Sumarga H. Suanda

Intersensory Redundancy Accelerates Preverbal Numerical Competence

Intersensory redundancy can facilitate animal and human behavior in areas as diverse as rhythm discrimination, signal detection, orienting responses, maternal call learning, and associative learning. In the realm of numerical development, infants show similar sensitivity to numerical differences in both the visual and auditory modalities. Using a habituation-dishabituation paradigm, we ask here, whether providing redundant, multisensory numerical information allows six-month-old infants to make more precise numerical discriminations. Results indicate that perceptually redundant information improved preverbal numerical precision to a level of discrimination previously thought attainable only after additional months of development. Multimodal stimuli may thus boost abstract cognitive abilities such as numerical competence.

The unrealized promise of infant statistical word–referent learning

Recent theory and experiments offer a new solution regarding how infant learners may break into word learning by using cross-situational statistics to find the underlying word-referent mappings. Computational models demonstrate the in-principle plausibility of this statistical learning solution and experimental evidence shows that infants can aggregate and make statistically appropriate decisions from word-referent co-occurrence data. We review these contributions and then identify the gaps in current knowledge that prevent a confident conclusion about whether cross-situational learning is the mechanism through which infants break into word learning. We propose an agenda to address that gap that focuses on detailing the statistics in the learning environment and the cognitive processes that make use of those statistics.

Cross-situational statistical word learning in young children.

Recent empirical work has highlighted the potential role of cross-situational statistical word learning in childrens early vocabulary development. In the current study, we tested 5- to 7-year-old childrens cross-situational learning by presenting children with a series of ambiguous naming events containing multiple words and multiple referents. Children rapidly learned word-to-object mappings by attending to the co-occurrence regularities across these ambiguous naming events. The current study begins to address the mechanisms underlying childrens learning by demonstrating that the diversity of learning contexts affects performance. The implications of the current findings for the role of cross-situational word learning at different points in development are discussed along with the methodological implications of employing school-aged children to test hypotheses regarding the mechanisms supporting early word learning.

Detailed Behavioral Analysis as a Window Into Cross‐Situational Word Learning

Recent research has demonstrated that word learners can determine word-referent mappings by tracking co-occurrences across multiple ambiguous naming events. The current study addresses the mechanisms underlying this capacity to learn words cross-situationally. This replication and extension of Yu and Smith (2007) investigates the factors influencing both successful cross-situational word learning and mis-mappings. Item analysis and error patterns revealed that the co-occurrence structure of the learning environment as well as the context of the testing environment jointly affected learning across observations. Learners also adopted an exclusion strategy, which contributed conjointly with statistical tracking to performance. Implications for our understanding of the processes underlying cross-situational word learning are discussed.

Why Two-Year-Olds Fail to Learn Gestures as Object Labels: Evidence from Looking Time and Forced-Choice Measures

The range of symbols that children treat as object names narrows over the course of development as children accrue more experience with and exposure to language. By two years of age, children no longer treat gestures as object labels. Here we investigate the source of this new-found failure and ask whether it stems primarily from a failure to form associations between gestures and their referents, as opposed to a failure to interpret these associations as referential. To explore these possibilities, we tested word versus gesture learning in a paradigm consisting of both a preferential looking task (designed to detect implicit associations) and a forced-choice task (designed to index explicit symbol-to-referent mapping). Our findings reveal that unlike two-year-olds in the word condition, two-year-olds in the gesture condition failed to demonstrate associations between gestures and objects in either task, suggesting that they did not form associative links between gestures and their intended referent. Importantly, those who did exhibit associations during preferential looking were also more likely to demonstrate successful learning of gestures in the forced-choice task. In contrast, 18-month-olds readily formed associations between gestures and objects. We conclude that the decline in receptivity to gestural labels during the second year is due to a failure to form reliable associations between gestures and their referents.

The Multisensory Nature of Verbal Discourse in Parent–Toddler Interactions

ABSTRACT Toddlers learn object names in sensory rich contexts. Many argue that this multisensory experience facilitates learning. Here, we examine how toddlers’ multisensory experience is linked to another aspect of their experience associated with better learning: the temporally extended nature of verbal discourse. We observed parent–toddler dyads as they played with, and as parents talked about, a set of objects. Analyses revealed links between the multisensory and extended nature of speech, highlighting inter-connections and redundancies in the environment. We discuss the implications of these results for our understanding of early discourse, multisensory communication, and how the learning environment shapes language development.