The shape of the vocabulary predicts the shape of the bias

Perry, Lynn K. and Samuelson, Larissa K. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9141-3286 (2011) The shape of the vocabulary predicts the shape of the bias. Frontiers in Psychology, 2. ISSN 1664-1078

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Abstract

Children acquire attentional biases that help them generalize novel words to novel objects. Researchers have proposed that these biases arise from regularities in the early noun vocabulary children learn and suggest that the specifics of the biases should be tied to the specifics of individual children's vocabularies. However, evidence supporting this proposal to date comes from studies of group means. The current study examines the relations between the statistics of the nouns young children learn and the similarities and differences in the biases they demonstrate. We show that individual differences in vocabulary structure predict individual differences in novel noun generalization. Thus, these data support the proposal that word learning biases emerge from the regularities present in individual children's vocabularies and, importantly, that children's on-line attention during an experiment is mediated by instances of past learning.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: © 2011 Perry and Samuelson. This is an open-access article subject to a non-exclusive license between the authors and Frontiers Media SA, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in other forums, provided the original authors and source are credited and other Frontiers conditions are complied with
Uncontrolled Keywords: word learning,categorization,individual differences
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Psychology
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Developmental Science
Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Cognition, Action and Perception
Depositing User: Pure Connector
Date Deposited: 13 Nov 2015 15:00
Last Modified: 04 Aug 2023 11:30
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/55215
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00345

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