The Acquisition of Color Words

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katie Wagner ◽  
David Barner
Keyword(s):  
Color Word ◽  
Inductive Learning ◽  
Word Meaning ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Electromagnetic Spectrum ◽  
Word Meanings ◽  
Word Acquisition ◽  
Color Categories ◽  
Word Boundaries ◽  
Different Color

Human experience of color results from a complex interplay of perceptual and linguistic systems. At the lowest level of perception, the human visual system transforms the visible light portion of the electromagnetic spectrum into a rich, continuous three-dimensional experience of color. Despite our ability to perceptually discriminate millions of different color shades, most languages categorize color into a number of discrete color categories. While the meanings of color words are constrained by perception, perception does not fully define them. Once color words are acquired, they may in turn influence our memory and processing speed for color, although it is unlikely that language influences the lowest levels of color perception. One approach to examining the relationship between perception and language in forming our experience of color is to study children as they acquire color language. Children produce color words in speech for many months before acquiring adult meanings for color words. Research in this area has focused on whether children’s difficulties stem from (a) an inability to identify color properties as a likely candidate for word meanings, or alternatively (b) inductive learning of language-specific color word boundaries. Lending plausibility to the first account, there is evidence that children more readily attend to object traits like shape, rather than color, as likely candidates for word meanings. However, recent evidence has found that children have meanings for some color words before they begin to produce them in speech, indicating that in fact, they may be able to successfully identify color as a candidate for word meaning early in the color word learning process. There is also evidence that prelinguistic infants, like adults, perceive color categorically. While these perceptual categories likely constrain the meanings that children consider, they cannot fully define color word meanings because languages vary in both the number and location of color word boundaries. Recent evidence suggests that the delay in color word acquisition primarily stems from an inductive process of refining these boundaries.

scholarly journals The Acquisition of Color Words

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Barner
Keyword(s):  
Visible Light ◽  
Color Word ◽  
Color Perception ◽  
Complex Interplay ◽  
Word Meanings ◽  
Color Properties ◽  
Color Categories ◽  
Word Boundaries ◽  
Different Color

Our experience of color results from a complex interplay of our perceptualand linguistic systems. At the lowest level of perception, our visualsystem transforms the visible light portion of the electromagnetic spectruminto a rich 3D experience of color. Despite our ability to discriminatemillions of different color shades, most languages categorize color intodiscrete color categories. Perception provides constraints on the likelylocations of color word boundaries but does not fully define color wordmeanings. Once acquired, although language likely does not influence thelowest levels of color perception, language does influence our memory andprocessing speed of color. One approach to examining the relationshipbetween perception and language in forming our experience of color is tostudy children as they acquire color language. Children produce color wordsin speech for many months to years before acquiring adult-like meanings forcolor words. Research in this area has focused on whether children’sdifficulties stem from 1) an inability to identify color properties as alikely candidate for words meanings or alternatively 2) inductive learningof language specific color word boundaries. Supporting the first account,there is evidence that children more readily attend to object traits likeshape rather than color as likely candidates for word meanings; however,children seem to have successfully identified color a candidate for wordmeaning before they begin to produce color words in speech. There is alsoevidence that pre-linguistic infants, like adults, perceive colorcategorically. While these perceptual categories likely constrain themeanings that children consider, they cannot fully define color wordmeanings because languages vary in both the number of location of colorword boundaries. Recent evidence suggests that the delay in color wordacquisition primarily stems from an inductive process of refining theseboundaries.

scholarly journals Word meaning access: The one-to-many mapping from form to meaning

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer M Rodd
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Word Meaning ◽  
Semantic Features ◽  
Contextual Cues ◽  
Word Meanings ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Core Feature ◽  
Distributional Information ◽  
Current Context ◽  
The One

This chapter focuses on the process by which stored knowledge about a word’s form (orthographic or phonological) maps onto stored knowledge about its meaning. This mapping is made challenging by the ambiguity that is ubiquitous in natural language: most familiar words can refer to multiple different concepts. This one-to-many mapping from form to meaning within the lexicon is a core feature of word-meaning access. Fluent, accurate word-meaning access requires that comprehenders integrate multiple cues in order to determine which of a word’s possible semantic features are relevant in the current context. Specifically, word-meaning access is guided by (i) distributional information about the a priori relative likelihoods of different word meanings and (ii) a wide range of contextual cues that indicate which meanings are most likely in the current context.

scholarly journals Semantic Conflict and Response Conflict in the Stroop Task

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 24-38
Author(s):  
Alexey Starodubtsev ◽  
◽  
Mikhail Allakhverdov
Keyword(s):  
Stroop Effect ◽  
Word Meaning ◽  
Incorrect Response ◽  
Response Conflict ◽  
Response Level ◽  
Semantic Level ◽  
Semantic Conflict ◽  
Response Set ◽  
Different Color ◽  
Printed Word

The most common ways researchers explain the Stroop effect are either through semantic or through response conflict. According to the literature, there are several methods capable of disentangling these conflicts: to use words outside of the response set, to use associatively related colors and words, or to use a “2:1” paradigm (requiring the same response for two types of stimuli). However, we believe that these methods cannot entirely differentiate semantic and response conflicts. We propose the following alternative method: when naming the color of a printed word (e.g., red, yellow, etc.) in the Stroop test, participants were asked to use different color names for some colors. For example, the red-colored stimuli had to be named by the word “yellow”. This approach allowed us to create semantically congruent stimuli, but with the conflict at the response level (the word red appears in red, but the participants have to say “yellow” because of the rule). Some stimuli remain congruent at the response level, but with the conflict at the semantic level (the word yellow appears in red, and the participants have to say “yellow” because of the rule). The results showed that semantically congruent stimuli do not produce the Stroop effect even if the meaning of the word corresponds to an incorrect response. In turn, congruence at the response level reduces the interference effect, but interference remains significant. Thus, the response conflict affects the magnitude of the Stroop effect only when there is a semantic conflict. Our data do not correspond to models that assume direct activation of responses corresponding to word meaning

scholarly journals What we talk about when we talk about color

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin R. Twomey ◽  
Gareth Roberts ◽  
David Brainard ◽  
Joshua B. Plotkin
Keyword(s):  
Visible Light ◽  
Color Space ◽  
Color Perception ◽  
Geographic Location ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Variation ◽  
Inference Algorithm ◽  
Color Categories ◽  
New Directions ◽  
Different Color

Names for colors vary widely across languages, but color categories are remarkably consistent [1–5]. Shared mechanisms of color perception help explain consistent partitions of visible light into discrete color vocabularies [6–10]. But the mappings from colors to words are not identical across languages, which may reflect communicative needs – how often speakers must refer to objects of different color [11]. Here we quantify the communicative needs of colors in 130 different languages, using a novel inference algorithm. Some regions of color space exhibit 30-fold greater demand for communication than other regions. The regions of greatest demand correlate with the colors of salient objects, including ripe fruits in primate diets. Using the mathematics of compression we predict and empirically test how languages map colors to words, accounting for communicative needs. We also document extensive cultural variation in communicative demands on different regions of color space, which is partly explained by differences in geographic location and local biogeography. This account reconciles opposing theories for universal patterns in color vocabularies, while opening new directions to study cross-cultural variation in the need to communicate different colors.

Using Speakers' Referential Intentions to Model Early Cross-Situational Word Learning

2009 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 578-585 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael C. Frank ◽  
Noah D. Goodman ◽  
Joshua B. Tenenbaum
Keyword(s):  
Computational Model ◽  
Word Learning ◽  
Word Meaning ◽  
Mutual Exclusivity ◽  
Object Individuation ◽  
Word Meanings ◽  
Inference Problems ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
Situational Learning

Word learning is a “chicken and egg” problem. If a child could understand speakers' utterances, it would be easy to learn the meanings of individual words, and once a child knows what many words mean, it is easy to infer speakers' intended meanings. To the beginning learner, however, both individual word meanings and speakers' intentions are unknown. We describe a computational model of word learning that solves these two inference problems in parallel, rather than relying exclusively on either the inferred meanings of utterances or cross-situational word-meaning associations. We tested our model using annotated corpus data and found that it inferred pairings between words and object concepts with higher precision than comparison models. Moreover, as the result of making probabilistic inferences about speakers' intentions, our model explains a variety of behavioral phenomena described in the word-learning literature. These phenomena include mutual exclusivity, one-trial learning, cross-situational learning, the role of words in object individuation, and the use of inferred intentions to disambiguate reference.

Kennis van Lexicale Relaties Bij Blinde Kinderen

1998 ◽  
Vol 60 ◽  
pp. 47-52
Author(s):  
Anita van Loon-Vervoorn ◽  
Loekie Eibers
Keyword(s):  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Word Meaning ◽  
Word Meanings ◽  
Blind Children

Blind children acquire their mother tongue in a relatively 'decontextualized' way, as compared to their sighted peers. Many word meanings which sighted children learn in a predominantly visual experiential context, have to be verbally explained and defined to blind children. In consequence, blind children may be deficient in the more experientially based aspects of word meaning, but may be aheadof their,sighted peers in their acquisition of the more verbally based meaning relations between words. Our findings indicate that blind children do not seem to be 'ahead' of sighted children in the knowledge about verbally based relations but rather in the accessibility of the relations which they have in their lexicon.

scholarly journals A three-dimensional laser interferometer gravitational-wave detector

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mengxu Liu ◽  
Biping Gong
Keyword(s):  
Gravitational Wave ◽  
Laser Interferometer ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Electromagnetic Emission ◽  
Laser Interferometry ◽  
Electromagnetic Spectrum ◽  
Spherically Symmetric ◽  
Directional Response ◽  
Wave Detector ◽  
The Universe

Abstract The gravitational wave (GW) has opened a new window to the universe beyond the electromagnetic spectrum. Since 2015, dozens of GW events have been caught by the ground-based GW detectors through laser interferometry. However, all the ground-based detectors are L-shaped Michelson interferometers, with very limited directional response to GW. Here we propose a three-dimensional (3-D) laser interferometer detector in the shape of a regular triangular pyramid, which has more spherically symmetric antenna pattern. Moreover, the new configuration corresponds to much stronger constraints on parameters of GW sources, and is capable of constructing null-streams to get rid of the signal-like noise events. A 3-D detector of kilometer scale of such kind would shed new light on  the joint search of GW and electromagnetic emission.

The early acquisition of word meaning

1976 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter A. Reich
Keyword(s):  
Early Development ◽  
Learning Process ◽  
Word Meaning ◽  
Word Meanings ◽  
Early Acquisition ◽  
Special Case

ABSTRACTThe development of the meaning of shoe in one pre-lingual child, plus additional examples drawn from the literature, support a notion that word meanings start out very narrow and only become overextended later, though sometimes before the word is spoken. This appears to contradict the course of development of meaning hypothesized by Clark (1973). It is argued that the early development of word meaning is simply a special case of a much more general learning process.

“Corplum is a core from a plum”: The advantage of bilingual children in the analysis of word meaning from verbal context

2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
STEFKA H. MARINOVA-TODD
Keyword(s):  
Independent Schools ◽  
Standardized Test ◽  
Word Meaning ◽  
Receptive Vocabulary ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Test Results ◽  
Word Meanings ◽  
Word Context ◽  
The Usa

The possible advantage of bilingual children over monolinguals in analyzing word meanings from verbal context was examined. The subjects were 40 third-grade children (20 bilingual and 20 monolingual) recruited from independent schools in the USA. The two groups of participants were compared on their performance on a standardized test of receptive vocabulary and an experimental measure of word meanings, the Word–Context Test. Results revealed that on average, the bilingual children had smaller vocabularies in English. The bilinguals deduced the meaning from context of more words than the monolingual children, although there were no differences between groups on the rate of reaching the target meanings for words on which they were successful, and on the quality of their definitions. Moreover, bilingual children approached the task differently and they showed greater flexibility when analyzing word meanings from verbal context, thus indicating that bilinguals may be more efficient vocabulary learners than monolinguals.

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