Essay Plan Vocab Learning PDF

Preview

Summary

Essay plan for exam...

Description

Essay Plans: Language Acquisition 2/Vocabulary Carey (1978): Fast Mapping:      

Children are not just passive recipients of language assistance given by adults, e.g. scaffolding. Fast mapping – Ability to quickly link a novel name to a novel object using known information. Nursery children asked ‘bring me the chromium tray; not the blue one’ out of 2 trays. 13/14 brought the correct tray as they used knowledge that the tray was not blue. 1 week later asked which of a set of colour chips was chromium. 9/13 chose either green or olive, similar to the colour of the tray.

Evaluation: 





Implies that the word ‘chromium’ had been learned; was retained from tray selection task to chip selection task. Fast mapping therefore shows vocabulary-increasing potential. Ostensive Naming: Reinforcement behaviour, adult holds up correctly named item and repeats its name to the child. Has been seen to occur in many studies claiming that children learn via fast mapping, including Carey’s. Validity is therefore limited as retention was encouraged by the repetition and reinforcement of the word.

Horst, Scott & Pollard (2010): Fast Mapping & Retention:  

Children presented with 3, 4 or 5 items, asked to get the ‘yok’. All children performed well in referent selection, however only children with the fewest competitors present during referent selection demonstrated retention of the word ‘yok’ when tested later.

Evaluation: 



Shows that the presence of many competitors hinders vocabulary learning through fast mapping; it may only be a useful technique for learning words when few options are presented. Supports findings of Carey, as Carey used only one competitor in tray task and several in chip task; despite ostensive naming bias, poorer performance with more competitors.

Twomey, Ranson & Horst (2014): Target Categories:  



30 month old Ps, 3 fast mapping referent selection tasks & 3 retention trials. Condition 1: Same category exemplar across every trial, Condition 2: Multiple different (colours, materials) exemplars across each trial (info about the category rather than single item). Overall excellent referent selection, but only those exposed to categories retained words significantly above chance level.



Shows fast mapping can be effective for increasing vocabulary, but only when a range of examples are shown, giving a view of items as a group rather than separate items.

Overall Fast Mapping:  

Evidence for use of fast mapping to increase vocabulary is mixed. Supporting studies primarily suffer validity problems following ostensive naming. Supporting evidence suggests it is only useful in certain paradigms – adding competitors renders it near-useless and category-based retention is greater than single-item, however infants may not be shown multiple exemplars for a given name in real life contexts.

Shape Bias: 



Applying the same word to items that share the same shape, e.g. bowtie pasta. Not only seen in infants as adults do this as well. An example of over-extension in generalisation (grouping items together based on loose visual similarities). Can be tested using solid objects or non-solid substance paradigms, where items are presented for comparison, e.g. ‘this is my tulver; get your tulver’, and infants must select either an item of the same shape or same material.

Samuelson & Smith (1999): Vocabulary Levels:  



17-33 month old Ps, productive noun vocabulary was measured prior to study. Found that children who demonstrated over 150 nouns in their productive vocabulary reliably picked the correct item in the solid objects condition but not the non-solid one. Age did not have an effect on whether or not this occurred. Concluded that shape bias emerges as a product of increased vocabulary rather than developing as a product of age.

Samuelson (2002): Shape Bias & Increasing Vocabulary:      

If shape bias is acquired through increased vocabulary, we should be able to teach shape bias by experimentally increasing vocabulary. 17 month old Ps attended lab once a week for 9 weeks to be taught 12 real nouns with multiple category exemplars given. Nouns were complex and would be learned much later (~26 weeks). Split into shape training and material training groups and learned names for items identified by shape/material respectively. Shape training group showed better retention in both solid and non-solid object paradigms. After 1 month follow-up, material group matched the average trajectory for vocabulary learning (~150 words) whilst shape group increased significantly above this (~210 words).

Evaluation:

 



Both Samuelson studies show that shape bias is primarily a product of word learning rather than anything else. However, it follows that pre-linguistic abilities of children would better enable them to engage in shape bias-based learning, as greater perceptual abilities which allow for attention of the shape of objects would theoretically make this learning easier.

Whilst both shape bias and fast mapping have been seen to increase vocabulary (with varied effectiveness), they do not allow children to learn syntax or morphology, which are important facets of language development....