3-091 - Sophisticated Aspects of Word Learning: Extension, Animacy, Color, and Negation

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Most early word learning studies focus exclusively on children’s ability to link words and objects in a simplified context, setting aside complexities such as category extension and abstract concept-to-word mappings. Here we investigate four aspects of early word learning in which inferring the intended meaning requires sophisticated knowledge integration.

Paper one and two examine how young children arrive at the appropriate extensions of words. Paper one suggests that 12-20-month-olds’ meaning representations for common nouns narrow over the second year. Paper two demonstrates that, in contrast to previous claims, toddlers abstract color concepts before learning color-word meanings, their color-word comprehension generally precedes production, and their errors are overextensions of adult usages. Paper three demonstrates that toddlers can use known verbs to infer the animacy of novel nouns and, furthermore, that the efficiency of this mechanism increases significantly between 19-24 months. The fourth paper shows that while 3-5-year-olds say the word “no”, and are at ceiling in understanding negation in a 2AFC task, unlike adults, they do not use this negative particle to predictively guide their choices.

Taken together, these papers highlight several aspects of early word-learning: (1) children’s meanings winnow from a broader class of considered referents to a more adult-like category, (2) on-line word processing efficiency increases on differentiated timescales for complex semantic domains (i.e. animacy and negation), and (3) probing the size and content of the spoken and understood lexicons reveals a more nuanced narrative of how children use what they know to learn what they do not.

Sub Unit

• Language, Communication

Chair

• Elika Bergelson, University of Rochester

Individual Presentations

• Narrowing Meaning Specificity from 12-20 Months - Presenting Author: Elika Bergelson, University of Rochester; Richard N Aslin, Univ of Rochester

• The Early and Gradual Construction of Color Word Meanings - Presenting Author: Katie Wagner, Ucsd; Tori Aroworade, University of California San Diego; Alayna Chilson, North Island College; Tera Cooper, North Island College; Jill Jergens, University of California San Diego; David A Barner, University of California, San Diego

• When veps cry: Two-year-olds efficiently learn new words from ambient language - Presenting Author: Brock Ferguson, Northwestern University; Sandra R Waxman, Northwestern University

• The Processing of Negation in Adults and Children - Presenting Author: Ann Nordmeyer, Stanford University; Michael C. Frank, Stanford University