Word learning Flashcards
Constraints View
“Children’s word learning is guided by a set of default/innate assumptions or constraints” (Woodward & Markman, 1998)
Whole object assumption
Markman (1989) proposes that when children hear a new word they assume that it refers to the whole object (eg: “rabbit”, not “leg”, or “furry”). Honor the whole object assumption and assume that a label refers to the whole thing
Mutual exclusivity
Markman and Wachtel (1988) proposes that children assume that different words refer to different things (if gub = rabbit, gavagai ≠ rabbit)
Children constrain word meaning by assuming at first words are Mutually exclusive - that each object will have one and only one label. 1. On the whole object assumption, look for an object as a first hypothesis about the meaning of the label; 2. On the mutual exclusivity assumption, reject the already labeled object; And 3. Therefore, assume the other object is being referred to by the novel label.
Evidence for Constraints theory
3-year-old children use the principle of mutual exclusivity in figuring out the meaning of a new word (Markman & Wachtel (1988) as well as by Golinkoff (1986).
Issues with Constraints View
Children readily learn >1 name for things (violates mutual exclusivity). Eg: Animal, Fido, Dog
- children make progress in acquiring new words by assuming mutual exclusivity.
- The mutual exclusivity bias guides children’s initial hypotheses about a word’s meaning and without evidence to the contrary, children will maintain this hypothesis. But mutual exclusivity can be overridden (Markman 1990)
Constraints are arbitrary- anything could be a constraint (“Gavagai”= “White until year 2006, then blue”- Deak, 2000)
Constraints apply only to common nouns & actually HINDER learning of other words (Tomasello, 2003)
- word learning principles not help the child to learn words other than object labels (common nouns)
- difficult time learning verbs, adjectives, prepositions, and many nonprototypical nouns like breakfast, party, and park
no attention to other types of words or to social-pragmatic processes that might serve to constrain children’s early word learning
Why language at 1year – due to learning constraints? There is no independent way to measure constraints, they are inferred from the child’s linguistic behaviour – So there is no way to predict onset of language (Tomasello, 2000)
Social-Pragmatic theory (Akhtar and Tomasello, 2000)
Words are learnt by reasoning guided by their understanding of others’ minds and information in social interaction.
There are no innate constraints. Word learning is possible because of children’s social understanding.
Communication typically takes place within “joint attentional frames” where the child and the speaker are attending to (looking at or playing with) the objects that are referred to.
Bruner (1983) called joint attentional `“formats” mutually understood social interactions between child and adult that constitute joint attentional framework of the usage event
Communicative intentions
An example: “Put your hat on”
-Cultural routine: Getting dressed
-Joint attention: Child and parent both attending to hat act of dressing
-Communicative intent: Child understands parent’s intention is make him put the hat on (routine + adult is holding it and gesturing).
Behne, Carpenter and Tomasello (2005)
A hiding-finding game
A toy hidden in one of 2 buckets
Experimenter pointed to or looked at the hiding place
14 month olds correctly inferred where the toy was
Relies on child’s knowing that adult knew child was looking for toy
Advantages of Social pragmatic
Joint attention
Baldwin (1996)
Children co-exposed to novel toys and sounds under two conditions. Social - object labelled by experimenter who is sharing attention to the toy. Non-social - word uttered repeatedly by out-of-view experimenter who is said to be on the phone
At test children could (when questioned) only correctly identify the referent of the word when it had been used socially
Carpenter, Nagell & Tomasello (1998)
Studied joint attention and “following in” (talking about things the child is attending to) in children between 9 and 15 months of age. Found that children whose parents jointly attended and followed in tended to have larger vocabularies, both concurrently and in follow up survey. JA and FI accounted for as much as 50% of the variance in the size of children’s vocabulary. Earlier emerging skills of nonlinguistic joint attention begin to acquire linguistic skills at an earlier age as well
Advantage of social pragmatic - Intention to learn words
Baldwin (1991, 1993)
19-month-old infants new words in two new situations. In one situation the adult followed into the infant’s focus of attention, and, as in other studies, they learned the new word quite well - better than in any other condition in fact. But the adult also successfully taught the infants new words in a situation in which they looked at and labelled an object the child was not looking at, thus requiring the child to look up and then determine the adult’s attentional focus.
Tomasello & Barton (1994): Experimenter - “Let’s dax Mickey Mouse”
Performs Action A – accidental “Whoops”
Performs Action B – purposeful “There”
When then asked to dax Mickey Mouse, children (aged 2) imitated action B – the deliberate action not the accident .Children could tell that the intention of the speaker is to name Action B (purposeful action) and not Action A (accidental action) even though the actions occurred just after hearing the verb in both conditions.
Learn verbs this way - requests that the toys be put away by pointing to the destination desired. Social pragmatic cues indicate adults intentions for the child
Akhtar, Carpenter, & Tomasello 1996).
-Playing with mother with 3 objects, mother leaves and a 4th object is introduced. Mother returns and exclaimed oh look a modi!! Understanding that the mother would not be excited about the objects she had already played with previously, but that she very well might be excited about the object she was seeing for the first time, children learned the new word for the object the mother had not seen previously
Advantages of social pragmatic - General
Explains why word learning begins at about 12mnths (joint attention begins) - Language acquisition begins when it does because it depends on a more fundamental skill, namely, the ability to share attention with other human beings - which emerges in nonlinguistic form near the end of the first year of life (Fenson et al, 1994)
No need for (perhaps impossible) innate, language specific constraints. Word-learning like other social-learning
Independent evidence for joint attention / communicative intention (vs. Constraints are just re-description of experimental phenomena)
Weakness of Social pragmatic
Somewhat vague. No specific proposal for how children identify precise meaning of each word, once they’ve understood communicative intent of whole utterance (eg: put your hat on)
