Linking sounds to meanings: infant statistical learning in a natural language.

نویسندگان

  • Jessica F Hay
  • Bruna Pelucchi
  • Katharine Graf Estes
  • Jenny R Saffran
چکیده

The processes of infant word segmentation and infant word learning have largely been studied separately. However, the ease with which potential word forms are segmented from fluent speech seems likely to influence subsequent mappings between words and their referents. To explore this process, we tested the link between the statistical coherence of sequences presented in fluent speech and infants' subsequent use of those sequences as labels for novel objects. Notably, the materials were drawn from a natural language unfamiliar to the infants (Italian). The results of three experiments suggest that there is a close relationship between the statistics of the speech stream and subsequent mapping of labels to referents. Mapping was facilitated when the labels contained high transitional probabilities in the forward and/or backward direction (Experiment 1). When no transitional probability information was available (Experiment 2), or when the internal transitional probabilities of the labels were low in both directions (Experiment 3), infants failed to link the labels to their referents. Word learning appears to be strongly influenced by infants' prior experience with the distribution of sounds that make up words in natural languages.

برای دانلود رایگان متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

منابع مشابه

Monolingual and Bilingual Infants’ Ability to Use Non-native Tone for Word Learning Deteriorates by the Second Year After Birth

Previous studies reported a non-native word learning advantage for bilingual infants at around 18 months. We investigated developmental changes in infant interpretation of sounds that aid in object mapping. Dutch monolingual and bilingual (exposed to Dutch and a second non-tone-language) infants' word learning ability was examined on two novel label-object pairings using syllables differing in ...

متن کامل

Design features of language emerge from general-purpose learning mechanisms

There are certain universal properties of language that are taken to be definitional to the concept of language itself, such as the arbitrary relationship between sounds and meanings of words. Another possibility is that these “design features” of language may instead be the expressed consequences of general purpose learning constraints within the cognitive system learning the language. To test...

متن کامل

Language, Music, and Brain

Introduction: Over the last centuries, scientists have been trying to figure out how the brain is learning the language. By 1980, the study of brain-language relationships was based on the study of human brain damage. But since 1980, neuroscience methods have greatly improved. There is controversy about where music, composition, or the perception of language and music are in the brain, or wheth...

متن کامل

Statistics All the Way Down: How is Statistical Learning Accomplished Using Varying Productions of Novel, Complex Sound Categories?

For statistical learning to aid in language learning, learners must resolve statistical information along multiple dimensions of the same linguistic signal. Given that infants show evidence of lexical knowledge while they are still learning how to categorize speech, infant learners are likely presented with at least two statistical learning problems simultaneously. In an effort to approximate t...

متن کامل

Interactions between statistical and semantic information in infant language development.

Infants can use statistical regularities to form rudimentary word categories (e.g. noun, verb), and to learn the meanings common to words from those categories. Using an artificial language methodology, we probed the mechanisms by which two types of statistical cues (distributional and phonological regularities) affect word learning. Because linking distributional cues vs. phonological informat...

متن کامل

ذخیره در منابع من


  با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید

عنوان ژورنال:
  • Cognitive psychology

دوره 63 2  شماره 

صفحات  -

تاریخ انتشار 2011