title: Social cues modulate the representations underlying cross-situational learning.
abstract: Because children hear language in environments that contain many things to talk about, learning the meaning of even the simplest word requires making inferences under uncertainty. A cross-situational statistical learner can aggregate across naming events to form stable word-referent mappings, but this approach neglects an important source of information that can reduce referential uncertainty: social cues from speakers (e.g., eye gaze). In four large-scale experiments with adults, we tested the effects of varying referential uncertainty in cross-situational word learning using social cues. Social cues shifted learners away from tracking multiple hypotheses and towards storing only a single hypothesis (Experiments 1 and 2). In addition, learners were sensitive to graded changes in the strength of a social cue, and when it became less reliable, they were more likely to store multiple hypotheses (Experiment 3). Finally, learners stored fewer word-referent mappings in the presence of a social cue even when given the opportunity to visually inspect the objects for the same amount of time (Experiment 4). Taken together, our data suggest that the representations underlying cross-situational word learning of concrete object labels are quite flexible: In conditions of greater uncertainty, learners store a broader range of information.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Stanford University, United States. Electronic address: kyle.macdonald@stanford.edu.
authors.forename: Kyle
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: MacDonald
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Stanford University, United States.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Yurovsky
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Stanford University, United States.
authors.forename: Michael C
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Frank
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003463:Cues; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning; D012660:Semantics; D012919:Social Behavior; D012938:Social Perception; D013067:Speech Perception; D035501:Uncertainty; D014796:Visual Perception
keywords: Language acquisition; Social cues; Statistical learning; Word learning