lecture 6 vocabulary development

Question 1

what is the international phonemic alphabet

Answer 1

i.e. d/ʎ̝/k alphabetic system of phonetic notation - designed to represent only those qualities of speech that are part of oral language: phones, phonemes, intonation, and the separation of words and syllable

Question 2

what is the vocab spurt

Answer 2

young toddlers add to vocab slowly and then no of world learning accelerates and able to better pronounce and learn new words (around 24 m)
highly varied between individuals

Question 3

fast mapping

Answer 3

rapid ability to map a sound to a concept

Question 4

describe plunkett segementation of speech explanation of vocab spurt

Answer 4

longditudinal study of danish chilren between 12 and 24 months
home visits - transcribed audio and video for
Target lexemes - full words
sub lexical forms - undershoot ie raffe
formulaic expressions - overshoot ie many words as one

Question 5

results of plunkett ‘segementation of speech’ explanation of vocab spurt

Answer 5

words of target lexeme rapidly increases and formulaic/sublexical forms reduce with age

spurt occurs because improvement in articulation of words - filter out unnecessary and increase full word

Question 6

describe gopnik and meltzoff 1987 ‘categorisation of objects’ explanation of vocab spurt

Answer 6

changes in categorisation ability between 15 and 21months in longidtudinal study - record performance on spontaneous categorisation of objects, object permanents and means ends tasks + lang dev

Question 7

results gopnik and meltzoff ‘categorisation of objects’ explanation of vocab spurt

Answer 7

advanced object sorting correlate to vocab spurt

specificity hypothesis - strong developmental relation between cognitive and semantic development - reflect understanding that words belongn in one category

Question 8

describe meints plunkett and harris 1999 ‘categorisation of objects’ explanation of vocab spurt

Answer 8

role of typicality
PLP for forced choice task
shown 2 stimuli side by side (a target and a distractor) and heard the target stimulus named. The target stimulus was either a typical or an atypical exemplar of the named category.
12m, 18m and 24m

Question 9

results of meints plunkeyy and harris ‘categorisation of objects’ explanation of vocab spurt

Answer 9

12m assoc typical examples with the target name ie ‘dog’ ‘bird’ - increase in target looking for typical but not atypical targets
broaden extension of the name as they get older to include less typical examples
24-month-olds display an increase for both
18-month-olds display a pattern similar to that of 24-month-olds

Question 10

describe mcshane 1979 ‘naming insight’ of vocab spurt

Answer 10

vocab spurt reflects understanding of the way the world works - recognize that all things should have names

Question 11

describe Kamhi 1986 ‘naming insight of vocab spurt

Answer 11

recognition that all words should have names is an observable phenomenon in infants

Question 12

who is Quinne

Answer 12

philosopher of mind and language - how do we interpret words and connect them with a concept?

Question 13

what is the disambiguation problem? (Quinne)

Answer 13

when hear a novel word, there are infinite possibilities with as to what that word is referring to - meaning is ambiguous to someone who has no knowledge of the word or the concept it links to
how do we map words to concepts if no prev knowledge of assoc?

Question 14

solution to the disambiguation problem: syntactic bootstrapping

Answer 14

infer the meaning of a word based on the syntax that is used 
ie
count noun - "this is a X"
mass noun - "this is some X"
proper noun - "this is X"
adjective - "this is a X one"
Verb - "this is X-ing"

Question 15

solution to the disambiguation problem: novelty of concept

Answer 15

map novel names onto novel objects - make assumptions about novel words because equiped with innate word learning biases and constraints

Question 16

what are the biases/constraings in novelity of concept

Answer 16

principle of reference
principle of conventionality
whole object principle
principle of extendability
principle of categorical scope
novel name-nameless category
shape bias
principle of contrast
noun category bias
mutual exclusivity
taxonomic assumption

Question 17

define novelity of concept ‘principle of reference’

Answer 17

words can refer to things both concrete and abstract

Question 18

define novelity of concept ‘principle of conventionality’

Answer 18

understanding that we all use the same words for the same things

Question 19

define novelity of concept ‘whole object principle’

Answer 19

tendency to name whole objects not part or salient properties of them

Question 20

define novelity of concept ‘principle of extendability’

Answer 20

have an understanding that some words can be used to refer to more than one object

Question 21

define novelity of concept ‘principle of categorical scope’

Answer 21

learn first words at their most basic level ie cair instead of armchair

Question 22

define novelity of concept ‘novel name-nameless category’

Answer 22

new name mapped onto the new object

Question 23

define novelity of concept ‘shape bias’

Answer 23

apply term to the shape of the object over its other properties

Question 24

define novelity of concept ‘principle of contrast’

Answer 24

understanding that every word has a subtly different connotation and use of words specific to what want to talk about

Question 25

define novelity of concept ‘noun-category bias’

Answer 25

new words often nouns - preference to learn nouns

Question 26

define novelity of concept ‘mutual exclusivity’

Answer 26

understand that objects cant have more than one name

Question 27

describe houston price, caloghins and raviglione 2012 mutual exclusivity

Answer 27

is development of word-learning strategy driven by experience of hearing only one name for each referent compared the behavior of infants from monolingual and bilingual homes 17–22 m
Mono show clear evidence of using an ME strategy - preferentially fixate on novel object when they were asked to “look at the dax.”
Bilingual fail to show a similar pattern
Children who are raised bilingual fail to develop an ME strategy in parallel with monolingual infants because development of the bias is a consequence of the monolingual child’s everyday experiences with words.

Question 28

define novelity of concept ‘taxonomic assumption’

Answer 28

words refer to categories - therefore if already have a name, then must be referring to something of that object

Question 29

solution to the disambiguation problem: the social pragmatic approach

Answer 29

the context we are in determines word learning by joint attention (JA)
ie adult may follow in to infants attention and provide name or infant matched adults attention and attach label given by adult
18m - attach new words at focus of adults attention - attach word looked at by speaker not themselves

Question 30

solution to the disambiguation problem: associative learning via statistical probabilities

Answer 30

frequency that hear word and concept at the same time determines labelling of the object

Question 31

describe smith and yu 2008 associative learning - disambiguation problem

Answer 31

show infants pairs of novel objects with novel words assoc with them - expose frequently
12+14month look at object most commonly assoc with word
12- and 14-month-old infants can resolve the uncertainty problem in another way, not by unambiguously deciding the referent in a single word-scene pairing, but by rapidly evaluating the statistical evidence across many individually ambiguous words and scenes.

Question 32

development of word learning

Answer 32

rapidly develop the capacity to learn new words
new word every 1-2 hours fom 12m-18y/o
6y/o hold around 13000 words
18y/o hold around 60000 words

Question 33

fenson et al 1994 word production development

Answer 33

production slow at 12 months

non linear growth - spurt around 18-24m

Question 34

explanations of vocab spurt

Answer 34

sound - development of speech segmentation
concept - categorisation of objects
mapping - naming insight ie relationship between sound and concept

Question 35

halberda 2003 mutual exclusivity

Answer 35

increase in target looking for typical but not atypical targets - when presented a familiar and a novel object (e.g. car and phototube) and asked to “look at the dax”, 17-m increased looking to the novelobject (i.e. phototube) above baseline preference.
16-m were at chance
14-m systematically increased looking to the familiar object (i.e. car) in response to hearing the novel label “dax”.
failure at 14 months may be as infants are direct attention to known object to check it as a possible referent and running out of time
OR , after rejecting known object, infants fail to complete
the inference
rejection of the known object (car) necessary second step in the Disjunctive Syllogism, then increased looking to the known object (car) would be the result of remaining focused on this step

Question 36

define disjunctive syllogism

Answer 36

proposed that children work through an implicit Disjunctive Syllogism- rejecting objects with known labels in the process of deducing the correct referent.
The computational structure Disjunctive Syllogism
is any argument of the form: A or B, not A, therefore B