Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 108, Issue 22, Pages 9014-9019Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1105040108
Keywords
acquisition; induction; language; vocabulary
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Funding
- National Institutes of Health [1-R01-HD-37507]
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Three experiments explored how words are learned from hearing them across contexts. Adults watched 40-s videotaped vignettes of parents uttering target words (in sentences) to their infants. Videos were muted except for a beep or nonsense word inserted where each mystery word was uttered. Participants were to identify the word. Exp. 1 demonstrated that most (90%) of these natural learning instances are quite uninformative, whereas a small minority (7%) are highly informative, as indexed by participants' identification accuracy. Preschoolers showed similar information sensitivity in a shorter experimental version. Two further experiments explored how cross-situational information helps, by manipulating the serial ordering of highly informative vignettes in five contexts. Response patterns revealed a learning procedure in which only a single meaning is hypothesized and retained across learning instances, unless disconfirmed. Neither alternative hypothesized meanings nor details of past learning situations were retained. These findings challenge current models of cross-situational learning which assert that multiple meaning hypotheses are stored and cross-tabulated via statistical procedures. Learners appear to use a one-trial fast-mapping procedure, even under conditions of referential uncertainty.
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