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The Effects of Speaker and Exemplar Variability in Children’s Cross-Situational Word learning

Principal Investigator(s):  View help for Principal Investigator(s) Kimberly Crespo, Boston University; Margarita Kaushanskaya, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Version:  View help for Version V2

Name File Type Size Last Modified
Overall_Averages_m.csv text/csv 134 bytes 05/17/2022 02:06:PM
Speaker.Exemplar.Variability.Monolinguals_rev.R text/x-rsrc 6.9 KB 05/30/2023 07:18:AM
adultXSWLdata.csv text/csv 193.8 KB 05/30/2023 07:18:AM
m_background.csv text/csv 4 KB 05/30/2023 07:12:AM
monolingualdatawithTrialnumbers.csv text/csv 239.7 KB 05/30/2023 07:13:AM
proportion correct by word-object pairs.csv text/csv 557 bytes 05/30/2023 06:51:AM

Project Citation: 

Crespo, Kimberly, and Kaushanskaya, Margarita. The Effects of Speaker and Exemplar Variability in Children’s Cross-Situational Word learning. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2023-05-30. https://doi.org/10.3886/E170601V2

Project Description

Summary:  View help for Summary Cross-situational word learning (XSWL) – children’s ability to learn words by tracking co-occurrence statistics of words and their referents over time – has been identified as a fundamental mechanism underlying lexical learning. However, it is unknown whether children can acquire new words when faced with variable input beyond word-referent associations, such as varying exemplars and speakers. In the present study, we examine the separate and combined effects of exemplar and speaker variability on XSWL in typically developing English-speaking monolingual children. Results revealed that variability in speakers and exemplars did not facilitate or hinder XSWL performance. However, input that varied in both speakers and exemplars simultaneously did hinder children’s word learning. Results from this work suggest that XSWL mechanisms may support categorization and generalization beyond word-object associations, but that accommodating multiple forms of variable input may incur costs. Overall, this research provides new theoretical insights into how fundamental mechanisms of word learning scale to more complex and naturalistic forms of input. 



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Published Versions

V3 [2023-11-02]

V2 [2023-05-30]

V1 [2022-05-17]

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