scholarly journals The role of prior lexical knowledge in children’s and adults’ incidental word learning from illustrated stories.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma James ◽  
M. Gareth Gaskell ◽  
Rhiannon Pearce ◽  
Caroline Korell ◽  
Charlotte Dean ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Word Learning ◽  
Lexical Knowledge ◽  
Incidental Word Learning

scholarly journals The role of prior lexical knowledge in children’s and adults’ word learning from stories

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma James ◽  
M. Gareth Gaskell ◽  
Rhiannon Pearce ◽  
Caroline Korell ◽  
Charlotte Dean ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Prior Knowledge ◽  
Word Learning ◽  
Vocabulary Instruction ◽  
Lexical Knowledge ◽  
Additional Support ◽  
Incidental Word Learning ◽  
Neighbourhood Structure ◽  
Explicit Vocabulary

Children and adults benefit from a new word’s phonological neighbours during explicit vocabulary instruction, suggesting that related prior knowledge supports learning across development. This study examined lexical neighbourhood structure during incidental word learning—limiting opportunities for strategically engaging prior knowledge—and tested the hypothesis that prior knowledge would provide additional support during subsequent consolidation.

scholarly journals Cognitive mechanisms underpinning statistical learning of grammatical regularities in child and adult learners: Evidence for a multicomponential view

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jelena Mirković ◽  
Marissa Yee ◽  
Maddison Kennedy ◽  
Marianna E. Hayiou-Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Adult Learners ◽  
Statistical Learning ◽  
Word Learning ◽  
Explicit Knowledge ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Cognitive Mechanisms ◽  
Lexical Knowledge ◽  
Group Type ◽  
Grammar Learning

Statistical learning plays a key role in language acquisition and development, from word segmentation to grammar learning. In a recent review and meta-analysis, Frost et al. (2019) identified key contributions of the statistical learning literature over the last 20 years, as well as a number of limitations. Here we address three of those limitations across three experiments. First, we address the issue of unrealistic learning environments in previous statistical learning research by training participants on an artificial language comprising multiple regularities (phonological, distributional, semantic), unlike the majority of previous statistical learning studies. Second, to examine learning at several levels of linguistic structure, we use a word learning paradigm at training, which allowed us to assess both word and grammar learning, including generalization of the trained regularities to previously unseen items. Third, to address the issue of underspecification of cognitive mechanisms underpinning statistical learning, we examine the emergence and role of explicit knowledge in generalization performance in both child and adult learners. Additionally, we examine the role of off-line memory consolidation processes. Across three experiments and multiple tasks, we found that both children and adults showed good levels of word learning, but variable levels of generalization of the trained grammatical regularities. Generalization success depended on the age group, type of training, and type of regularity assessed. Across all three experiments, explicit knowledge of the regularities contributed to the performance in some generalization tasks, but it was not key for successful generalization. Off-line consolidation processes consistently influenced long-term maintenance of the newly acquired lexical knowledge, but evidence of their role in grammar learning was mixed. We argue that our findings shed light on the cognitive mechanisms underpinning statistical learning, and provide evidence in support of multicomponential views of statistical learning.

The role of emotion in word learning

2010 ◽  
Vol 180 (8) ◽  
pp. 1065-1078 ◽  
Author(s):  
S.N. Doan
Keyword(s):  
Word Learning

scholarly journals The role of character positional frequency on Chinese word learning during natural reading

PLoS ONE ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. e0187656 ◽  
Author(s):  
Feifei Liang ◽  
Hazel I. Blythe ◽  
Xuejun Bai ◽  
Guoli Yan ◽  
Xin Li ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Word Learning ◽  
Chinese Word

Learning Through Processing: Toward an Integrated Approach to Early Word Learning

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephan C. Meylan ◽  
Elika Bergelson
Keyword(s):  
Word Learning ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Integrated Approach ◽  
Linguistic Knowledge ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Learning Mechanisms ◽  
Lexical Knowledge ◽  
Novel Word Learning

Children's linguistic knowledge and the learning mechanisms by which they acquire it grow substantially in infancy and toddlerhood, yet theories of word learning largely fail to incorporate these shifts. Moreover, researchers’ often-siloed focus on either familiar word recognition or novel word learning limits the critical consideration of how these two relate. As a step toward a mechanistic theory of language acquisition, we present a framework of “learning through processing” and relate it to the prevailing methods used to assess children's early knowledge of words. Incorporating recent empirical work, we posit a specific, testable timeline of qualitative changes in the learning process in this interval. We conclude with several challenges and avenues for building a comprehensive theory of early word learning: better characterization of the input, reconciling results across approaches, and treating lexical knowledge in the nascent grammar with sufficient sophistication to ensure generalizability across languages and development. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Linguistics, Volume 8 is January 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

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