The Emergence of Words: Attentional Learning in Form and Meaning Export

@article{citeulike:573474, abstract = {Children improve atword learning during the 2nd year of life—sometimes dramatically. This fact has suggested a change in mechanism, from associative learning to a more referential form of learning. This article presents an associative exemplar-based model that accounts for the improvement without a change in mechanism. It provides a unified account of children's growing abilities to (a) learn a new word given only 1 or a few training trials ( ” fast mapping”); (b) acquire words that differ only slightly in phonological form; (c) generalize word meanings preferentially along particular dimensions, such as object shape (the ” shape bias”); and (d) learn 2nd labels for already-named objects, despite a persisting resistance to doing so ( ” mutual exclusivity”). The model explains these improvements in terms of increased attention to relevant aspects of form and meaning, which reduces memory interference. The interaction of associations and reference in word learning is discussed.}, author = {Regier, T.}, citeulike-article-id = {573474}, journal = {Cognitive Science}, keywords = {4, critical\_period, neural\_network, vocabulary\_spurt}, pages = {819--865}, posted-at = {2006-04-02 22:44:07}, priority = {4}, title = {The Emergence of Words: Attentional Learning in Form and Meaning}, volume = {29}, year = {2005} }

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:573474 L3 - citeulike-article-id:573474 N2 - Children improve atword learning during the 2nd year of life—sometimes dramatically. This fact has suggested a change in mechanism, from associative learning to a more referential form of learning. This article presents an associative exemplar-based model that accounts for the improvement without a change in mechanism. It provides a unified account of children’s growing abilities to (a) learn a new word given only 1 or a few training trials (“fast mapping”); (b) acquire words that differ only slightly in phonological form; (c) generalize word meanings preferentially along particular dimensions, such as object shape (the “shape bias”); and (d) learn 2nd labels for already-named objects, despite a persisting resistance to doing so (“mutual exclusivity”). The model explains these improvements in terms of increased attention to relevant aspects of form and meaning, which reduces memory interference. The interaction of associations and reference in word learning is discussed. JF - Cognitive Science EP - 865 TI - The Emergence of Words: Attentional Learning in Form and Meaning VL - 29 SP - 819 KW - 4 KW - critical_period KW - neural_network KW - vocabulary_spurt AU - Regier, T PY - 2005/// ER -