It’s about time: Integrating the multiple timescales of attention and memory in early word learning.

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Research demonstrates the powerful role of processes such as attention and memory in early word learning. This symposium examines these processes over multiple timescales via cutting edge formal models and rigorous experimental manipulations.

Talk 1 uses machine learning on infant first-person videos in naturalistic play sessions to examine the role of sustained attention in early word learning. This ground-breaking work demonstrates that learning is jointly determined by naming event timing and infant attentional strategies.

Talk 2 examines the influence of the temporal structure of naming events on learning outcomes in a cross-situational word learning (CSWL) task with school-age children and adults. Manipulations of the number of intervening trials between repeated naming events show no effect on child outcome but that adults learn best when repeated naming events followed each other closely.

Talk 3 presents a formal account of CSWL grounded in psychological processes of memory and attention that explicitly models the dynamics of looking at a moment-to-moment scale and learning across trials. The model captures data from 12 studies of CSWL with adults and children, providing a comprehensive and developmental account of the extant literature; offering insights into how underlying processes change from infancy through adulthood.

Talk 4 examines how the passage of time changes the details of children’s newly encoded nominal category representations. Three studies demonstrate that preschool children’s memories are most accurate if probed immediately and become narrower over time as specific exemplar features are forgotten.

Together this work demonstrates the dynamic nature of early word learning processes.

Sub Unit

• Language, Communication

Chairs

• Larissa K Samuelson, University of East Anglia

• John P Spencer, University of East Anglia

Individual Presentations

• Modeling Early Word Learning from the Infant’s Point of View - Presenting Author: Chen Yu, Indiana University; Non-Presenting Author: Satoshi Tsutsui, Indiana University; Non-Presenting Author: Andrei Amatoni, University of Texas at Austin; Non-Presenting Author: Yayun Zhang, University of Texas at Austin; Non-Presenting Author: David Crandall, Indiana University - Bloomington

• Developmental differences in the role of temporal structure in ambiguous word learning - Presenting Author: Viridiana L. Benitez, Arizona State University; Non-Presenting Author: Martin Zettersten, Princeton University; Non-Presenting Author: Erica Wojcik, Skidmore College

• Word-Object Learning via Visual Exploration in Space (WOLVES): A Process Model of Cross-Situational Word Learning - Presenting Author: Larissa K Samuelson, University of East Anglia; Non-Presenting Author: Ajaz Bhat; Non-Presenting Author: John P Spencer, University of East Anglia

• When time shifts the boundaries: Isolating the role of forgetting in children’s changing category representations - Presenting Author: Christina Schonberg, University of Wisconsin - Madison; Non-Presenting Author: Haley A Vlach, University of Wisconsin - Madison