Takei Article
Nonreferential hand gestures (the equivalent to vocal babbling in deaf children) begun at 7 months and increased until 10 months then declined. This mimics vocal babbling because after this point the baby begins using referential speech/signing. Favorite hand shapes also predicted favorite signs.
Baldwin Article (In Class)
2 buckets with one named (modi). Labels one bucket and either looks in that bucket or the other. Shows that the baby pays attention to intention rather than just what shows up after hearing a word.
Dinosaur Study (In Class)
If the baby is told that each previous picture is a dinosaur, they can accurately tell the next picture is a dinosaur or not. If they aren’t given this category name, they won’t have this same skill.
Hespos Article
English and Korean have different emphases on putting in and tight/loose fit. Showed that perceptual tuning in also applies to vision because the Korean children past tuning age were better at distinguishing tight/loose fit relationships and English tuned-in speakers were better at distinguishing put in / on. Got results both ways.
Quine’s Quandry
Hearing a random language gives us no context as to what it could means. There’s like 7 different options minimum. How do infants learn in these circumstances? A LOT OF TRIALS AND ASSUMPTIONS
Early Age Assumptions (<18 mo)
Nouns refer to objects
nouns refer to categories of objects
nouns refer to similarly shaped objects (shape bias)
How to extend words?
Infants are most commonly exposed to the basic instead of the superlative or subordinate class of words. Extend through that class first and learn specifics later.
3 theories of categorization
Family Resemblance
Prototype
Exemplar
Family Resemblance Theory
Grouping based on resemblance
A network of similarities and compare to members (some members are better at matching than others)
Prototype Theory
Child makes an average abstract image (e.g., the most cat cat) of other things (e.g., cats)
If close to the prototype then it is the thing
Exemplar Theory
Kids keep some really good examples of cats with all the features they associate with cats. They compare new cats to this example and if it matches its a cat.
Vocab Spurt
Around 18 months: before this infants have around 50 words and take several listens to learn a word. Aftet this they start learning about 10 words a day and develop object permanence.
Hurtado Learning in Latino Children Article
Bought a house in the neighborhood. Showed infants pairs matched by gender. 2.5 yo looks at the correct word longest and then 2 yo is roughly equal to 1.5 yo below the 2.5 yo. Unlike Enlgish speaking children in the US, the infants only look after the word instead of at the start of pronunciation. Maternal education also correlated with skill at the study.
Suarez-Rivera Play Article
Embodied view (interacting / playing with an object with a name) helps the infant learn the name of the object. Just naming the object helps, just playing helps, but both is best.
Adamson Joint Attention Autism and Down Syndrome
Symbol-infused cooridinated joint engagement with infants with autism or down syndrome was the best way for them to learn the names of words.
Stage 1 of syntax
2 word phrases. Mostly combine open and closed class words
Verb-learning Theories
Syntactic Bootstrapping
Verb Island
Hypothesis Testing - All 3 below are learning by comparison
Statistical Learning
Structural Alignment
Verb Island
Kids don’t know syntax; instead, just pair subject, transitive, and verbs until they get em right. Kids just copy the verb 1 to 1 and hope they get it right. Ignoring any applicable syntax rules (e.g., tense).
learning by comparison 3 forms:
hypothesis testing
statistical learning
structural alignment
All share that they think infants learn words as they’re used in different situations
Hypothesis Testing
Hears a word then stores it until they find a match. Only stores good guesses. Problem: thats a lot of storage.
Statistical Learning
Store all info around a word and keep it all until you’re sure which piece is meant to be the word. Makes this harder in verbs as reflected in kids because many different actions could be the verb
Structural Alignment
Match with what they know, pull out actions that they hear the verb in.
Imai Japanese, English, Chinese Verbs/Nouns
Bare verb vs Bare word studies showing that at age 5 Japanese and English can learn verbs. Chinese can learn better overall, nouns are learned better than verbs, and 5 yo learned best. Showed novel objects and novel actions then the trials either changed the action or object and quizzed the kids to see if they understood the action had been named.
Abbott-Smith Resultative Action Article
Resultative action is harder to understand due to visual brevity. 3 yo can but need comparisons (Childers), but 5 yo can learn without comparisons for nonresultative actions.
