Dev wk 3

Question 2

Word learning is hard

why is it not just pointing and naming

Answer 2

Point and name is not common (and not universal)

• Usually only nouns

Question 3

The mapping problem

under and over extension

Answer 3

under-extension. when a child uses a word too narrowly. e.g. dog is the name for family dog only.

over extension: too broadly. e.g. dog refers to horses, lions etc.

Question 4

The mapping problem

Answer 4

How do children know what a word refers to when there are many stimuli. Also what other situations do these words apply to

Question 5

infants appear to comprehend nouns as early as..

they start to comprehend verbs when

Answer 5

6 months

~10 months

Question 6

Comprehension precedes production

e.g.

Answer 6

2 yr olds comprehend 2-3x more words than they can produce

Question 7

common first word categories

what is there a lack of

Answer 7

Nouns
verbs
social routines ( bye, hello, please)
Adjectives

Lack of things like Articles (the, a)

Question 8

what age do infants usually speak their first words

when do they produce around 500 words

Answer 8

Around 12 months

by 24-30 months know 500 words

HOWEVER
loads of variability

Question 9

is infants first word production predictive of later language ability?

Answer 9

not necessarily.

Language comprehension is more indicative

Question 10

early noun bias. Socially mediated word learning

Answer 10

learning occours in situations where it is easiest to read adults intentions, regardless of word class.

This happens often with nouns.
Not all are nouns, not all are discrete objects.

Question 11

Early noun bias

what is it

what cross linguistic evidence supports this bias

what hypothesis explains this bias

Answer 11

Cross-linguistically, predominance of nouns in early vocabularies (e.g. 40% of english-speaking children’s first 50 words - Nelson, 1973)
-more nouns even in verb-friendly languages.

Natural partitions hypothesis explains this bias.

Early nouns denote concrete objects easily individuated from surroundings.

Actions, states etc. tend to entities labelled by nouns, less clearly defined in space and time.

Question 12

words are often used in a variety of situations include

Answer 12

• names for people and objects (stay same across diff contexts)
• Names for actions - e.g. open jar, open door
• Names for properties - gone, more dirty

Question 13

generally, children make over extension errors until what age

Answer 13

2.5 years.

Question 14

Some possible mechanisms for word learning

Answer 14

• Innate constraints
• Structural cues in language
• The social pragmatic approach

Question 15

innate constraints on early word learning

2 types of constraints

Answer 15

Constraints as in reducing hte number of hypotheses a word could be refering to

1. Object constraint
   - words refer to objects
   - Explains early noun bias
2. Whole object constraint.
   - refer to whole objects rather than parts
   - Gavagai = whole animal, not tail, ears, legs

Question 16

innate constraints on early word learning

2 additional constraints

Answer 16

Constraints as in, narrowing down hypotheses of word learning
.3. Principle of Contrast
- no two words have exactly the same meaning
- explains how overcomes over extension
4. Mutual exclusivity
- No object has more than one name.
- helps child overcome whole object constraint and learn words for parts of objects.

Question 17

problem with constraint theories

Answer 17

• unanswered questions:
• do constraints explain lang learning or just describe it?

! - are constraints innate or learned ? (little research on infants)

! - Are constraints specific to language?
e.g. more about figuring out the intentions and what they are trying to communicate.

study =
cildren shown object “this is the one my uncle gave me”.
put down in array of objects.
ASk “find tthe one my dog likes to play with”. ]
children chose a new toy. constraint of intntions, and not one of words.

Question 18

structural cues to word learning

what is it.

what
evidence is available

Answer 18

where the word is placed in a sentence suggests it’s meaning.

e.g. asked 3-5 yr olds

do you know what a sib is
do you know what it means to sib?
have you seen any sib?

Task = pick out pictures of action, substance, containers

child accuratly chose
sibbing = picture of kneading
a sib = picture of a bowl
sib = pic of substance

Question 19

what evidence is there that structural cues to word learning are learned

Answer 19

• children are good at using structural cues to apply nonsense words to Nouns , but are not good at applying to adjectives (at 14 months)

*
e.g. Blickit (novel noun/category) vs Blickish (novel adjective/property).

didn’t assign the noun blicket to a property (colour) but could to a category (animal)

couldn’t assign Blickish to any condition (gave randomly) so they knew it wasn’t a noun but didn’t know exactly how it worked

Question 20

issues with structural cues to word learning

Answer 20

• Do experimental studies reveal smth ab long term learning or immediate problem solving? e.g. applying tamming as a word isn’t really learning
• structural info can’t solve all problems
  The man is tamming over the bridge. Does tamming mean walking, strolling etc
• children sensitive to some aspects of sentence structure. Not sure what and when.
• Chicken and egg problem. need to understand words to understand structure to understand words..

Question 21

The social pragmatic approach

this is made easier for the infant through

Answer 21

Children are learning words and word meaning based from the pragmatic cues in the environment (e.g. what they think the adult is trying to mean/convey).

figure out these intentions easily through

1. social world is structured
   - routines, games, patterned social interactions.
2. Social-cognitive skills the infant has.
   - Joint attention, intention reading

Question 22

Social revolution begins at around what age

Answer 22

9 months. childs become really good at intention reading , interpreting communicative contexts

Question 23

Intention reading e.g.

what age do they show this

Answer 23

child already knows the name of the familiar object on the table and knows the adult knows them too.
- so can assume (using intention reading) that that the adult intends to ask about the novel object when adult asks her to “show the modi”.

2 years

Question 24

Acquisition of verbs The social-pragmatic approach: intention reading

Answer 24

children are capable of mapping the verb onto the action by intention reading.

children able to interpret adults anticipation of what will happen and learn verbs which relate to forthcoming action

Children can differentiate between intended and accidental actions.
e.g. swinging, acidentally let go.
Can you meek the string.
they will swing it, not throw it.

Question 25

evidence for the social-pragmatic approach

Answer 25

children use things like eye-gaze and joint attention to identify referents from adults: - 18-20mnth olds learn names for objects better when the speaker and infant are jointly attending to the object. (evidence for jA). Gaze-following at 10 months predicts language skills at 18 months

Question 26

Evidence that children are using intention reading : the social-pragmatic approach

Answer 26

- if child already knows one referent and knows mother knows it. When asked: show the modi, they will get new object. - 2 yr olds understand that when adult rejects 3 objects (make hmm noise) and accept one ( ooooh noise), and adult asked "show modi" (novel object) , adult is not referring to rejected objects

Question 27

problems with the social-pragmatic approach

Answer 27

- what kinds of inferential skills does the child bring to the task of language acquisition? - can this process of learning account for the acquisition of complex syntax.