lecture 3 - lexical development Flashcards

Question

lexical and semantic development - At what age do children typically start producing words?

Answer 1

around 1 yr

Answer 2

around 50 words

Answer 3

The vocabulary explosion, where word acquisition accelerates rapidly.

Answer 4

Words referring to important people, animals, food, and toys.

Answer 5

Expressive style – emphasizes people and feelings. Referential style – emphasizes objects.

Answer 6

The child’s view of language's purpose (social interaction vs. labeling). Parental language use (e.g., labeling objects more often encourages referential style)

Answer 7

Not significantly. Both expressive and referential children reach 50 words at the same age, and show no major difference in later development (Bates et al., 1994; Hoff-Ginsberg, 1997)

Answer 8

Early words may refer to roles, not just objects (e.g., "mama" may refer to actions associated with the mother, not the mother herself).

Answer 9

Things that move (e.g., people, animals, vehicles). Things that can be moved (e.g., toys, food). Places and tools are rarely named early on

Answer 10

Whether early referential words differ qualitatively from later ones in meaning and use (McShane, 1991)

Answer 11

Rarely at first; they begin doing so more frequently by the end of the second year

Answer 12

Because they must: Identify the correct referent among many possibilities. Learn that words refer to objects, not just properties. Understand that object names remain constant despite changes in appearance

Answer 13

When a mother says, “Isn’t the moon pretty?” the child must figure out: What the word “moon” refers to among many things. That it refers to the object, not just its color or shape. That “moon” stays the same even when it changes shape (crescent to full)

Answer 14

Yes, because children are forming hypotheses about word meanings and refining them over time.

Answer 15

“Bowwow” applied to dogs, cats, cows, and horses. Interpreting “on purpose” as “you’re looking at me.”

Answer 16

Language is for communication. Language makes sense in context.

Answer 17

By forming hypotheses about meanings and testing them against how adults use language

Answer 18

Children’s semantic development relies on their conceptual development—they can only link words to concepts they already understand. This means language learning follows cognitive growth. Not all concepts are linguistically marked (e.g., we don’t have separate words for brown vs. black dogs), but children seem innately able to categorize objects (Quinn & Eimas, 1986). Vocabulary growth isn’t based solely on the words children hear; they often know more object names than appear in adult speech (Bloom, 2001a), suggesting a learning bias. Early words usually arise in contexts where both the parent and child see an example of the category being named. The “look and name” (or ostensive) model—where a parent points and names an object—has its limits (Quine, 1960). The child may not know which feature is being labeled: the whole object, its color, sound, or motion. This is known as the mapping problem. Some help comes from adults emphasizing key words in speech, which children tend to focus on (Gleitman & Wanner, 1982). Despite the challenge, children quickly learn new words, often after a single exposure—a skill called fast-mapping. Researchers continue to explore how children solve the mapping problem so efficiently

Answer 19

- Children use lexical constraints to interpret new words (Golinkoff et al., 1992, 1994). Whole-object assumption: Words refer to whole objects, not parts/attributes (Markman, 1990). Adults usually label whole objects (Ninio, 1980). Children sometimes mislabel adjectives as nouns (e.g., “pretty” = object). Even infants show object-focused perception (Spelke, 1994). Taxonomic constraint: Words refer to categories of similar items (Markman, 1989). Children prefer taxonomic over thematic groupings (e.g., dog + cat vs. dog + dog food). Mutual exclusivity: Each object has only one label (Markman & Wachtel, 1988). Leads to strategies like N3C (novel name–nameless category) (Mervis & Bertrand, 1994). Syntactic cues help identify word meaning: “I see Wolf” (proper noun) vs. “I see the wolf” (common noun) (Bloom, 2001a). Vocabulary growth allows for explicit definitions, including hierarchical terms: E.g., “Chairs, sofas, and tables are types of furniture.” Children expect words to highlight shared features, refined by experience (Waxman, 1999).

Answer 20

Innate & Social Influences Some word-object mappings may be innately biased (Fodor, 1981). Social interaction plays a key role, especially joint attention between adult and child (Baldwin, 1991). Pragmatic context shapes early word use—words tied to specific discourse settings (Levy & Nelson, 1994). Tomasello (1992): Pragmatic/social cues help infer meaning, especially when discussing future actions. Role of Social-Pragmatic Factors Joint attention helps children map words to referents without knowing the language. Variation in joint attention (9–18 months) may explain differences in early vocabulary. Over time, linguistic input quality (richness & complexity) becomes more important than conversational engagement (Hoff & Naigles, 2002). Individual Differences & Conceptual Level Children form different hypotheses about word meanings (Clark & Clark, 1977). Early words tend to be at the basic level (e.g., "dog" vs. "terrier" or "animal") (Brown, 1958). Superordinate terms (e.g., “furniture”) are harder to learn and appear later (Markman, 1989). Mass nouns often signal superordinate categories and have syntactic restrictions (Markman, 1985). Object Properties & Labeling Label interpretation depends on object type: Solids → whole object labels. Substances → parts or properties (Soja et al., 1992). Syntactic Cues & Bootstrapping Children use syntactic bootstrapping (Gleitman, 1990): Sentence structure helps infer word meaning. Part-of-speech cues (e.g., “a sib” vs. “Sib”) guide category vs. name interpretation (Brown, 1958). Children use verb syntax to infer meaning (e.g., "bring" implies transfer) (Naigles, 1990, 1996). Why Some Words Are Easier to Learn Frequency of exposure. Conceptual accessibility (e.g., theory of mind needed for "believe") (Gopnik & Meltzoff, 1997). Information change model: Learning depends on accumulating syntactic & semantic knowledge (Gleitman et al., 2005)

Answer 21

- Approaches that make use of constraints on how children relate words to the world have some problems. - First, we are still faced with the problem of where these constraints themselves come from. - Second, they are biases rather than constraints, as children sometimes go against them (Nelson, 1988, 1990). - In particular, very early words (those used before the vocabulary explosion) often violate the constraints (Barrett, 1986). - For example, Bloom (1973) noted that a young child used “car” to refer to cars, but only when watched from a certain location. - The constraints only appear to come into operation at around 18 months, which is difficult to explain if they are indeed innate or a component of the language acquisition device. (It is of course possible that the attainment of the concept of object permanence interacts with this.) - Third, whereas it is relatively easy to think of constraints that apply to concrete objects and substances, it is less easy to do so for abstract objects and actions. Nelson (1988, 1990) argued that language development is best seen as a process of social convergence between adult and child, emphasizing communicability. The role of social and pragmatic constraints in early acquisition might have been greatly underestimated. In conclusion, it is likely that a number of factors play a role in how children come to name objects.

Answer 22

One useful way of discovering how children acquire meaning is to examine the errors children make. Children’s early meanings overlap with adult meanings in four ways: the early meaning might be exactly the same as the adult meaning; it might overlap but go beyond it; it might be too restricted; or there might be no overlap at all. Words that have no overlap with adult usage get abandoned very quickly: Bloom (1973) observed that in the earliest stages of talking, inappropriate names are sometimes used for objects and actions, but these are soon dropped, because words that have no overlap in meaning with the adult usage are likely to receive no reinforcement in communication.

Answer 23

Over-extension: Child uses a word more broadly than adults (E. Clark, 1973); common across languages (Rescorla, 1980). Often based on perceptual features (shape, size, texture, movement, sound), more than function (Bowerman, 1978; Clark, 1973). McShane & Dockrell (1983): Must distinguish persistent over-extensions (reflecting real semantic development) from occasional errors (similar to adult word slips). Thomson & Chapman (1977): Over-extensions occur in comprehension as well as production, but findings are debated (Fremgen & Fay, 1980). Clark & Clark (1977): Over-extension may happen in two stages—initially attribute-based, later shorthand ("like" objects without the right word). Some errors may be due to mistakes, analogy, or mischief (Bloom, 2001)

Answer 24

Under-extension: Using a word too narrowly (e.g., calling only balls “round”). Often hard to detect because child use seems accurate.

Answer 25

Semantic Feature Hypothesis (E. Clark, 1973) Children’s word meanings are built from incomplete or incorrect sets of semantic features. Problems: Features can be arbitrary, hard to define, and disconnected from perceptual development (Atkinson, 1982; Barrett, 1978). Functional Core Hypothesis (Nelson, 1974) Function as well as perceptual features drive generalization. Suffers similar weaknesses to the semantic feature approach. Prototype Hypothesis (Bowerman, 1978) Children form prototypes (average category members); words are extended based on how closely an object matches the prototype (Kay & Anglin, 1982). Concepts are clustered around prototypical examples rather than fully developed. Also inherits problems of broader semantic theories Summary Over- and under-extensions reflect incomplete or overly specific lexical representations. Development involves refining concepts toward adult norms. Future connectionist models may better explain these patterns.

Answer 26

How Children Learn New Word Meanings Barrett (1978): Children learn word meanings by contrasting new words with related ones (e.g., “dog” vs. “cat”), not just by learning features in isolation. Barrett’s Revised Model (1982): Stage 1: Words are first mapped onto prototypes (typical examples). Stage 2: Contrastive features are used to distinguish semantically similar words. Contrastive Hypothesis (E. Clark, 1987–1995): Each word has a distinct meaning (similar to the mutual exclusivity constraint). New words are assumed to refer to new things. Limitations: Overlap exists: Children sometimes accept two labels for the same object (Gathercole, 1987). Contrast not always useful: E.g., distinguishing black cats from white cats isn't semantically important. Other factors likely involved: Children may infer new meanings from the speaker’s intent or word choice (Gathercole, 1989; Hoff-Ginsberg, 1997).

Answer 27

- It is unlikely that only one principle is operating in semantic development. On the one hand, children have to learn appropriate contrasts between words, but they must not learn inappropriate or too many contrasts. As this is just the sort of domain where the learning of regularities and the relation between many complex inputs and outputs is important, computational modeling should make a useful contribution here; however, as yet there has been no research on this topic. One obvious problem is that it is most unclear how to model the input to semantic development. How should the salient perceptual and functional attributes of objects and actions be encoded? Finally, we should not underestimate the importance of the social setting of language development.

Answer 28

By around 2½ years, children largely stop over-extending words and begin asking questions like “What’s that called?”, triggering rapid vocabulary growth. Word acquisition from this point often follows semantic complexity—simpler concepts are learned first. For example, dimensional adjectives (e.g., big-small, tall-short) are acquired in order of increasing specificity, with wide-narrow and deep-shallow learned last (Bierwisch, 1970; Clark & Clark, 1977). Nouns are typically learned before verbs, likely because verbs involve more cognitive and syntactic complexity—they express relations, not objects (Gentner, 1978). Gillette et al. (1999) found that verb meanings are harder to infer from context alone, especially for mental state verbs. However, performance improves with syntactic cues. For instance, “Vlad is gorping” suggests an intransitive verb like sneeze, while “Vlad is gorping the snaggle” implies a transitive action like kick. In sum, linguistic context is more helpful than environmental cues, especially for verbs, and later semantic development is shaped by the interaction between lexical knowledge and syntax.

Answer 29

- Comprehension usually precedes production for the obvious reason that the child has to more or less understand (or think they understand) a concept before producing it. Quite often contextual cues are strong enough for the child to get the gist of an utterance without perhaps being able to understand the details. In such cases there is no question of the child being able to produce language immediately after being first exposed to a particular word or structure. Furthermore, as we have seen, even when a child starts producing a word or structure, it might not be used in the same way as an adult would use it (e.g., children over-extend words). There is more to development than a simple lag, however. The order of comprehension and production is not always preserved: words that are comprehended first are not alwys those that are produced first (clark and hecht 1983). Early comprehension and production vocabularies may differ quite markedly (benedict 1979). There are even cases of words being produced before there is any comprehension of their meaning (leonard, newhoff and fey 1980).

Answer 30

1. The Challenge of Word Learning * Vocabulary learning appears effortless in toddlers but is actually complex. * Children must map spoken words to meanings, despite referential ambiguity (e.g., the gavagai problem). * Traditional theories suggested that innate, language-specific constraints help guide learning. 2. The Shift from Language-Specific to General Learning Mechanisms * New research suggests that domain-general cognitive processes—not innate language abilities—support word learning. * Learning is influenced by rich environmental input, rather than an impoverished setting. * Simple mechanisms work together dynamically to facilitate word acquisition. 3. Core Phenomena in Early Language Development * Referential Ambiguity: A word can refer to multiple things, yet children resolve this ambiguity efficiently. * Fast-Mapping: Toddlers can associate a word with its meaning after minimal exposure. * Vocabulary Spurt: Around 18–24 months, the rate of word learning accelerates dramatically. 4. Challenging Old Views on Language Learning * The 1980s and 1990s emphasized language-specific constraints, assuming children have built-in strategies for word learning. * Examples of proposed constraints: ○ Whole-object constraint (words refer to whole objects, not parts). ○ Mutual exclusivity (new words refer to unknown objects, rather than synonyms). ○ Naming insight (realizing that most objects have names). * Recent research challenges these static, domain-specific views. 5. The Role of Developmental and Contextual Factors * Children’s perspective matters: They typically have fewer objects in view than adults, making word-learning problems simpler than previously assumed. * Social and environmental cues play a crucial role (e.g., parents label objects children are focused on). * Cognitive biases (e.g., attention to novelty) help guide word learning. 6. Separating Referent Selection from Learning * Identifying an object’s referent doesn’t guarantee long-term learning. * Retention and repeated exposure are critical for solidifying word-object mappings. * Early studies focused on momentary learning but ignored long-term vocabulary development. 7. Rethinking the Vocabulary Spurt * Previously thought to reflect a sudden shift in learning ability. * New research suggests it’s an emergent property of gradual learning: ○ Children learn multiple words at once. ○ Words vary in difficulty (concrete vs. abstract words). * A natural acceleration occurs due to cumulative learning effects. 8. Future Directions: A Developmental Systems Perspective * Word learning emerges from multiple simple cognitive processes working together. * Attention, social interaction, and environmental structure shape learning. * New technologies (eye-tracking, head-mounted cameras) provide insights into how children engage with their environment. * Implications for interventions in language development (e.g., autism, language delays). 9. Conclusion * Word learning is not driven by innate, language-specific mechanisms. * Instead, general cognitive processes, environmental structure, and interactive experiences enable children to acquire vocabulary. * Understanding word learning requires studying developmental processes rather than assuming pre-programmed linguistic knowledge. This article represents a shift from traditional theories of innate constraints to a more dynamic, experience-driven model of word learning.

Answer 31

- WEIRD societies are usually the samples used for studies in the worlds top journals - either assuming there is little variation across human populations or that these 'standard' subjects are as representative of the species as any other population - The article found there is substantial variability in experimental results across populations and WEIRD subjects are particularly unusual compared with the rest of the species - frequent outliers - The domains reviewed include visual perception, fairness, cooperation, spatial reasoning, categorization and inferential induction, moral reasoning, reasoning styles, self-concepts and related motivations, and the heritability of IQ. - Findings suggest members of WEIRD societies incl young children are one of the least represetative populations for generalising to humans. There are no a priori grounds for basing universal behavioural phenomenon on a sample from a single subpopulation - These challenges need to be tackled - Western/ american undergraduates form the bulk of the database in the experimental branches of psychology, cognitive science and economics aswell as allied fields. They ask how representative these typical subjects are in light of the available comparative database. The article looks at how WEIRD people compare with other populations. - They constructed an empirical review of studies involving large-scale comparative experimentation on important psychological or behavioural variables. - They focused on domains that have been largely assumed to be de facto psychological universals - The examination of the representativeness of WEIRD subjects is restricted to the limited database available. The presentation was organised into a series of telescoping contrasts showing, at each level of contrast, how WEIRD people measure up relative to the available reference populations. - The first contrast compared people from modern industrialized societies to those from small-scale societies. The second contrasts people from Western societies with those from non-Western industrialized societies. Then contrasted Americans with people from other Western societies. Finally, they contrasted university-educated Americans with non–university-educated Americans, or university students with non student adults, depending on the available data. At each level behavioral and psychological phenomena was discussed for which there are available comparative data, and Assessed how WEIRD people compare with other samples - Some differences may be environmental and represent some form of non-cultural phenotypic plasticity, which may be developmental or facultative, as well as either adaptive or maladaptive. Also due to genetic variation. - Main aim to determine whether researchers can reasonably generalise from WEIRD samples to humanity at large. - Humans from all societies will share substantially basic aspects of cognition, motivation and behaviour but there are differences in developing aspects of human psychology from more developmentally, culturally or environmentally contingent aspects of psychology. The database in the behavioural sciences is drawn from an extremely narrow slice of human diversity and behavioural scientists routinely assume at least implicitly that their findings from this narrow slice generalise to the species.

Answer 32

- A recent analysis of the top journals in six sub- disciplines of psychology from 2003 to 2007 revealed that 68% of subjects came from the United States, and a full 96% of subjects were from Western industrialized countries, specifically those in North America and Europe, as well as Australia and Israel (Arnett 2008). The make-up of these samples appears to largely reflect the country of residence of the authors, as 73% of first authors were at American universities, an 99% were at universities in Western countries. This means that 96% of psychological samples come from countries with only 12% of the world’s population - In journal of personality and social psychology 67% of american samples were composed soley of undergraduates in psychology courses. The tendency to rely on undergraduate samples has not decreased over time. Therefore studies are sampling from a rather limited subpopulation within each country. - It could be that the dominance of american authors in psych publications is due to american unis having more resources and attracting the best international researchers but 70% of all psychology citations come from the United States – a larger percentage than any of the other 19 sciences that were compared in one extensive international survey eg chemistry its 37% - Behavioural scientists are interested in drawing inferences about the human mind and human behaviour so generalise universally. - Leading scientific journals and university textbooks routinely publish research findings claiming to generalize to “humans” or “people” based on research done entirely with WEIRD undergraduates. Without even a cautionary footnote. - In psychology much of this generalisation is implicit. A typical article does not claim to be discussing “humans” but will rather simply describe a decision bias, psychological process, set of correlations, and so on, without addressing issues of generalizability, although findings are often linked to “people.” Commonly, there is no demographic information about the participants, aside from their age and gender. - Arnett 2008 says psychologists would bristle if journals were renamed to more accurately reflect the nature of their samples as they believe their findings generalise beyond this sample. However there are exceptions to the tendency as some rsearchers have assembled a broad databse to provide evidence for universality. - When is it safe to generalize from a narrow sample to the species? First, if there are good empirical reasons to believe that little variability existed across diverse populations in a particular domain, it would be reasonable to tentatively infer universal processes from a single subpopulation. Second, the argument that as long as the samples were drawn from near the centre of the human distribution, then it would not be overly problematic to generalize across the distribution more broadly – at least the inferred pattern would be in the vicinity of the central tendency of our species. - It challenges the assumption that basic cognitive processes like visual perception are universal. A study by Segall et al. (1966) examined how people from 16 different societies perceived the Müller-Lyer illusion, finding significant cultural differences. American undergraduates were highly susceptible to the illusion, whereas San foragers of the Kalahari were unaffected. - The study suggests that visual perception is shaped by cultural and environmental factors, such as exposure to "carpentered corners" in modern architecture, which influence optical processing. This indicates that visual perception develops in response to environmental features, making it a culturally evolved trait rather than a fixed human characteristic. - Even fundamental cognitive processes can vary across cultures. - Developmental studies may not fully capture these differences, as children also show population-level variation. - Cross-cultural research is crucial for understanding the true nature of psychological processes

Answer 33

- Research on early development of fundamental cognitive and language capacities focuses on middle class infants and not those in poverty who may have less cognitive stimulation in early life. If we ignore this we cant see how good contributions of environmental support are to cognitive and language abilities. - One issue suggested by Henrich et al is that researchers in this area assume their findings are universal - The WEIRD population of children represents less than 5% of worlds population. - It matters as the difference is socioeconomic status is associated with the quality and quantity of early cognitive stimulation available to infants and this matters as 60 yrs of developmental research shows that parenting practices in infancy mediate links between SES and long term cognitive outcomes. - the hundreds of experiments in recent years looking at basic cognitive capacities at younger and younger ages have almost all focused on middle-class participants. At the 2010 International Conference on Infant Studies, less than 1% of the 1,000 research presentations reported including participants from disadvantaged families, although 20–40% of children in the United States are growing up in poverty if the studies were on them the results would likely be different. - Children from low SES backgrounds may develop spatial and linguistic abilities more slowly due to reduced access to enriching experiences such as toys, puzzles and safe exploration spaces. - Developmental research often generalises findings from middle class infants universally - Do these age specific benchmarks represent all infants truly, we need to recognise that environmental factors shape early cognitive development. - There are robust relations between verbal processing speed in infancy and long-term outcomes in both high-SES English-learning children and low-SES Spanish-learning children. In both groups, infants who are faster in speech processing at 18 months are more advanced on later cognitive and language measures (Fernald et al. Hurtado et al.) By 18 months, we find that low-SES children are already substantially slower in processing speed and vocabulary growth; and by the age of 5 years we see the gap in developmental measures found in numerous studies since the 1960s (Ramey & Ramey 2004). This means previous research conclusions should not be assumed to be universal. - Can differences in early experience with language contribute to the variability observed in children's efficiency in real-time processing?Early practice with language is influential in the development of fluency in understanding. - Research on low-SES families found that children whose mothers talked to them more acquired vocabulary faster and showed greater improvements in processing speed. These findings suggest that child-directed speech not only aids vocabulary learning but also enhances cognitive efficiency, leading to further learning advantages. By examining variability in language exposure, the study identified both typical developmental trajectories and environmental factors that contribute to differences in children's language processing abilities. Developmental psychologists can now also address important questions about the crucial influence of early postnatal experience on cognition and language. But to do so we need to extend beyond the WEIRD “convenience samples” we have traditionally relied on, to examine trajectories of growth in broader populations of children living in more diverse circumstances.

lecture 3 - lexical development Flashcards

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