Developmental Psychology - Early Word Learning

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First Words

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- Around 9-12 months
- 500 known by 24-30 months

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Specific Early Word Use

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- "bye" only when putting phone down (Bates et al, 1979)
- "there" only when place an object in location (Barrett, 1983)

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Nelson (1973)

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- Noun bias
- 40% English-speaking children's first 50 words are nouns

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Natural Partitions Hypothesis

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- Early nouns refer to concrete objects easily individuated from surroundings (as opposed to verbs)
- Explains noun bias
- (Gentner, 1982)

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Socially Mediated World Learning

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- Not all early words are nouns (hello, bye)
- Not all early nouns discrete objects (breakfast)
- Learning occurs in situations where easiest to read adults intentions (irrespective of world class)
~ (Tomasello, 2003)

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The Mapping Problem

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- "Gavagai" could refer to 'dog' or any part of a dog: 'paw', 'ear' or 'bark'
- How do children know what it refers too?
- (Quine, 1960)

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Object Constraint

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- Child believes words refer to objects
- Explains early noun bias
- (Gentner, 1982)

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Whole-Object Constraint

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- Child believes words refer to whole objects rather than parts
- Solves mapping (gavagai) problem
- (Markman, 1991)

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Principle of Contrast

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- No two words have exactly the same meaning
- Explains how child overcomes overextension
- (Clark, 1993)

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Mutual Exclusivity Constraint

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- No object has more than one name
- 3 year olds shown familiar and unfamiliar object
- "Show me the modi" children choose unfamiliar object
- If objects familiar they choose parts instead
- (Markman, 1988)

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Diesendruck & Markson (2002)

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- 3 year olds presented with two objects
- Either told a novel label or novel fact about one object
- When asked to choose new label or fact, choose one which was not previously referred to
- Happened for labels AND facts

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Brown (1957)

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- 3-5 year olds introduced to novel word "sib"
- Chose different pictures depending on form of the word
- sibbing = picture of kneading
- a sib = picture of bowl
- sib = picture of substance

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Soja, Carey & Spelke (1991)

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- 2 year olds pick object of same shape when label = 'find a blicket'
- BUT same substance (regardless of shape) when label = 'find some blicket'

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Gelman & Markman (1985)

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- 4 year olds pick different object of same kind when label = 'find the fep one'
- BUT different object when label = 'find the fep'

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Syntactic Bootstrapping

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- Children sensitive to structural information
- Can infer verb meanings from this
- (Gleitman, 1990)

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Naigles (1990)

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- Infants shown videos
- "The bunny is gorping the duck"
OR
- "The bunny and duck are gorping"
- Recorded looking times
- Looked more at the image which matched correct verb use

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Social-Pragmatic Approach

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- Children learn from cues in environment
- Adults talk about here-and-now, cater to childs focus of attention
- Language learnt from routines in social context
- Childs ability to infer intentions and direct attention to relevant cues aids word learning
- (Tomasello & Todd, 1983)

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Baldwin (1991)

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- 16-19 months children actively shift attention to object adult is focus on and can learn word for object

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Tomasello & Kruger (1992)

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- Children able to interpret adults anticipation of what will happen
- Can learn verbs which relate to forthcoming action

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Tomasello & Barton (1994)

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- Children understand novel referent (e.g. dax) refers to object adult looking for rather than rejected objects
- Able to differentiate between intended and accidental actions when learning new verbs

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Mundy et al (1990)

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- Autistic childrens language success strongly correlated with ability to share joint attention