Identifying cross-situational word learning mechanisms across development

项目摘要/摘要 词汇习得是儿童早期发展的重要组成部分，为儿童发展奠定了基础 为了早日在学校取得成功，让孩子们能够与他人交流并向他人学习。当孩子们 最近的研究表明，依靠许多词汇学习策略来建立词汇量具有强大的作用 用于跨情景单词学习。即使一个单词的意思在一个上下文中是模糊的(例如，儿童 听到“是一只狗！”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来 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 提出儿童追踪词义在不同语境中的共现情况，而假设检验理论 建议孩子们收集证据，只支持或反对一种假设的意义，或先前的假设。 建议的研究使用行为、眼球跟踪和计算建模方法来评估 这些相互竞争的单词学习机制。这些研究采用了发展的方法，询问儿童的单词是如何 学习能力从2岁到7岁到成年，以及什么学习机制最好 解释这些变化的原因。这项工作还将为儿童是否能够学习提供第一个证据 语义模糊的语境中的动词：新奇的动词可以指单个事件的不同方面(如 例如运动的方式或路径)，对儿童的学习提出了挑战。最后，我们考察了一个相关的 来自记忆文献的预测：当学习者编码一个单词的时候，单词学习会得到改善 集成事件表示中的潜在含义。这些研究解决了以下基本问题 跨情境学习的机制、范围和整个发展过程中的潜在表征。 这些发现将为儿童在语言的重要时期如何学习单词提供洞察力 从学龄前到二年级的发展，以及这些能力如何在成年后成熟。通过 这些研究同时考察了名词和动词，也为词汇学习策略提供了一项至关重要的测试 以前关于名词的记录延伸到儿童对动词的习得，这带来了额外的挑战 因此，它们是较晚获得的，对于经历语言延迟的儿童来说，学习起来尤其困难。 此外，这些研究将揭示词汇学习语境的结构如何，这通常涉及潜在的 词义参与共享事件，可以促进名词和动词的学习。 最后，这些研究将为申请人提供关键的博士后培训，以促进其 职业生涯。申请人将掌握考试所需的新的方法和理论技能。 终身学习语言，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、课程作业和 跨多个部门和研究机构的专业发展活动。这 培训最终将为申请者成为一名成功的独立研究人员做好准备。

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.