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.

scholarly journals Prosody and Function Words Cue the Acquisition of Word Meanings in 18-Month-Old Infants

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 319-332 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex de Carvalho ◽  
Angela Xiaoxue He ◽  
Jeffrey Lidz ◽  
Anne Christophe
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Word Learning ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Word Meaning ◽  
Lexical Acquisition ◽  
Function Words ◽  
Word Meanings ◽  
Syntactic Information ◽  
And Function ◽  
Speech Melody

Language acquisition presents a formidable task for infants, for whom word learning is a crucial yet challenging step. Syntax (the rules for combining words into sentences) has been robustly shown to be a cue to word meaning. But how can infants access syntactic information when they are still acquiring the meanings of words? We investigated the contribution of two cues that may help infants break into the syntax and give a boost to their lexical acquisition: phrasal prosody (speech melody) and function words, both of which are accessible early in life and correlate with syntactic structure in the world’s languages. We show that 18-month-old infants use prosody and function words to recover sentences’ syntactic structure, which in turn constrains the possible meanings of novel words: Participants ( N = 48 in each of two experiments) interpreted a novel word as referring to either an object or an action, given its position within the prosodic-syntactic structure of sentences.

scholarly journals Children's use of information in word learning

1990 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 393-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terry Kit-Fong Au
Keyword(s):  
Prior Knowledge ◽  
Word Learning ◽  
Word Meaning ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Linguistic Information ◽  
Word Meanings ◽  
Knowledge And Beliefs ◽  
Novel Material ◽  
Children's Beliefs

ABSTRACTWhenever children hear a novel word, the context supplies information about its meaning. One way children may cope with so much information is to use whatever seems to make sense, given their prior knowledge and beliefs, while ignoring or quickly forgetting the rest. This work examined if and how children's beliefs about word meanings may affect their use of contrastive linguistic information in the input in word learning. In Study 1, some 3- and 4-year-olds were introduced to a novel material or shape name and heard it contrasted with familiar words. Others merely heard the novel word used for referring to an object. These children were then tested to determine what they had learned about their new word meaning. In Study 2, another group of 3-and 4-year-olds were asked to name the materials and shapes used for introducing these novel terms. Children made use of linguistic contrast only in some situations. They benefited more when the novel term did not overlap much in denotation with any terms commonly known by 3-and 4-year-olds. These results suggest that children can use information in the input very efficiently in learning a term for an as-yet-unnamed category, but not in learning a term similar in denotation to a word they already know. Thus, the results are consistent with the claim that children believe every word has a unique denotation.

Blind children's language: resolving some differences

1984 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 645-664 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elaine S. Andersen ◽  
Anne Dunlea ◽  
Linda S. Kekelis
Keyword(s):  
Visual Perception ◽  
Visual Information ◽  
Role Play ◽  
Word Meaning ◽  
Early Language ◽  
Word Meanings ◽  
Linguistic System ◽  
Blind Children ◽  
The World

ABSTRACTAlthough the role of visual perception is central to many theories of language development, researchers have disagreed sharply on the effects of blindness on the acquisition process: some claim major differences between blind and sighted children; others find great similarities. With audio-and video-recorded longitudinal data from six children (with varying degrees of vision) aged 0; 9–3; 4, we show that there ARE basic differences in early language, which appear to reflect differences in cognitive development. We focus here on early lexical acquisition and on verbal role-play, demonstrating how previous analyses have failed to observe aspects of the blind child's language system because language was considered out of the context of use. While a comparison of early vocabularies does suggest surface similarities, we found that when sighted peers are actively forming hypotheses about word meanings, totally blind children are acquiring largely unanalysed ‘labels’. They are slow to extend words and rarely overextended any. Similarly, although verbal role-play appears early, attempts to incorporate this kind of language into conversations with others reveal clear problems with reversibility – specifically, the ability to understand the role of shifting perspectives in determining word meaning. Examination of language in context suggests that blind children have difficulties in just those areas of language acquisition where visual information can provide input about the world and be a stimulus for forming hypotheses about pertinent aspects of the linguistic system.

scholarly journals Linguistic Conventionality and the Role of Epistemic Reasoning in Children’s Mutual Exclusivity Inferences

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mahesh Srinivasan ◽  
Ruthe Foushee ◽  
Andrew Bartnof ◽  
David Barner
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Word Learning ◽  
Relevant Alternative ◽  
Mutual Exclusivity ◽  
Epistemic Reasoning ◽  
Epistemic States ◽  
Children's Beliefs

To interpret an interlocutor’s use of a novel word (e.g., “give me the papaya”), children typically exclude referents that they already have labels for (like an “apple”), and expect the word to refer to something they do not have a label for (like the papaya). The goal of the present studies was to test whether such mutual exclusivity inferences require children to reason about the words their interlocutors know and could have chosen to say: e.g., If she had wanted the “apple” she would have asked for it (since she knows the word “apple”), so she must want the papaya. Across four studies, we document that both children and adults will make mutual exclusivity inferences even when they believe that their interlocutor does not share their knowledge of relevant, alternative words, suggesting that such inferences do not require reasoning about an interlocutor’s epistemic states. Instead, our findings suggest that children’s own knowledge of an object’s label, together with their belief that this is the conventional label for the object in their language, and that this convention applies to their interlocutor, is sufficient to support their mutual exclusivity inferences. Additionally, and contrary to the claims of previous studies that have used mutual exclusivity as a proxy for children’s beliefs that others share their knowledge, we found that children — especially those with stronger theory of mind ability — are quite conservative about attributing their knowledge of object labels to others. Together, our findings hold implications for theories of word learning, and for how children learn about the scope of shared conventional knowledge.

The Role of Reference in Cross-Situational Word Learning (2018, Cognition)

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Hao Wang ◽  
Toben Herbert Mintz
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Word Learning ◽  
Statistical Information ◽  
Unlimited Number ◽  
Referential Ambiguity ◽  
Situational Learning

Word learning involves massive ambiguity, since in a particular encounter with a novel word, there are an unlimited number of potential referents. One proposal for how learners surmount the problem of ambiguity is that learners use cross-situational statistics to constrain the ambiguity: When a word and its referent co-occur across multiple situations, learners will associate the word with the correct referent. Yu & Smith (2007) propose that these co-occurrence statistics are sufficient for word-to-referent mapping. Alternative accounts hold that co-occurrence statistics alone are insufficient to support learning, and that learners are further guided by knowledge that words are referential (e.g., Waxman & Gelman, 2009). However, no behavioral word learning studies we are aware of explicitly manipulate subjects’ prior assumptions about the role of the words in the experiments in order to test the influence of these assumptions. In this study, we directly test whether, when faced with referential ambiguity, co-occurrence statistics are sufficient for word-to-referent mappings in adult word-learners. Across a series of cross-situational learning experiments, we varied the degree to which there was support for the notion that the words were referential. At the same time, the statistical information about the words’ meanings was held constant. When we overrode support for the notion that words were referential, subjects failed to learn the word-to-referent mappings, but otherwise they succeeded. Thus, cross-situational statistics were useful only when learners had the goal of discovering mappings between words and referents. We discuss the implications of these results for theories of word learning in children’s language acquisition.

The effects of linguistic experience on the flexible use of mutual exclusivity in word learning

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 626-638 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARINA KALASHNIKOVA ◽  
KAREN MATTOCK ◽  
PADRAIC MONAGHAN
Keyword(s):  
Word Learning ◽  
Word Meaning ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Communicative Interaction ◽  
Mutual Exclusivity ◽  
Linguistic Experience ◽  
Pragmatic Information ◽  
The Social ◽  
One To One ◽  
The One

Mutual Exclusivity (ME) is a prominent constraint in language acquisition, which guides children to establish one-to-one mappings between words and referents. But how does unfolding experience of multiple-to-one word-meaning mappings in bilingual children's environment affect their understanding of when to use ME and when to accept lexical overlap? Three-to-five-year-old monolingual and simultaneous bilingual children completed two pragmatically distinct tasks, where successful word learning relied on either the default use of ME or the ability to accept overlapping labels. All children could flexibly use ME by following the social-pragmatic directions available in each task. However, linguistic experience shaped the development of ME use, whereby older monolinguals showed a greater reliance on the one-to-one mapping assumption, but older bilinguals showed a greater ability to accept lexical overlap. We suggest that flexible use of ME is thus shaped by pragmatic information present in each communicative interaction and children's individual linguistic experience.

First Word Learning

2018 ◽  
pp. 713-735
Author(s):  
Marilyn May Vihman
Keyword(s):  
Word Learning ◽  
Declarative Memory ◽  
Word Meaning ◽  
Qualitative Change ◽  
Brain Structures ◽  
Perceptual Processing ◽  
Word Forms ◽  
Episodic Memories ◽  
Vocabulary Spurt

Learning words means gaining the ability not only to understand, but also to produce identifiable word forms and use them to make reference. Focusing on the first two years of life, this chapter considers the role of isolated words as well as segmentation in word-form learning, and also the role of vocal practice for production. It reviews alternative perspectives on the origins of concepts or categories of meaning and weighs the evidence for a “vocabulary spurt” or “nominal insight.” Self-action is found to be a powerful tool for perceptual processing of word forms, understanding referential intention, and retaining episodic memories. Changes related to the maturation of brain structures documented for declarative memory in other domains provide suggestive parallels to the processes of decontextualization of word meaning and reference, while word learning itself is seen to lead to a qualitative change in the learning process.

scholarly journals The role of developmental change and linguistic experience in the mutual exclusivity effect

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Molly Lewis ◽  
Veronica Cristiano ◽  
Brenden M. Lake ◽  
Tammy Kwan ◽  
Michael C. Frank
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Study ◽  
Developmental Change ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Quantitative Description ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Mutual Exclusivity ◽  
Word Meanings ◽  
Linguistic Experience ◽  
The Relationship

Given a novel word and a familiar and a novel referent, children have a bias to assume the novel word refers to the novel referent. This bias -- often referred to as "Mutual Exclusivity'' (ME) -- is thought to be a potentially powerful route through which children might learn new word meanings, and, consequently, has been the focus of a large amount of empirical study and theorizing. Here, we focus on two aspects of the bias that have received relatively little attention in the literature: Development and experience. A successful theory of ME will need to provide an account for why the strength of the effect changes with the age of the child. We provide a quantitative description of the change in the strength of the bias across development, and investigate the role that linguistic experience plays in this developmental change. We first summarize the current body of empirical findings via a meta-analysis, and then present two experiments that examine the relationship between a child's amount of linguistic experience and the strength of the ME bias. We conclude that the strength of the bias varies dramatically across development and that linguistic experience is likely one causal factor contributing to this change. In the General Discussion, we describe how existing theories of ME can account for our findings, and highlight the value of computational modeling for future theorizing.

scholarly journals From social contingency to verbal reference: a constructivist hypothesis.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Luchkina ◽  
Fei Xu
Keyword(s):  
Word Learning ◽  
Language Production ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Eye Gaze ◽  
Word Meaning ◽  
Developmental Theory ◽  
Mediated Learning ◽  
Word Meanings ◽  
Social Contingency ◽  
Ostensive Communication

In the first year of life, infants’ word learning is slow, laborious, and requires long, repeated exposure to word-referent co-occurrences. In contrast, by 14-18 months, infants learn words from just a few labeling events, use joint attention and eye-gaze to decipher word meaning, and begin to use speech to communicate about absent things. We propose that this remarkable advancement in word learning results from attaining verbal reference–a property of words (or other signals) that are linked to mental representations and used intentionally to communicate about real-world referents. We argue that verbal reference is supported by co-developing conceptual, social, representational, and statistical learning capacities. We also propose that infants’ recognition of this tri-directional link between words, referents, and mental representations is fueled by their experience participating in and observing socially contingent interactions. Verbal reference signals a qualitative shift in infants’ word learning. This shift enables infants to bootstrap word meanings from syntax and semantics, learn novel words and facts from non-ostensive communication, and even make inferences about speakers’ epistemic competence based on their language production. In this paper, we review empirical findings across multiple facets of infant cognition, propose a novel developmental theory of verbal reference, and reconcile a long-standing debate on the mechanisms of early word learning. Finally, we propose new directions of empirical research that may provide stronger and more direct evidence for our theory and contribute to our understanding of the development of verbal reference and language-mediated learning in infancy and beyond.

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