Infant language learners are faced with the difficult inductive problem of determining how new words map to novel or known objects in their environment. Bayesian inference models have been successful at using the sparse information available in natural child-directed speech to build candidate lexicons and infer speakers’ referential intentions. We begin by asking how a Bayesian model optimized for monolingual input generalizes to new monolingual or bilingual corpora and find that, especially in the case of the bilingual input, the model (...) shows a significant decrease in performance. In the next experiment, we propose the ME Model, a modified Bayesian model, which approximates infants’ mutual exclusivity bias to support the differential demands of monolingual and bilingual learning situations. The extended model is assessed using the same corpora of real child-directed speech, showing that its performance is more robust against varying input and less dependent than the Intentional Model on optimization of its parsimony parameter. We argue that both monolingual and bilingual demands on word learning are important considerations for a computational model, as they can yield significantly different results than when only one such context is considered. (shrink)

Learning depends on attention. The processes that cue attention in the moment dynamically integrate learned regularities and immediate contextual cues. This paper reviews the extensive literature on cued attention and attentional learning in the adult literature and proposes that these fundamental processes are likely significant mechanisms of change in cognitive development. The value of this idea is illustrated using phenomena in children's novel word learning.

This paper introduces a special issue of Cognitive Science initiated on the 25th anniversary of the publication of Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP), a two-volume work that introduced the use of neural network models as vehicles for understanding cognition. The collection surveys the core commitments of the PDP framework, the key issues the framework has addressed, and the debates the framework has spawned, and presents viewpoints on the current status of these issues. The articles focus on both historical roots and contemporary (...) developments in learning, optimality theory, perception, memory, language, conceptual knowledge, cognitive control, and consciousness. Here we consider the approach more generally, reviewing the original motivations, the resulting framework, and the central tenets of the underlying theory. We then evaluate the impact of PDP both on the field at large and within specific subdomains of cognitive science and consider the current role of PDP models within the broader landscape of contemporary theoretical frameworks in cognitive science. Looking to the future, we consider the implications for cognitive science of the recent success of machine learning systems called “deep networks”—systems that build on key ideas presented in the PDP volumes. (shrink)

Across a series of four experiments with 3- to 4-year-olds we demonstrate how cognitive mechanisms supporting noun learning extend to the mapping of actions to objects. In Experiment 1 the demonstration of a novel action led children to select a novel, rather than a familiar object. In Experiment 2 children exhibited long-term retention of novel action-object mappings and extended these actions to other category members. In Experiment 3 we showed that children formed an accurate sensorimotor record of the novel action. (...) In Experiment 4 we demonstrate limits on the types of actions mapped to novel objects. Overall these data suggest that certain aspects of noun mapping share common processing with action mapping and support a domain-general account of word learning. (shrink)

What mechanism implements the mutual exclusivity bias to map novel labels to objects without names? Prominent theoretical accounts of mutual exclusivity (e.g., Markman, 1989, 1990) propose that infants are guided by their knowledge of object names. However, the mutual exclusivity constraint could be implemented via monitoring of object novelty (see Merriman, Marazita, & Jarvis, 1995). We sought to discriminate between these contrasting explanations across two preferential looking experiments with 22-month-olds. In Experiment 1, infants viewed three objects: one name-known, two name-unknown. (...) Of the two name-unknown objects, one was novel, and the other had been previously familiarized. The infants responded to hearing a novel label by increasing attention only to the novel, name-unknown object. In a second experiment in which the name-known object was absent, a novel label increased infants’ attention to a novel object beyond baseline preference for novelty. The experiments provide clear evidence for a novelty-based mechanism. However, differences in the time course of disambiguation across experiments suggest that novelty processing may be influenced by contextual factors. (shrink)