title: Integrating constraints for learning word-referent mappings.
abstract: Learning word-referent mappings is complex because the word and its referent tend to co-occur with multiple other words and potential referents. Such complexity has led to proposals for a host of constraints on learning, though how these constraints may interact has not yet been investigated in detail. In this paper, we investigated interactions between word co-occurrence constraints and cross-situational statistics in word learning. Analyses of child-directed speech revealed that when both object-referring and non-referring words occurred in the utterance, referring words were more likely to be preceded by a determiner than when the utterance contained only referring words. In a word learning study containing both referring and non-referring words, learning was facilitated when non-referring words contributed grammatical constraints analogous to determiners. The complexity of multi-word utterances provides an opportunity for co-occurrence constraints to contribute to word-referent mapping, and the learning mechanism is able to integrate these multiple sources of information.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Research in Human Development and Learning, Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YF, UK. p.monaghan@lancaster.ac.uk
authors.forename: Padraic
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Monaghan
authors.forename: Karen
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Mattock
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D005556:Form Perception / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007804:Language Development; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D012660:Semantics; D013060:Speech; D014825:Vocabulary; D055815:Young Adult