Learned Labels Shape Pre‐speech Infants’ Object Representations

Twomey, Katherine Elizabeth; Westermann, Gert

doi:10.1111/infa.12201

Cited by 9 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…For example, variability supports category learning in infants and adults (Goldenberg & Sandhofer, ; Smith & Handy, ). Infants show better retention of object labels if they experience object–label mappings against a changing background across trials, rather than one that remains constant across trials (Twomey & Westermann, ). In learning paradigms with adults, variation in context is associated with better learning of grammatical class (Redington, Chater, & Finch, ) and referent mappings (Smith & Yu, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning Words Via Reading: Contextual Diversity, Spacing, and Retrieval Effects in Adults

Pagán

Nation

2019

Cognitive Science

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We examined whether variations in contextual diversity, spacing, and retrieval practice influenced how well adults learned new words from reading experience. Eye movements were recorded as adults read novel words embedded in sentences. In the learning phase, unfamiliar words were presented either in the same sentence repeated four times (same context) or in four different sentences (diverse context). Spacing was manipulated by presenting the sentences under distributed or non‐distributed practice. After learning, half of the participants were asked to retrieve the new words, and half had an extra exposure to the new words. Although words experienced in diverse contexts were acquired more slowly during learning, they enjoyed a greater benefit of learning at immediate posttest. Distributed practice also slowed learning, but no benefit was observed at posttest. Although participants who had an extra exposure showed the greatest learning benefit overall, learning also benefited from retrieval opportunity, when words were experienced in diverse contexts. These findings demonstrate that variation in the content and structure of the learning environment impacts on word learning via reading.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning Words Via Reading: Contextual Diversity, Spacing, and Retrieval Effects in Adults

Pagán

Nation

2019

Cognitive Science

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“…Effects of learning history also emerge when infants' experience is controlled experimentally. For example, after a week of training with one named and one unnamed novel object, 10-month-old infants exhibited increased visual sampling of the previously named object in a subsequent silent lookingtime task (Twomey & Westermann, 2017; see also Bornstein & Mash, 2010;Gliga, Volein, & Csibra, 2010). Thus, learning depends on the interaction between what infants encounter in-the-moment and what they know (Thelen & Smith, 1994).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Curiosity‐based learning in infants: a neurocomputational approach

Twomey

Westermann

2017

Developmental Science

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Infants are curious learners who drive their own cognitive development by imposing structure on their learning environment as they explore. Understanding the mechanisms by which infants structure their own learning is therefore critical to our understanding of development. Here we propose an explicit mechanism for intrinsically motivated information selection that maximizes learning. We first present a neurocomputational model of infant visual category learning, capturing existing empirical data on the role of environmental complexity on learning. Next we “set the model free”, allowing it to select its own stimuli based on a formalization of curiosity and three alternative selection mechanisms. We demonstrate that maximal learning emerges when the model is able to maximize stimulus novelty relative to its internal states, depending on the interaction across learning between the structure of the environment and the plasticity in the learner itself. We discuss the implications of this new curiosity mechanism for both existing computational models of reinforcement learning and for our understanding of this fundamental mechanism in early development.

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“…It is possible, however, that infants' prior familiarity with either the object or the label may have influenced the ease with which they learned the two word-object associations in the current study (Fennell, 2011;Kucker & Samuelson, 2012). Indeed, existing studies with novel objects and labels show that 10-month-old infants can learn novel word-object associations after substantially more training (Twomey & Westermann, 2018), or demonstrate rapid word-learning in older infants of 14 and 15 months of age (Schafer & Plunkett, 1998;Werker et al, 1998). Whether infants are similarly able to rapidly learn two completely novel word-object associations when the objects and the labels are completely unfamiliar remains an interesting challenge for future work.…”

Section: Early Success In Word Learning and Generalizationmentioning

confidence: 79%

“…Bergelson and Swingley (2012) and Syrnyk and Meints (2017) have demonstrated word recognition for several common objects in infants at or before 9 months of age, documenting the formation of word-object associations through daily experience with language. Further, Twomey and Westermann (2018) demonstrated that 10-month-old infants could learn novel-label to novel-object mappings when trained with objects and labels over the course of a week.…”

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confidence: 97%

The Limits of Infants’ Early Word Learning

Taxitari

Twomey

Westermann

et al. 2019

Language Learning and Development

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In this series of experiments, we tested the limits of young infants' word learning and generalization abilities in light of recent findings reporting sophisticated word learning abilities in the first year of life. Ten-month-old infants were trained with two word-object pairs and tested with either the same or different members of the corresponding categories. In Experiment 1, infants showed successful learning of the word-object associations, when trained and tested with a single exemplar from each category. In Experiment 2, infants were presented with multiple within-category items during training but failed to learn the word-object associations. In Experiment 3, infants were presented with a single exemplar from each category during training, and failed to generalize words to a new category exemplar. However, when infants were trained with items from perceptually and conceptually distinct categories in Experiment 4, they showed weak evidence for generalization of words to novel members of the corresponding categories. It is suggested that word learning in the first year begins as the formation of simple associations between words and objects that become enriched as experience with objects, words and categories accumulates across development. Infants begin to solve the puzzle of language learning from a very young age. Even before the onset of speech, in the second half of the first year, the young language learner is equipped with crucial phonetic/phonological abilities, such as fine-tuning to language-specific phonological contrasts (Werker & Tees, 1984), the ability to segment words in fluent speech contexts (Jusczyk & Aslin, 1995) and sensitivity to the prosodic and phonotactic characteristics of their native language (Mattys & Jusczyk, 2001). These fundamental abilities allow infants to take on the challenge of learning word-object associations well before the onset of full-fledged productive language skills (Gershkoff

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Learned Labels Shape Pre‐speech Infants’ Object Representations

Cited by 9 publications

References 44 publications

Learning Words Via Reading: Contextual Diversity, Spacing, and Retrieval Effects in Adults

Learning Words Via Reading: Contextual Diversity, Spacing, and Retrieval Effects in Adults

Curiosity‐based learning in infants: a neurocomputational approach

The Limits of Infants’ Early Word Learning

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