Dual language statistical word segmentation in infancy: Simulating a language‐mixing bilingual environment

Tsui, Angeline; Erickson, Lucy C.; Mallikarjun, Amritha; Thiessen, Erik D.; Fennell, Christopher T.

doi:10.1111/desc.13050

Cited by 9 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…For example, preschool-aged children can accept lexical overlap when it is beneficial for communication, such as when each of two speakers understand different labels as names for the same object (Piccin & Blewitt, 2007;Kalashnikova, et al, 2015). Information that makes clear that the overlapping labels stem from two distinctive languages may also be beneficial (Au & Glusman, 1990;Mitchel & Weiss, 2010;Tsui et al, 2021;Weiss et al, 2009). When children are presented with a novel English label and then later provided a novel Spanish label for the same object, they are more likely to accept the second Spanish label than when both labels for the same object are English labels (Au & Glusman, 1990).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cross-Situational Word Learning in Children and Adults: The Case of Lexical Overlap

Benitez,

2023

Language Learning and Development

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Cross-situational word learning, the ability to decipher word-referent links over multiple ambiguous learning events, has been documented across development and proposed to be key to vocabulary acquisition. However, this work has largely focused on learning from one-to-one structure, where each referent is consistently linked with a single label. In contrast, learners can encounter lexical overlap, such as when learning synonyms, which requires learning from structure that presents multiple labels linked with the same thing (many-to-one structure). Are children capable of cross-situational word learning from encounters presenting consistent lexical overlap? How does this ability change with age? Here, we provide a first test of cross-situational word learning from input presenting lexical overlap across age by testing 4-to 7-year-old children (N = 190) and adults (N = 80) on their ability to learn from one-to-one or two-to-one structure. Results showed that adults (Experiment 1) were successful at learning from both types of structure, with an advantage for one-to-one structure. Children (Experiment 2) performed less well than adults overall, and failed to learn from two-to-one structure. With extended training (Experiment 3), older children were successful at learning from two-to-one structure while younger children were not. These results provide the first evidence that cross-situational word learning from one-to-one and two-to-one structure improves over age.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cross-Situational Word Learning in Children and Adults: The Case of Lexical Overlap

Benitez,

2023

Language Learning and Development

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“…In addition to including younger participants, future research would benefit from the use of neurophysiological techniques that have already been successfully used to assess speech segmentation in young infants (e.g., Kidd et al., 2018; Kooijman et al., 2009; Snijders et al., 2020). While looking times have been used widely in the literature (e.g., Altvater‐Mackensen & Mani, 2013; Thiessen & Erickson, 2013; Tsui et al., 2020), they may not be ideal for comparing performance across modalities. A static photograph is less appealing than a dynamic video, so the segmentation ability in the AO group of infants in this study may have been underestimated since they may have attended auditorily to the stimulus while not looking at the screen, especially in the second test block.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seeing a talking face matters: Infants' segmentation of continuous auditory‐visual speech

Tan

Kalashnikova

Burnham

2022

Infancy

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Visual speech cues from a speaker's talking face aid speech segmentation in adults, but despite the importance of speech segmentation in language acquisition, little is known about the possible influence of visual speech on infants' speech segmentation. Here, to investigate whether there is facilitation of speech segmentation by visual information, two groups of English‐learning 7‐month‐old infants were presented with continuous speech passages, one group with auditory‐only (AO) speech and the other with auditory‐visual (AV) speech. Additionally, the possible relation between infants' relative attention to the speaker's mouth versus eye regions and their segmentation performance was examined. Both the AO and the AV groups of infants successfully segmented words from the continuous speech stream, but segmentation performance persisted for longer for infants in the AV group. Interestingly, while AV group infants showed no significant relation between the relative amount of time spent fixating the speaker's mouth versus eyes and word segmentation, their attention to the mouth was greater than that of AO group infants, especially early in test trials. The results are discussed in relation to the possible pathways through which visual speech cues aid speech perception.

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“…In a bilingual environment, everyday language experiences can vary in that learners encounter multiple languages, across changing scenes, and with linguistic variations between languages. Statistical learning theories therefore need to incorporate learners' abilities to deal with multiple, changing, and varied inputs (Benitez et al, 2016Byers-Heinlein, 2014;Poepsel & Weiss, 2016;Qian et al, 2012;Tsui et al, 2021;Weiss et al, 2009Weiss et al, , 2020. In this paper, we provide a test of adults' statistical word learning from bilingual input by investigating how a linguistic cue (lexical tone) differentiating two languages and learners' language experience affect word learning.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lexical Tone as a Cue in Statistical Word Learning from Bilingual Input

Benitez²

2023

Preprint

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Learners can track word-referent co-occurrences across individually-ambiguous naming events to form correct word-referent mappings, termed statistical word learning (SWL). Prior research largely focuses on learning from a single language input, where a referent co-occurs with a single word (1:1 mapping). Here, we tested adults’ SWL from a simulated bilingual environment, where one referent co-occurred with two words (2:1 mapping) and the two words were either differentiated by a linguistic cue (Mandarin lexical tones, Cued condition) or not (Uncued condition). Results showed that in the Cued condition, Chinese-English bilinguals (N = 38) outperformed Spanish-English bilinguals (N = 56) and English monolinguals (N = 55), while Spanish-English bilinguals and English monolinguals performed similarly. The three groups did not differ in the Uncued condition. Self-reported learning confidence and strategies showed limited conscious awareness of learning. Results demonstrate that familiarity with a linguistic cue boosts overall statistical word learning from bilingual input.

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Dual language statistical word segmentation in infancy: Simulating a language‐mixing bilingual environment

Cited by 9 publications

References 43 publications

Cross-Situational Word Learning in Children and Adults: The Case of Lexical Overlap

Cross-Situational Word Learning in Children and Adults: The Case of Lexical Overlap

Seeing a talking face matters: Infants' segmentation of continuous auditory‐visual speech

Lexical Tone as a Cue in Statistical Word Learning from Bilingual Input

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