title: What can Neighbourhood Density effects tell us about word learning? Insights from a connectionist model of vocabulary development.
abstract: In this paper, we investigate the effect of neighbourhood density (ND) on vocabulary size in a computational model of vocabulary development. A word has a high ND if there are many words phonologically similar to it. High ND words are more easily learned by infants of all abilities (e.g. Storkel, 2009; Stokes, 2014). We present a neural network model that learns general phonotactic patterns in the exposure language, as well as specific word forms and, crucially, mappings between word meanings and word forms. The network is faster at learning frequent words, and words containing high-probability phoneme sequences, as human word learners are, but, independently of this, the network is also faster at learning words with high ND, and, when its capacity is reduced, it learns high ND words in preference to other words, similarly to late talkers. We analyze the model and propose a novel explanation of the ND effect, in which word meanings play an important role in generating word-specific biases on general phonological trajectories. This explanation leads to a new prediction about the origin of the ND effect in infants.
authors.affiliation: Comenius University,Bratislava,Slovakia andUniversity of Otago,Dunedin,New Zealand.
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Takac
authors.affiliation: University of Otago,Dunedin,New Zealand.
authors.forename: Alistair
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Knott
authors.affiliation: University of Hong Kong,Hong Kong.
authors.forename: Stephanie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Stokes
mesh_terms: D003198:Computer Simulation; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007804:Language Development; D007805:Language Development Disorders; D007858:Learning; D000069550:Machine Learning; D016571:Neural Networks, Computer; D010700:Phonetics; D011336:Probability; D014825:Vocabulary