Identifying cross-situational word learning mechanisms across development

项目总结/摘要 词汇习得是儿童早期发展的重要组成部分， 为了在学校取得早期成功，并使儿童能够与他人沟通和学习。虽然儿童 依赖于许多单词学习策略来建立他们的词汇量，最近的研究表明， 跨情境词汇学习的机会即使一个词的含义在一个上下文中是模糊的（例如，一个孩子 “是狗！”和几个动物在场），孩子们可以使用一系列这些模棱两可的话语， 学习这个词。然而，儿童这样做的机制尚不清楚：累积统计理论 假设检验理论提出儿童在不同语境中追踪词义共现， 建议儿童收集证据支持或反对只有一个假设的意义，或以前的假设。 拟议的研究使用行为，眼动跟踪和计算建模方法来评估 这些对立的单词学习机制。这些研究采取了发展的方法，询问儿童的语言是如何影响他们的语言能力的。 学习能力从2岁到7岁以及进入成年期的变化，以及什么学习机制最好 解释这些变化。这项工作也将提供关于儿童是否能够学习的第一个证据 语义模糊语境中的动词：新动词可以指单个事件的不同方面（如 作为运动的方式或路径），对儿童的学习提出了挑战。最后，我们研究了一个相关的 来自记忆文献的预测：当学习者编码一个词的时候， 整合事件表示中的潜在含义。这些研究涉及以下基本问题： 跨情境学习的机制，范围和整个发展过程中的潜在表现。 这些研究结果将提供深入了解儿童如何学习单词在一个重要的时期的语言 发展，从学前班延伸到二年级，以及这些能力如何在成年后成熟。通过 通过对名词和动词的研究，这些研究也提供了一个关键的测试， 先前对名词的研究扩展到了儿童对动词的习得，这带来了额外的挑战。 因此，它们是后天习得的，对于经历语言发育迟缓的儿童来说尤其难以学习。 此外，这些研究将揭示如何结构的单词学习的背景下，这往往涉及潜在的 词汇的意义被包含在一个共同的事件中，可以增强名词和动词的学习。 最后，这些研究将为申请人提供关键的博士后培训，以提高他的 事业申请人将掌握必要的新方法和理论技能，以检查 语言学习的整个生命周期，并构建主要语言的计算模型 学习理论。这种培训将是高度跨学科的，利用导师，课程， 跨多个部门和研究机构的专业发展活动。这 培训将最终使申请人成为一名成功的独立研究人员。

Project Summary/Abstract Vocabulary acquisition is a crucial component of children’s early development, laying the groundwork for early success in school and enabling children to communicate with and learn from others. While children rely on many word learning strategies to build their vocabularies, recent research has revealed a powerful role for cross-situational word learning. Even when a word’s meaning is ambiguous in one context (e.g., a child hears “It’s a dog!” and several animals are present), children can use a series of these ambiguous utterances to learn the word. However, the mechanism by which children do so is not clear: the Cumulative Statistics theory proposes children track word-meaning co-occurrences across contexts while the Hypothesis Testing theory proposes children collect evidence for or against only one hypothesized meaning, or previous hypotheses. The proposed studies use behavioral, eye-tracking, and computational modeling methods to evaluate these rival word learning mechanisms. The studies take a developmental approach, asking how children’s word learning abilities change from 2 to 7 years of age and into adulthood, as well as what learning mechanisms best account for these changes. This work will also provide the first evidence regarding whether children can learn verbs across semantically ambiguous contexts: novel verbs can refer to separate aspects of a single event (such as the manner or path of motion), presenting a challenge for children’s learning. Finally, we examine a related prediction from the memory literature: that word learning will be improved when learners encode a word’s potential meanings in an integrated event representation. These studies address fundamental questions about cross-situational learning’s mechanisms, scope, and underlying representations throughout development. These findings will offer insight into how children learn words during an important period of language development, stretching from preschool to 2nd grade, as well as how these abilities mature in adulthood. By examining both nouns and verbs, these studies also provide a crucial test of how word learning strategies previously documented for nouns extend to children’s acquisition of verbs, which pose additional challenges and, as such, are later-acquired and can be especially hard for children experiencing language delays to learn. In addition, these studies will reveal how the structure of word learning contexts, which often involve potential word meanings being involved in a shared event, can enhance both noun and verb learning. Finally, these studies will provide the applicant with critical postdoctoral training to advance his career. The applicant will master the new methodological and theoretical skills necessary to examine language learning throughout the lifespan and construct computational models of major language learning theories. This training will be highly interdisciplinary, utilizing mentors, coursework, and professional development activities across multiple departments and research organizations. This training will ultimately prepare the applicant to become a successful independent researcher.