scholarly journals I don’t believe what you said before: Preschoolers retrospectively discount information from inaccurate speakers

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Luchkina ◽  
Kathleen H. Corriveau ◽  
David Sobel

Children use speakers’ past accuracy to make inferences about novel word meanings those individuals provide in the future. An open question is whether children can retrospectively re-evaluate information upon learning that the source was inaccurate. We addressed this question in two experiments, in which a speaker first introduced labels for novel objects and then revealed that she is either accurate or inaccurate in naming familiar objects. Experiment 1 showed that 3.5-6.5-year-olds displayed enhanced performance on a word knowledge test when they had learned novel words from a speaker who then showed herself to be an accurate labeler as opposed to an inaccurate one. Experiment 2 replicated this finding, but had a different speaker provide inaccurate label information. This manipulation did not affect learning, suggesting that children discount speakers and are not simply influenced by the demands of processing inaccurate information. Together, these results indicate that 3.5-6.5-year-olds continue to monitor the speakers’ accuracy after learning new words from them, update their beliefs as accuracy data become available, and selectively retain words learned from speakers whom they deem to be epistemically competent.

1998 ◽  
Vol 58 ◽  
pp. 27-29
Author(s):  
Marianne Verhallen-van Ling

The most frequently used Dutch language course for primary schools (Taal actief, 'Language actively') was analysed with respect to vocabulary teaching. The analysis was restricted to the materials for 'group 6' (children of about 10 years old). It was shown that vocabulary was part of the curriculum, but only in a limited and non-systematic way. Only about 350 words which seemed adequate for the age group considered were presented in the course material. Furthermore, the words seemed to be randomly selected. Relatively few of the tasks and exercises were directed at the learning of new words or new word meanings. Most tasks had to do with the relation between words, for example providing words with opposite meanings. Generally, the exercises did not aim at the acquisition of new words and meanings, but at the testing of word knowledge.


Author(s):  
Sharry Shakory ◽  
Xi Chen ◽  
S. Hélène Deacon

Purpose The value of shared reading as an opportunity for learning word meanings, or semantics, is well established; it is less clear whether children learn about the orthography, or word spellings, in this context. We tested whether children can learn the spellings and meanings of new words at the same time during a tightly controlled shared reading session. We also examined whether individual differences in either or both of orthographic and semantic learning during shared reading in English were related to word reading in English and French concurrently and 6 months longitudinally in emergent English–French bilinguals. Method Sixty-two Grade 1 children (35 girls; M age = 75.89 months) listened to 12 short stories, each containing four instances of a novel word, while the examiner pointed to the text. Choice measures of the spellings and meanings of the novel words were completed immediately after reading each set of three stories and again 1 week later. Standardized measures of word reading as well as controls for nonverbal reasoning, vocabulary, and phonological awareness were also administered. Results Children scored above chance on both immediate and delayed measures of orthographic and semantic learning. Orthographic learning was related to both English and French word reading at the same time point and 6 months later. In contrast, the relations between semantic learning and word reading were nonsignificant for both languages after including controls. Conclusion Shared reading is a valuable context for learning both word meanings and spellings, and the learning of orthographic representations in particular is related to word reading abilities. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.13877999


2020 ◽  
Vol 65 ◽  
pp. 323-334
Author(s):  
Inga V. Zheltikova

The concept of O. Spengler suggests that the history of any culture goes through certain stages of development, the last of which is civilization. During this period creative activity in culture is replaced by mechanical imitation and lost connection with the culture formed by the «pra-phenomenon». The author correlates Spengler’s postulates with the processes of actual social reality and comes to the conclusion that contemporary Russia is going through the stage of civilization. The article raises the question of how the future is seen in this situation. The author uses the term “image of the future”, introduced by F. Polak to understand the disinterest of modern post-war Europe in its future. Thus, the lack of interest in the future can be recognized as another characteristic of the state of civilization. The existence in contemporary Russia of distinct images of the future is an open question. Using the methods of content analysis, the author comes to the conclusion that in Russian contemporary society there exists a retrospective image of the future, focused on conservative values, hierarchy of society and its closed nature to the world. Thus, it is concluded that it is wrong to talk about complete absence of images of the future in contemporary Russia. But the nature and content of these images demonstrate the low level of interest in the future, which also indicates the transition of Russian culture to civilization.


Author(s):  
Kevin Wong ◽  
Rob Macmillan

Regarded by commentators as an emollient to soothe critics of the part privatisation of the public probation service, the Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) reforms in England and Wales promised an enlarged role for the voluntary sector in the resettlement and rehabilitation of offenders. Whether such changes mark a decisive turning point or in the fullness of time represent just another twist in the long and messy narrative of voluntary sector provision of offender services remains an open question. This chapter will examine the role and fortunes of the sector during the tumultuous period between 2014 and 2019 and identify what lessons can be learnt for the future.


Author(s):  
Tine Greidanus ◽  
Paul Bogaards ◽  
Elisabeth van der Linden ◽  
Lydius Nienhuis ◽  
Tom de Wolf

Gesture ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eve V. Clark ◽  
Bruno Estigarribia

Adults rely on both speech and gesture to provide children with information pertinent to new word meanings. Parents were videotaped introducing new objects to their children (aged 1;6 and 3;0). They introduce these objects in three phases: (1) they establish joint attention on an object; (2) they introduce a label for it; (3) they situate the object conceptually. Parents used labels and gestures to maintain attention on the object; with one-year-olds, they led with gestures to capture the children’s attention. They added supplementary information about objects only after labeling them, again with speech and gesture. They used indicating gestures (point, touch, tap) to identify the objects labeled, their parts, and their properties. They used demonstrating gestures (turning a truck wheel, opening salad tongs) to depict actions and functions they were describing in words. These procedures support children in their construction of meanings for new words.


2001 ◽  
Vol 66 ◽  
pp. 69-77
Author(s):  
Elisabeth van der Linden ◽  
Paul Bogaards ◽  
Tine Greidanus ◽  
Lydius Nienhuis ◽  
Tom de Wolf

This paper describes an investigation into the relation between the results of a newly developed test of deep word knowledge (DWK) and a series of other word knowledge tests as well as a writing task. The DWK consists of 63 items constructed along the following model: one stimulus plus 6 responses. Each stimulus belongs to one of five frequency classes. The responses are not less frequent than the stimulus word. Students are to pick out the responses which bear a relationship to the stimulus word. Dutch students studying French in their first, second and third year and 26 French 17-year-old high school pupils took the test. The result showed that it has a strong discriminatory power between the groups. The results of the DWK were compared to a broad word knowledge test administered to the first-year students and yielded a high and significant correlation. Comparison with another deep word knowledge test, based on the EURALEX French tests and administered to the third-year students, showed a smaller and non significant correlation. This lower correlation may be due to the greater homogeneity of the group of third-year students. The first- and third-year students did a written assignment, which was scored along a rough scoring model. A t-test showed that the third-year students performed significantly better than the first-year ones. Correlations between the scores of the deep word knowledge test and the writing task were found to be high and significant. This is mainly due to the correlation for the first-year students. The smaller correlation for the third-year group is possibly due to the greater homogeneity. Another explanation could be that the scores for writing for third-year students are more strongly influenced by factors other than word knowledge such as style, text structure and text markers, as well as more complex sentences. It could also be the case that the third-year students' texts show a lexical richness, including rare words, which is not covered by the DWK


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (9) ◽  
pp. 180711 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia Kartushina ◽  
Julien Mayor

The past 5 years have witnessed claims that infants as young as six months of age understand the meaning of several words. To reach this conclusion, researchers presented infants with pairs of pictures from distinct semantic domains and observed longer looks at an object upon hearing its name as compared with the name of the other object. However, these gaze patterns might indicate infants' sensibility to the word frequency and/or its contextual relatedness to the object regardless of a firm semantic understanding of this word. The current study attempted, first, to replicate, in Norwegian language, the results of recent studies showing that six- to nine-month-old English-learning infants understand the meaning of many common words. Second, it assessed the robustness of a ‘comprehension’ interpretation by dissociating semantic knowledge from confounded extra-linguistic cues via the manipulation of the contingency between words and objects. Our planned analyses revealed that Norwegian six- to nine-month-old infants did not understand the meaning of the words used in the study. Our exploratory analyses showed evidence of word comprehension at eight to nine months of age—rather than from six to seven months of age for English-learning infants—suggesting that there are cross-linguistic differences in the onset of word comprehension. In addition, our study revealed that eight- to nine-month-old infants cannot rely exclusively on single extra-linguistic cues to disambiguate between two items, thus suggesting the existence of early word-object mappings. However, these mappings are weak, as infants need additional cues (such as an imbalance in frequency of word use) to reveal word recognition. Our results suggest that the very onset of word comprehension is not based on the infants' knowledge of words per se . Rather, infants use a converging set of cues to identify referents, among which frequency is a robust (pre-semantic) cue that infants exploit to guide object disambiguation and, in turn, learn new words.


Author(s):  
Aaron Benanav

The rapid spread of COVID-19 interacted with long-unfolding economic trends to set a global tinder box aflame. Over the past thirty years, the world's workforce has increasingly found employment in low-wage, low-productivity jobs in the global services sector. The pandemic lockdowns hit these sorts of activities the hardest. Opportunities to work evaporated, spreading both poverty and hunger around the world. The same rise in global service sector employment shares, which amplified the pandemic lockdown's destructive effects, will now slow the pace of the recovery. The transition to a services-based economy has accelerated, due to what José Antonio Ocampo and Tomasso Faccio call “too much excess capacity and too little certainty about future demand,” which have depressed levels of investment and ushered in a period of economic stagnation. COVID-19 will make these tendencies worse. Weak economic recoveries will further entrench an economic order in which employers pay little attention to workers’ demands, deepening employment insecurity and economic inequality. The future for labor looks bleak. What that means for the future of working people remains an open question. Their fight for dignity, in the midst of the pandemic and post-pandemic eras, will prove decisive.


2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 160-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Preeti G. Samudra ◽  
Kevin M. Wong ◽  
Susan B. Neuman

Children from diverse backgrounds are able to learn new words from educational media. However, learning is often partial and fragile, leaving much room for uncovering strategies that can increase the efficacy of educational media in supporting children's vocabulary knowledge. The present study investigated one such strategy—repeated viewing of educational media—in a sample of low-income preschoolers. One hundred thirty one preschoolers were randomly assigned to view an educational media clip teaching three vocabulary words in one of three conditions: (a) once, (b) three times in immediate succession (massed repetition), or (c) three times with views spaced 1 hour apart (spaced repetition). Children completed a target vocabulary assessment both immediately after the final view and 1 week later. Results indicate that certain types of word knowledge were supported by repetition, particularly spaced repetition. Children also effectively retained the vocabulary knowledge they acquired from educational media over a 1-week period in all conditions. This suggests that educational media is a strong platform for teaching low-income preschoolers new words, and that spaced repetition might further support low-income preschoolers' vocabulary learning.


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