Department of Psychology, University of Chicago.
Cogn Sci. 2005 Nov 12;29(6):819-65. doi: 10.1207/s15516709cog0000_31.
Children improve at word learning during the 2nd year of life-sometimes dramatically. This fact has suggested a change in mechanism, from associative learning to a more referential form of learning. This article presents an associative exemplar-based model that accounts for the improvement without a change in mechanism. It provides a unified account of children's growing abilities to (a) learn a new word given only 1 or a few training trials ("fast mapping"); (b) acquire words that differ only slightly in phonological form; (c) generalize word meanings preferentially along particular dimensions, such as object shape (the "shape bias"); and (d) learn 2nd labels for already-named objects, despite a persisting resistance to doing so ("mutual exclusivity"). The model explains these improvements in terms of increased attention to relevant aspects of form and meaning, which reduces memory interference. The interaction of associations and reference in word learning is discussed.
儿童在生命的第二年在单词学习方面有所提高——有时是显著的提高。这一事实表明，学习机制已经发生了变化，从联想学习转变为更具参考性的学习形式。本文提出了一种基于联想范例的模型，该模型在不改变机制的情况下解释了这种提高。它为儿童不断增长的能力提供了一个统一的解释，这些能力包括：(a) 在只有 1 次或几次训练的情况下学习一个新单词（“快速映射”）；(b) 学习在语音形式上只有细微差别的单词；(c) 优先按照特定的维度（如物体形状）来概括单词的含义（“形状偏差”）；以及 (d) 学习已经命名的物体的第 2 个标签，尽管仍然存在抵制这样做的倾向（“互斥性”）。该模型从增加对形式和意义相关方面的注意力的角度解释了这些改进，这降低了记忆干扰。还讨论了在单词学习中联想和参考的相互作用。
