Word Learning Flashcards
What is meant by a production study when investigating word learning?
This is when we ask a child to name things (e.g produce words)
- recording how they speak in naturalistic settings
Why does pointing and naming things not work when learning words?
Only really applies to nouns
doesn’t convey meaning
Why is word learning difficult for young children?
Usually because it is difficult to accurately understand the meaning of something.
What is meant by underextension in regards to language?
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.
What is meant by the term “ The Mapping problem” ?
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.
over-extension of words means
to over apply or use words beyond the scope of its meanings e.g referring to all four legged animals as Doggy
According to Bergelson and Swingley (2012,2013) What will a toddler begin to understand first, a noun or a verb?
A noun
Comprehension will come before a child is able to do what?
Produce a word. Meaning they can understand words before they start to actually speak them.
What is a looking whilst listening task? And at what age does it begin to increase?
This measures the time course of a child’s gaze in response to speech
18 - 24 months
A child’s first word will often not include what types of words?
Articles such as A or the
What form does a child’s first word commonly take?
noun, verbs, social routines (hello) , adjectives/describing words
the early noun bias refers to the idea that across cultures and langauge babies have a preference for
Nouns in early speech even in verb-friendly languages
Getner (1982) explains the early noun bias using his Natural partitions hypothesis suggesting what?
early nouns will denote concrete objects that can be easily segmented or spotted from a person’s surroundings.
Tomsello (2003) suggested his idea of socially mediated word learning which suggested that learning occurs when?
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
What is a production error in speech ?
This is when children make common errors when first learning language and speaking.
Over and Under- extension
What age does these production errors cease?
2.5 years
Why do babies often produce these production errors?
Category errors ( improperly categorising things can cause over and under extensions of words)
Vocabulary limitations.
What are the 4 types of innate constraint theories on a child’s early word learning?
- Object Constraint
- Whole-Object constraint
- Principle of Contrast
- Mutual Exclusivity
What is meant by an object constraint?
This is when a child believes a word refers to objects and can explain the early noun bias.
What is a whole object constraint in early word learning?
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
explain what the principle of contrast means for children learning words? What production error does it explain?
Since no two words have exactly the same meaning.
Explains how a child can overcome Over-Extension of words.
How do children overcome the Whole Object constraint issue?
Via Mutual exclusivity, understanding that no object has more than one name, it helps them learn names for parts of objects.
What are some issues with constraint theories?
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?
What is meant by the syntactic bootstrapping hypothesis?
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.
The syntactic bootstrapping idea is an example of a what?
Structural cue to word meaning
Brown 1957 produce a study into what?
Testing the Syntactic bootstrapping hypothesis.
What was the process of the Brown (1957) study?
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.
Gelman and Markman (1985) investigated what when they asked 4 year olds to find “a fep” and “the fep one”?
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
What did Waxman and Booth investigate ? Using the ‘Blickett’ test
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
What word types do children earliest lean their structural cues?
Nouns, other word types such as adjectives come later.
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?
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”
What are some issues with Structural cues to word meaning?
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.
What is meant by the social pragmatic approach? And who Suggested it?
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.
How is word learning constraints/structured according to the social pragmatic approach?
- The social world is structured e.g by games, rules and routines.
- Social Cognitive skills the infant has will accommodate word learning (shared attention, intention/emotion reading abilities)
Ratner and Bruner (1978) suggested the children learn most of their language in what?
their cultural routines and familiar contexts.
Word learning will begin when a child attempts to do what?
Interpret the communicative intentions that their caregiver or adult expresses in speech to them.
children will use a speaker’s intentions to do what?
Infer meaning of words.
How will a child begin to learn verbs according to Tomasello and Kruger (1992)?
By interpreting their adults anticipation/prediction of what will happen and learning the verbs that are exhibited in the forthcoming action.
How would a child infer the meaning of a novel object according to Baldwin , 1991?
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.
Language learning therefore is made up of many factors such as…
Cognitive, social and environmental
Children will show patterns in how they learn language. Comprehension precedes what?
Production, learning nouns the earliest.
What general criticism are there for the theories of word learning?
- 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?
What issues are there with the social pragmatic approach to word learning?
- 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.
Tomasello and Barton 1994 When learning novel words a child is able to discriminate between what?
intentional and accidental actions when learning a new word.
