Cross‐situational Learning From Ambiguous Egocentric Input Is a Continuous Process: Evidence Using the Human Simulation Paradigm

Abstract

Recent laboratory experiments have shown that both infant and adult learners can acquire wordreferent mappings using cross-situational statistics. The vast majority of the work on this topic has used unfamiliar objects presented on neutral backgrounds as the visual contexts for word learning. However, these laboratory contexts are much different than the real-world contexts in which learning occurs. Thus, the feasibility of generalizing cross-situational learning beyond the laboratory is in question. Adapting the Human Simulation Paradigm, we conducted a series of experiments examining cross-situational learning from children's egocentric videos captured during naturalistic play. Focusing on individually ambiguous naming moments that naturally occur during toy play, we asked how statistical learning unfolds in real time through accumulating cross-situational statistics in naturalistic contexts. We found that even when learning situations were individually ambiguous, learners' performance gradually improved over time. This improvement was driven in part by learners' use of partial knowledge acquired from previous learning situations, even when they had not yet discovered correct word-object mappings. These results suggest that word learning is a continuous process by means of real-time information integration.

Implicit cross-situational word learning in children with and without developmental language disorder and its relation to lexical-semantic knowledge

“…However, it is far from realistic. Zhang et al (2021) investigated naturalistic crosssituational word learning in children who are playing with toys. Future research could compare this naturalistic cross-situational word learning between children with and without DLD.…”

It's not just what we don't know: The mapping problem in the acquisition of negation

“…These findings support an Information Change account and suggest that verbs are less frequent than nouns in early childhood production because verbs require understanding more linguistic context to learneven for learners who are conceptually equipped. This original effect has been replicated (Snedeker, 1999;Piccin & Waxman, 2007;using child Point-of-View videos: Yurovsky, Smith & Yu., 2013) and the HSP has been extended to address other learning questions (Fitch, Arunachalam & Lieberman, 2021;Cartmill et al, 2010;Zhang, Yurovsky & Yu, 2015). Here, we extend it to investigate negation.…”

The effect of lexicalization biases on cross-situational statistical learning of novel verbs

“…When the target referent was a concrete object, adults succeeded 45% of the time. Verbs, however, were correctly identified only 15% of the time, possibly indicating more difficulty in assigning verb meanings from cross-situational statistics alone (see also Piccin & Waxman, 2007;Zhang et al, 2020).…”

“…Noun learning also benefits from documented assumptions that guide the selection of meanings, such as biases for words to label whole objects and basic level categories (e.g., Markman, 1991). In contrast, studies utilizing the human simulation paradigm show that the average number of named referents for a novel verb is high, reflecting more ambiguity (Zhang et al, 2020). Thus, extending CSSL to verbs holds significant importance to our understanding of this process in the broader picture of language acquisition.…”