Structural Alignment in Incidental Word Learning

Ruxue Shao, Dedre Gentner

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

Young children can sometimes acquire new vocabulary words with only limited, indirect exposure (Carey & Bartlett, 1978). We propose that structural alignment processes lead to fluent detection of commonalities and differences that facilitate incidental word learning. To test this, we adapted the Carey and Bartlett paradigm, varying the alignability of the objects that 4-year-olds saw while hearing the novel word chromium. In Experiment 1, children in the High-Alignment condition were significantly better than those in the Low-Alignment condition at identifying chromium objects in a subsequent task. In Experiment 2, we ruled out an alternative account by equalizing the overall amount of information presented to the two groups. We also found that the advantage of high alignment persisted after two-to-four days. These results suggest that structural alignment is a mechanism by which children can learn word meanings even in incidental word learning situations.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 38th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2016
Subtitle of host publicationRecognizing and Representing Events
EditorsAnna Papafragou, Daniel Grodner, Daniel Mirman, John C. Trueswell
PublisherThe Cognitive Science Society
Pages1038-1043
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9780991196739
ISBN (Print)978-1510832985
StatePublished - 2016
Event38th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Recognizing and Representing Events, CogSci 2016 - Philadelphia, United States
Duration: Aug 10 2016Aug 13 2016

Publication series

NameProceedings of the 38th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2016

Conference

Conference38th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Recognizing and Representing Events, CogSci 2016
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityPhiladelphia
Period8/10/168/13/16

Funding

We thank the children, families, and preschools that participated in the study, Emma Bulzoni and Katherine Cha for their help in conducting the experiments, and members of the Project on Children’s Thinking for their insightful suggestions. This work was supported by NSF SLC Grant SBE-0541957 awarded to the Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center (SILC), and by ONR Grant N00014-13-1-0470 to Dedre Gentner.

Keywords

  • alignable differences
  • incidental word learning
  • structural alignment

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Computer Science Applications
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Cognitive Neuroscience

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