Statistical regularities in vocabulary guide language acquisition in connectionist models and 15 – 20 month olds

This research tested the hypothesis that young children’s bias to generalize names for solid objects by shape is the product of statistical regularities among nouns in the early productive vocabulary. Data from a four-layer Hopfield network suggested that the statistical regularities in the early noun vocabulary are strong enough to create a shape-bias, and that the shape-bias is overgeneralized to non-solid stimuli. A second simulation suggested this overgeneralization is due to the dominance of names for shape-based categories in the early noun vocabulary. Two subsequent longitudinal experiments asked whether it is possible to create word learning biases in children. Fifteen-to twenty-month-old children were given intensive naming experiences with twelve noun categories typical of the types of categories children learn to name early. The children developed a precocious shape-bias that was overgeneralized to naming non-solid substances. Further, these children showed accelerated vocabulary development. Children taught an atypical set of nouns or no new nouns did not develop a shape-bias and did not show accelerated vocabulary development. Learning word meanings in a first language should be a difficult task. The number and range of possible meanings to be learned is immense and, by some arguments, indeterminate from the typical information provided to young children (Quine, 1960). Indeed, very young children have great difficulty learning their first words. In the earl