Statistical Word Learning and Object Categorization: A Cross-Linguistic Study in English and Mandarin

This study investigates whether, in addition to learning the first-order regularities between individual words and objects under a cross-situational learning context, adult learners are sensitive to the second-order correlations between the phonological features of labels and the visuo-perceptual features of objects and whether they can use such features as a cue in categorizing novel objects. Two experiments were designed and conducted to examine whether native speakers of English and Mandarin Chinese performed differently when they encountered different types of training data that either reflected or were inconsistent with the linguistic features in their native language. We found that when the training stimuli reflected the linguistic structures of their native language, English speakers were able to use the phonological features of labels as a cue in object categorization just as their Mandarinspeaking counterparts did. Moreover, our results also suggest bi-directional real-time interactions between learning the firstorder word-referent mappings and the higher-order mappings between phonological features in labels and perceptual features in visual objects.