When More Evidence Makes Word Learning Less Suspicious

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Jenkins, Gavin W., Smith, Jodi R., Spencer, John P. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7320-144X and Samuelson, Larissa K. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9141-3286 (2011) When More Evidence Makes Word Learning Less Suspicious. In: Expanding the Space of Cognitive Science - Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2011. Expanding the Space of Cognitive Science - Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2011 . The Cognitive Science Society, USA, pp. 2556-2561. ISBN 9780976831877

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Abstract

One challenging problem that children overcome in learning new words is recognizing the hierarchical category of a label. For instance, one object could be called a Dalmatian, a dog, or an animal. Xu and Tenenbaum (2007) proposed a Bayesian model to explain how 3.5 to 5-year-olds solve this ambiguity. They emphasized children's appreciation for “suspicious coincidences:” a label applied to three identical toys is interpreted more narrowly than a label applied to one toy. Xu and Tenenbaum did not investigate children’s prior category knowledge, however. We replicated their “suspicious coincidence” effect and measured this knowledge. Unexpectedly, children with more category knowledge appreciated “suspicious coincidences” less. In a second experiment, repeatedly emphasizing novel labels caused all children to stop recognizing the “suspicious coincidence.” These data are inconsistent with the Bayesian account and suggest the phenomenon is influenced by subtler aspects of prior knowledge and by task-specific details.

Item Type: Book Section
Additional Information: Funding Information: This project was funded by grant number R01HD045713 to Larissa Samuelson. Publisher Copyright: © CogSci 2011.
Uncontrolled Keywords: bayesian model,categorization,word learning,artificial intelligence,computer science applications,human-computer interaction,cognitive neuroscience ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1700/1702
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Psychology
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Depositing User: LivePure Connector
Date Deposited: 25 Jan 2023 09:30
Last Modified: 25 Jan 2023 09:30
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/90785
DOI:

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