Caregivers use gesture contingently to support word learning.

Rachael W Cheung,Padraic Monaghan,Calum Hartley

doi:10.1111/desc.13098

Rachael W Cheung, Padraic Monaghan + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13098

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Abstract

Children learn words in environments where there is considerable variability, both in terms of the number of possible referents for novel words, and the availability of cues to support word-referent mappings. How caregivers adapt their gestural cues to referential uncertainty has not yet been explored. We tested a computational model of cross-situational word learning that examined the value of a variable gesture cue during training across conditions of varying referential uncertainty. We found that gesture had a greater benefit for referential uncertainty, but unexpectedly also found that learning was best when there was variability in both the environment (number of referents) and gestural cue use. We demonstrated that these results are reflected behaviourally in an experimental word-learning study involving children aged 18-24-month-olds and their caregivers. Under similar conditions to the computational model, caregivers not only used gesture more when there were more potential referents for novel words, but children also learned best when there was some referential ambiguity for words. Thus, caregivers are sensitive to referential uncertainty in the environment and adapt their gestures accordingly, and children are able to respond to environmental variability to learn more robustly. These results imply that training under variable circumstances may actually benefit learning, rather than hinder it.

Highlights

Word learning is a complex process, requiring children to individuate words from continuous speech and pair them with intended referents in the environment
We predicted that a computational model of word learning (MIM) trained under conditions of varying referential uncertainty would learn faster with fewer potential referents
We predicted that a gestural cue would be most helpful to word-referent mapping when there was an increase in potential referents

Summary

Introduction

Word learning is a complex process, requiring children to individuate words from continuous speech and pair them with intended referents in the environment. The environment contains multiple sources of information that can help to constrain word-object mappings This includes cross-situational statistics, where possible links between words and referents may be resolved by tracking co-occurrences between them across multiple situations In the MIM, the existence of variability within the environment itself circumvents the requirement for this to be incorporated into the learner, providing the necessary degree of dropout to maintain the learner’s sensitivity to multiple cues in the environment. These results indicate that word learning occurs in noisy contexts with multiple, variable cues, learners are able to make use of this variability to benefit learning

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