipation/prediction of what will happen and learning the verbs that are exhibited in the forthcoming action.

Question 39

How would a child infer the meaning of a novel object according to Baldwin , 1991?

Answer 39

Child will already know the name of a familiar object on the table.
Adult asks the baby to show the new ‘modi’ the child uses her intention reading skills and assumes that the adult intends the novel object.

Question 40

Language learning therefore is made up of many factors such as…

Answer 40

Cognitive, social and environmental

Question 41

Children will show patterns in how they learn language. Comprehension precedes what?

Answer 41

Production, learning nouns the earliest.

Question 42

What general criticism are there for the theories of word learning?

Answer 42

• Disclarity: We don’t know how different information is used at different stages of development.
• Cross- Culturality: Are these strategies the same across different languages and cultures.
• How do they learn more difficult and less common words?

Question 43

What issues are there with the social pragmatic approach to word learning?

Answer 43

• Do we understand the inferential skills a child brings to the task of language?
• Can we use this theory for how children learn difficult words and syntax rules.

Question 44

Tomasello and Barton 1994 When learning novel words a child is able to discriminate between what?

Answer 44

intentional and accidental actions when learning a new word.