Table 1 - uploaded by Erica Wojcik
Content may be subject to copyright.
Results From Experiment 2: Mean Proportion of Looks Infants Made to the Target Object in the Baseline and Target Windows
Source publication
Although the semantic relationships among words have long been acknowledged as a crucial component of adult lexical knowledge, the ontogeny of lexical networks remains largely unstudied. To determine whether learners encode relationships among novel words, we trained 2-year-olds on four novel words that referred to four novel objects, which were gr...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... looked significantly more to the target object during the target window than during the baseline window, t(23) = 4.78, p < .001 (see Table 1). This suggests that the tod- dlers learned the novel words. ...
Context 2
... found the same pattern for the more challenging similar-object trials, t(23) = 3.06, p < .01 (see Fig. 4 and Table 1). To compare performance on the two trial types, we calculated difference scores for each subject by subtracting baseline-window accuracy from target-window accuracy for both similar-and dis- similar-object trials. ...
Similar publications
The words in children's language learning environments are strongly predictive of cognitive development and school achievement. But how do we measure language environments and do so at the scale of the many words that children hear day in, day out? The quantity and quality of words in a child's input are typically measured in terms of total amount...
Representations formed on the basis of verbal descriptions may be fleeting and relatively weak or robust enough to support identification of referents. We investigated these two possibilities. Children (2.5- and 3.5-year-olds) were read verbal descriptions of unusual animals and were asked to choose the described animal from a pair of items. Someti...
Citations
... Instead, the segmented components are organized around functional (e.g., "things that are held, " MacWhinney, 2014) and semantic (e.g., "person/object, " Lieven et al., 2003;Dabrowska and Lieven, 2005) relationships in addition to distributional patterns. These components can, but need not, correspond to individual words, as children are sensitive to the statistical properties of multiword sequences (Bannard and Matthews, 2008;Skarabela et al., 2021) in addition to associative (Wojcik and Saffran, 2013) and positional (Wojcik and Saffran, 2015) information. Thus, apart from lexical items segmented from longer sequences, the components can include words along with their article (in Spanish, "la-pelota, " as opposed to "la" and "pelota, " Arnon and Ramscar, 2012) and longer chunks spanning multiple words, accounting for the jump from e.g., "I want milk" to "more milk" to, finally, "I want more milk" 3 (MacWhinney, 2014). ...
Traditional accounts of language postulate two basic components: words stored in a lexicon, and rules that govern how they can be combined into meaningful sentences, a grammar. But, although this words-and-rules framework has proven itself to be useful in natural language processing and cognitive science, it has also shown important shortcomings when faced with actual language use. In this article, we review evidence from language acquisition, sentence processing, and computational modeling that shows how multiword expressions such as idioms, collocations, and other meaningful and common units that comprise more than one word play a key role in the organization of our linguistic knowledge. Importantly, multiword expressions straddle the line between lexicon and grammar, calling into question how useful this distinction is as a foundation for our understanding of language. Nonetheless, finding a replacement for the foundational role the words-and-rules approach has played in our theories is not straightforward. Thus, the second part of our article reviews and synthesizes the diverse approaches that have attempted to account for the central role of multiword expressions in language representation, acquisition, and processing.
... Conversely, another way to address this issue is to use novel items so that perceptual features of objects can be systematically manipulated. Indeed, there is a growing body of work following this general approach-with examples including studies where novel items vary in either their pairwise perceptual similarity [87] or the density of their respective categories in toddlers' productive vocabularies [83]. The results of these studies suggest toddlers are sensitive to and encode patterns of pairwise similarity in lexical representations even for newly learned words-processes that could give rise to the pattern of results revealed in the current study. ...
While recent research suggests that toddlers tend to learn word meanings with many “perceptual” features that are accessible to the toddler’s sensory perception, it is not clear whether and how building a lexicon with perceptual connectivity supports attention to and recognition of word meanings. We explore this question in 24–30-month-olds (N = 60) in relation to other individual differences, including age, vocabulary size, and tendencies to maintain focused attention. Participants’ looking to item pairs with high vs. low perceptual connectivity—defined as the number of words in a child’s lexicon sharing perceptual features with the item—was measured before and after target item labeling. Results revealed pre-labeling attention to known items is biased to both high- and low-connectivity items: first to high, and second, but more robustly, to low-connectivity items. Subsequent object–label processing was also facilitated for high-connectivity items, particularly for children with temperamental tendencies to maintain focused attention. This work provides the first empirical evidence that patterns of shared perceptual features within children’s known vocabularies influence both visual and lexical processing, highlighting the potential for a newfound set of developmental dependencies based on the perceptual/sensory structure of early vocabularies.
... First, multiple pieces of evidence suggest that word learning extends beyond label-referent associations: Children and adults track information about the contexts in which a word occurs. For instance, they can keep track of the semantic and contextual relations between words (e.g., that "shoe" is often uttered with "foot" and more frequently in a dressing-event than in a eating-event: Arias-Trejo & Plunkett, 2013;Bergelson & Aslin, 2017;Dautriche & Chemla, 2014;Perfetti & Hart, 2002;Wojcik & Saffran, 2013). And second, while young children were long thought to have very poor episodic memory, recent research suggest that these abilities had been underestimated by previous research (e.g., Király et al., 2018). ...
There has been little investigation of the way source monitoring, the ability to track the source of one’s knowledge, may be involved in lexical acquisition. In two experiments, we tested whether toddlers (mean age 30 months) can monitor the source of their lexical knowledge and reevaluate their implicit belief about a word mapping when this source is proven to be unreliable. Experiment 1 replicated previous research (Koenig & Woodward, 2010): children displayed better performance in a word learning test when they learned words from a speaker who has previously revealed themself as reliable (correctly labeling familiar objects) as opposed to an unreliable labeler (incorrectly labeling familiar objects). Experiment 2 then provided the critical test for source monitoring: children first learned novel words from a speaker before watching that speaker labeling familiar objects correctly or incorrectly. Children who were exposed to the reliable speaker were significantly more likely to endorse the word mappings taught by the speaker than children who were exposed to a speaker who they later discovered was an unreliable labeler. Thus, young children can reevaluate recently learned word mappings upon discovering that the source of their knowledge is unreliable. This suggests that children can monitor the source of their knowledge in order to decide whether that knowledge is justified, even at an age where they are not credited with the ability to verbally report how they have come to know what they know.
... Before children start naming objects, visual familiarity with objects critically improves learning of name-object links. Moving in space, children get closer and focus on interesting objects, encoding their similarities and relations [118]; these moments are optimal to map words and objects, since the referential ambiguity is highly reduced, and children can fully benefit from adults' linguistic input [119]. Robust evidence shows that Western-society children extend object names on the basis of shape [120], and this likely occurs because shape is grounded in action [121]. ...
... Before children start naming objects, visual familiarity with objects critically improves learning of name-object links. Moving in space, children get closer and focus on interesting objects, encoding their similarities and relations ( [116]); these moments are optimal to map words and objects, since the referential ambiguity is highly reduced, and children can fully benefit from adults' linguistic input ( [117]). Robust evidence shows that Western-society children extend object names on the basis of shape ( [118]), and this likely occurs because shape is grounded in action ( [119]). ...
The paper introduces a new perspective on abstract concepts (e.g. “freedom”) and their associate words representation, the Words As social Tools (WAT) view. Traditional theories conceptualize language as a way to index referents, a shortcut to access meaning, or a way to access meaning through words associations. WAT goes beyond these theories by identifying additional functions of words and language: words are tools helping us to perform actions and change the state of our social environment, and language is a means to improve our thought abilities, to control our behavior and plays a predictive role, helping us to form categories. Most importantly, WAT proposes that language and sociality – along with interoceptive and metacognitive processes – are key for the grounding of abstract concepts (ACs) that are more complex, variable, and more detached from perceptual and motor experience than concrete concepts (CCs). We highlight four tenets of WAT and discuss each of them in light of recent evidence: a. acquisition: compared to concrete concepts, the acquisition of abstract concepts relies more on social and linguistic inputs; b. brain representation: abstract concepts recruit more linguistic and social brain areas; c. mouth activation: due to the relevance of language for representing them, abstract concepts activate more the oral motor system; d. linguistic variability: abstract concepts are more affected by differences between spoken languages. We discuss evidence supporting these four tenets of WAT, and its advantages and limitations compared to other views on abstract concepts. Finally, we outline a conceptual proposal that specifies how internal models supporting the representation and processing of ACs can be grounded on interoceptive, metacognitive, social, and linguistic experience.
... Additionally, specific learning phenomena of which the language user has some awareness-explicit learning-include building meaning through comparison and attaching it to words (Lany & Saffran, 2011;Wojcik & Saffran, 2013) and structures (Syrett, Arunachalam, & Waxman, 2014;van Dam & Desai, 2016), and using generalised concepts of meaning in different contexts (Finn & Hudson Kam, 2015;Fisher, Gertner, Scott, & Yuan, 2010;Foraker, Regier, Khetarpal, Perfors, & Tenenbaum, 2009). Specific examples of syntactic structures are presented in Table 2 below. ...
This work presents the case for using native-like language and learning networks in the classroom-based teaching of foreign languages and suggests how this might be done for EFL lessons. Networks in both syntax and syntax learning are discussed. Language and learning networks are then identified using principles from Evolutionary Linguistics and Cognitive Linguistics. The work culminates in an examination of how the identified networks in language and language learning can be better employed by teachers in the classroom to improve retention and use. Three general lesson plan types are suggested, which correspond with the three language network types that have been identified, which go further to attach meaning to the structures learnt in class.
... The stimuli in most studies on infant priming are chosen because they are familiar, so it is unclear if newly learned words are connected into lexical-semantic networks immediately, or if word representations must be more robust and well known before relations are formed. Researchers have used the AST to investigate semantic priming between newly learned words (29,30). In these experiments, 2-year-olds are exposed to four novel words organized into pairs of words related along only one dimension. ...
... When 2-year-olds learned new words in this paradigm, they readily encoded relations based on the visual similarity of the referents (29). Specifically, when two newly encoded words were related only by color of referent and similarity of shape, infants showed a priming effect between those word labels, in the absence of their referents, immediately after learning. ...
Researchers have focused for decades on how young children learn individual words. However, they have paid less attention to how children organize their word knowledge into the network of representations that underlies our ability to retrieve the right words efficiently and flexibly when we need them. Although methodological limits have made it difficult to study the development of lexical–semantic networks, in recent work with new paradigms, infants and toddlers have shown that they organize their vocabulary systematically via both categorical and associative relations from around age 2. Combined with work demonstrating that lexical–semantic relations affect early comprehension, production, and learning, this emerging area of research suggests that scientists and practitioners would benefit from more comprehensive theories of language learning that include not only vocabulary development, but also the development of lexical–semantic networks.
... For instance, Luche, Durrant, Floccia, and Plunkett (2014) find that 18-month-olds differentially listen to lists of words that are semantically coherent, as opposed to lists that are from mixed semantic categories, suggesting that even in relatively small vocabularies, there is organization along semantic dimensions. Relatedly, when learning new words, two-year olds quickly deduce visual similarity among new referents, and listen longer to perceptually related words than unrelated words (Wojcik & Saffran, 2013). In further relevant work, Arias-Trejo and Plunkett (2010) find that by 18-24 months infants reliably fixate a named target when the target and foil referent are visually or semantically related (or neither), but still struggle when the two presented images are both semantically and visually related (e.g. ...
The present study investigated infants’ knowledge about familiar nouns. Infants (n = 46, 12–20-month-olds) saw two-image displays of familiar objects, or one familiar and one novel object. Infants heard either a matching word (e.g. “foot’ when seeing foot and juice), a related word (e.g. “sock” when seeing foot and juice) or a nonce word (e.g. “fep” when seeing a novel object and dog). Across the whole sample, infants reliably fixated the referent on matching and nonce trials. On the critical related trials we found increasingly less looking to the incorrect (but related) image with age. These results suggest that one-year-olds look at familiar objects both when they hear them labeled and when they hear related labels, to similar degrees, but over the second year increasingly rely on semantic fit. We suggest that infants’ initial semantic representations are imprecise, and continue to sharpen over the second postnatal year.
... Two different conditions were created to counterbalance the familiarized and nonfamiliarized words, such that half of the participants heard tursey and coro during the familiarization phase and the other half heard blicket and pif during the familiarization phase. Note that we chose these particular four words because previous work with these stimuli demonstrated that toddlers of this age can learn this set of four wordobject pairings in quiet condition (Wojcik & Saffran, 2013). A single female speaker recorded all of the materials in an infant-directed register. ...
... This was an intentional choice in order to make the task easier for toddlers to learn. Indeed, these words have been shown to be learnable in other studies with a similar age group (Wojcik & Saffran, 2013). It is likely that if we increased the similarity of the words, we would have increased the processing demands of the task, which would in turn lead to a greater effect of noise on learning for children in the 10 dB SNR condition (Swingley & Aslin, 2007;Werker, Fennel, Corcoran, & Stager, 2002). ...
Although most studies of language learning take place in quiet laboratory settings, everyday language learning occurs under noisy conditions. The current research investigated the effects of background speech on word learning. Both younger (22-to 24-month-olds; n = 40) and older (28-to 30-month-olds; n = 40) toddlers successfully learned novel label–object pairings when target speech was 10 dB louder than background speech but not when the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) was 5 dB. Toddlers (28-to 30-month-olds; n = 26) successfully learned novel words with a 5-dB SNR when they initially heard the labels embedded in fluent speech without background noise, before they were mapped to objects. The results point to both challenges and protective factors that may impact language learning in complex auditory environments.
... Eye movements were coded offline frame by frame (Fernald, Zangl, Portillo, & Marchman, 2008). To inspect participants' looking after hearing the target word, a critical time window was defined as 300ms to 1800ms after target word onset; this window was chosen based on other studies with this age group (Fernald et al., 2008;Wojcik & Saffran, 2013). Individual trials were excluded if participants were looking away from the screen for over 500ms, and participants were excluded if they had fewer than 6 of 12 usable trials of each trial type per blocks. ...
When a toddler knows a word, what does she actually know? Many categories have multiple relevant properties; for example, shape and color are relevant to membership in the category banana. How do toddlers prioritize these properties when recognizing familiar words, and are there systematic differences among children? In this study, toddlers viewed pairs of objects associated with prototypical colors. On some trials, objects were typically colored (e.g., Holstein cow and pink pig); on other trials, colors were switched (e.g., pink cow and Holstein-patterned pig). On each trial, toddlers were directed to find a target object. Overall, recognition was disrupted when colors were switched, as measured by eye movements. Moreover, individual differences in vocabularies predicted recognition differences: Toddlers who say fewer shape-based words were more disrupted by color switches. "Knowing" a word may not mean the same thing for all toddlers; different toddlers prioritize different facets of familiar objects in their lexical representations.
