Integrating the Timescales of Word Learning

描述（由申请人提供）：单词学习是一种复杂的现象，因为它与许多不同的行为有关。它还涉及许多不同的感知和概念系统，并在时间上延伸。虽然复杂，但由于词汇发展与后来的认知功能以及对执行功能等一般认知能力有普遍影响的过程相关，因此对早期词汇学习有更丰富的理解是一个基本目标。此外，早期单词学习的缺陷对非典型人群的认知功能有深远的影响，包括有特殊语言障碍的儿童。鉴于单词学习的复杂性，一个核心挑战是建立有效揭示单词学习过程的经验范式，并发展揭示推动单词学习向前发展的机制的新理论。我们之前的研究表明，单词学习发生在当下对单词含义的一系列个人决定中。这些决策相互依存，形成后续决策，并在多个时间尺度上产生发展变化。这项拨款的目标是开发和测试一个统一的单词学习模型，该模型可以捕捉秒到秒和发展时间尺度上的过程，并提供一个基于过程的账户，说明个人行为是如何积累起来创造发展的。本研究计划建立并验证该模型。Specific Aim 1创建了一个统一的单词学习行为模型，该模型超越了我们之前在名词泛化方面的工作，包括从多个范例中理解、产生、参考选择和泛化的过程。具体目标2增加了对目标词相互作用和单词学习偏差发展的更完整的描述。Specific Aim 3增加了一个记忆过程，使模型能够在多个时间尺度上学习词汇并产生单词学习偏差。这项工作的最终结果将是在多个时间尺度上整合单词学习过程的个体发展轨迹模型——这是对非典型发展（如特殊语言障碍或早产）进行干预的必要步骤。在多个时间尺度和个体参与者层面上的过程集成是一个很少有模型直接解决的问题。此外，我们提出的模型将视觉认知中的物体处理工作与早期单词学习工作结合在一起，并与一个更大的基于神经的建模工作项目相关，该项目集成了多个视觉、空间、运动和语言系统。因此，该模型将为全面理解涉及词汇学习和词汇发展的多个系统以及这些过程与更普遍的认知的相互作用奠定基础。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Word learning is a complex phenomenon because it is tied to many different behaviors. It also involves many different perceptual and conceptual systems and is extended in time. Although complex, achieving a richer understanding of early word learning is a fundamental goal given that vocabulary development is correlated with later cognitive functioning and with processes that have a pervasive impact on general cognitive abilities such as executive function. Moreover, deficits in early word learning have a profound effect on cognitive functioning in atypical populations including children with specific language impairment. Given the complexity of word learning, a central challenge has been to establish empirical paradigms that effectively reveal the processes of word learning and to develop new theories that uncover the mechanisms that move word learning forward. Our previous work suggests word learning occurs in a cascade of individual decisions about word meaning in the moment. These decisions build on each other to shape subsequent decisions and, over multiple timescales, create developmental change. The goal of this grant is to develop and test a unified model of word learning that captures processes at both the second-to-second and developmental timescales and provides a process-based account of how individual behaviors accumulate to create development. The research plan builds and tests this model. Specific Aim 1 creates a unified model of word learning behaviors that extends beyond our prior work on noun generalization to include processes of comprehension, production, referent selection, and generalization from multiple exemplars. Specific Aim 2 adds a more complete account of object-word interactions and the development of word learning biases. Specific Aim 3 adds a memory process, enabling the model to learn a lexicon over multiple timescales and develop word learning biases. The end result of this work will be models of individual developmental trajectories that integrate word learning processes over multiple timescales-a necessary step towards intervention in cases of atypical development such as SLI, or prematurity. The integration of processes over multiple timescales and at the level of individual participants is an issue few models have addressed directly. Furthermore, the model we propose brings together work on object processing in visual cognition with work on early word learning an is related to a larger program of neurally-grounded modeling work that integrates across multiple visual, spatial, motor and language systems. Thus this model will be foundational to a full understanding of the multiple systems involved in word learning and vocabulary development, and to the interaction of these processes with cognition more generally. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The goal of this grant is to develop and test a unified model of word learning that captures both children's individual uses of words, and how these individual behaviors accumulate to create development. Achieving this goal will have broad implications for our understanding of child development because early vocabulary development is correlated with later cognitive functioning and with processes that have a pervasive impact on general cognitive abilities. The end result of this work will be models of individual children's development-a necessary step towards intervention in cases of atypical development such as late talkers, SLI, or prematurity.