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1
Zhang, Zheng. "Explorations in Word Embeddings : graph-based word embedding learning and cross-lingual contextual word embedding learning". Thesis, Université Paris-Saclay (ComUE), 2019. http://www.theses.fr/2019SACLS369/document.
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Les plongements lexicaux sont un composant standard des architectures modernes de traitement automatique des langues (TAL). Chaque fois qu'une avancée est obtenue dans l'apprentissage de plongements lexicaux, la grande majorité des tâches de traitement automatique des langues, telles que l'étiquetage morphosyntaxique, la reconnaissance d'entités nommées, la recherche de réponses à des questions, ou l'inférence textuelle, peuvent en bénéficier. Ce travail explore la question de l'amélioration de la qualité de plongements lexicaux monolingues appris par des modèles prédictifs et celle de la mise en correspondance entre langues de plongements lexicaux contextuels créés par des modèles préentraînés de représentation de la langue comme ELMo ou BERT.Pour l'apprentissage de plongements lexicaux monolingues, je prends en compte des informations globales au corpus et génère une distribution de bruit différente pour l'échantillonnage d'exemples négatifs dans word2vec. Dans ce but, je précalcule des statistiques de cooccurrence entre mots avec corpus2graph, un paquet Python en source ouverte orienté vers les applications en TAL : il génère efficacement un graphe de cooccurrence à partir d'un grand corpus, et lui applique des algorithmes de graphes tels que les marches aléatoires. Pour la mise en correspondance translingue de plongements lexicaux, je relie les plongements lexicaux contextuels à des plongements de sens de mots. L'algorithme amélioré de création d'ancres que je propose étend également la portée des algorithmes de mise en correspondance de plongements lexicaux du cas non-contextuel au cas des plongements contextuelsWord embeddings are a standard component of modern natural language processing architectures. Every time there is a breakthrough in word embedding learning, the vast majority of natural language processing tasks, such as POS-tagging, named entity recognition (NER), question answering, natural language inference, can benefit from it. This work addresses the question of how to improve the quality of monolingual word embeddings learned by prediction-based models and how to map contextual word embeddings generated by pretrained language representation models like ELMo or BERT across different languages.For monolingual word embedding learning, I take into account global, corpus-level information and generate a different noise distribution for negative sampling in word2vec. In this purpose I pre-compute word co-occurrence statistics with corpus2graph, an open-source NLP-application-oriented Python package that I developed: it efficiently generates a word co-occurrence network from a large corpus, and applies to it network algorithms such as random walks. For cross-lingual contextual word embedding mapping, I link contextual word embeddings to word sense embeddings. The improved anchor generation algorithm that I propose also expands the scope of word embedding mapping algorithms from context independent to contextual word embeddings
2
Schafer, Graham. "Word learning in infancy". Thesis, University of Oxford, 1998. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.242032.
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Yao, Xin. "Word Learning in Context". The Ohio State University, 2010. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1291060246.
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Rossi, Sonja. "Neuroplasticity of word learning". Doctoral thesis, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.18452/19420.
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Das Wortlernen begleitet unser Leben von der Kindheit bis ins Alter. Kleinkinder lernen ihre Muttersprache(n), aber auch Erwachsene lernen neue Wörter, z.B. beim Fremdspracherwerb. Unter gewissen Umständen muss eine neue Sprache wieder erlernen werden, wie z.B. nach einer Gehirnläsion. Wie meistert unser Gehirn diese herausfordernden Wortlernsituationen? Um die Neuroplastizität des Wortlernens zu untersuchen, wurden unterschiedliche neurowissenschaftliche Methoden (Elektroenzephalographie, funktionelle Nahinfrarotspektroskopie, voxel-basierte Läsion-Verhalten/EEG Mapping), teilweise in Kombination, bei Kleinkindern, Kindern und Erwachsenen sowie Patienten mit einer Gehirnläsion im Vergleich zu älteren Kontrollprobanden angewendet. 5 Experimente untersuchten die neuronale Verarbeitung von Pseudowörtern, welche mutter- und fremdsprachlichen phonotaktischen Regeln (d.h. die Kombination von verschiedenen Phonemen) folgten, in unterschiedlichen Lernsettings bei monolingualen Teilnehmern. Gesunde Erwachsene aber auch 6monatige und ältere Teilnehmer und Patienten konnten diese Regeln differenzieren. Beteiligte Gehirnareale umfassten ein links-hemisphärisches fronto-temporales Netzwerk. Die Verarbeitung universeller Spracheigenschaften, andererseits, zeigte sich in parietalen Regionen. Während Erwachsene eine klare Dominanz der linken Hemisphäre aufwiesen, nutzten 6monatige noch beide Gehirnhälften. Unterschiedliche Sprachtrainings (semantische Trainings oder Passives Zuhören) an drei aufeinanderfolgenden Tagen veränderten auch die Gehirnaktivität der Kleinkinder und der Erwachsenen und wiesen auf eine erhöhte Lernflexibilität hin. Im 6. Experiment lernten 5jährige bilinguale Kinder anhand pragmatischer Eigenschaften neue Adjektive und zeigten effizientere neuronale Mechanismen als Monolinguale. Die Ergebnisse unterstreichen die Wichtigkeit multi-methodologischer Ansätze, um genauere Einblicke in die komplexen Mechanismen der Neuroplastizität zu erlangen.Word learning accompanies our everyday life from infancy to advanced age. Infants have to learn the native language(s) but also during adulthood word learning can take place, for example if we learn a new foreign language. Sometimes people are confronted with a situation in which they have to re-learn a language because of a brain lesion. How does the brain master these challenging word learning settings? To assess neuroplasticity of word learning several neuroscientific methods (electroencephalography, functional near-infrared spectroscopy, voxel-based lesion-behavior/EEG mapping), partially in combination, were used in infants, children, and adults as well as in patients suffering from a brain lesion compared to matched elderly controls. In 5 experiments neuronal processing of pseudowords corresponding to native and non-native phonotactic rules (i.e., the combination of different phonemes) was investigated under different learning conditions in monolingual participants. Healthy adults but also 6-month-old infants and elderly subjects and patients were able to differentiate these rules. Involved brain areas included a left-hemispheric network of fronto-temporal regions. When processing universal linguistic features, however, more parietal regions were involved. While adults revealed a clear left-dominant network, 6-month-olds still recruited bilateral brain areas. Differential language trainings (semantic or passive listening trainings) over three consecutive days also modulated brain activation in both infants and adults suggesting a high flexibility for learning native and non-native linguistic regularities. In a 6th experiment, bilingual 5-year-old children learned novel adjectives by means of pragmatic cues and revealed more efficient neuronal mechanisms compared to monolingual children. Findings underline the importance of multi-methodological approaches to get clearer insights into the complex machinery of neuroplasticity.
5
Packard, Stephanie Leona. "Phonological word-form learning". Thesis, University of Iowa, 2010. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/568.
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Seven experiments examined phonological word-form learning (i.e., the learning of novel wordlike sound patterns) after differing types of training. In each case, learning at the end of training was assessed via stem-completion ability. Experiment 1 presented participants with 11 epochs of listening and repeating (incidental learning) and found significant stem-completion ability. The results of Experiment 2 showed greater stem-completion ability after 11 epochs of listening, repeating, and stem-completion testing (deliberate learning). Experiment 3 replicated results from Experiments 1 and 2 in a within-subject design and demonstrated that learning of both types is item-specific and not merely the result of generalized task facilitation. Experiment 4 measured stem-completion ability after 100 epochs of incidental learning and found that it remained lower than after only 11 blocks of deliberate learning in Experiments 2 and 3. Experiments 4, 5, and 6 utilized monosyllabic nonword stimuli, in contrast to the disyllabic nonword stimuli utilized in the first four experiments, and replicated results from Experiments 1, 2, and 3, respectively. Taken together, these results suggest that incidental learning does not yield full mastery of phonological word-forms.
6
Tan, Seok Hui. "Factors in infant word learning". Thesis, University of Reading, 2002. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.252252.
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Dolena, Alexis Lynn. "Uncovering the "slow mapping" process of word learning through word definition and word association tasks". Click here for download, 2006. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1212794661&sid=1&Fmt=2&clientId=3260&RQT=309&VName=PQD.
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Ballem, Kate Drury. "Phonological specificity in early word learning". Thesis, University of Oxford, 2004. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.410618.
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Frank, Michael C. Ph D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Early word learning through communicative inference". Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/62045.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, 2010.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 109-122).
How do children learn their first words? Do they do it by gradually accumulating information about the co-occurrence of words and their referents over time, or are words learned via quick social inferences linking what speakers are looking at, pointing to, and talking about? Both of these conceptions of early word learning are supported by empirical data. This thesis presents a computational and theoretical framework for unifying these two different ideas by suggesting that early word learning can best be described as a process of joint inferences about speakers' referential intentions and the meanings of words. Chapter 1 describes previous empirical and computational research on "statistical learning"--the ability of learners to use distributional patterns in their language input to learn about the elements and structure of language-and argues that capturing this abifity requires models of learning that describe inferences over structured representations, not just simple statistics. Chapter 2 argues that social signals of speakers' intentions, even eye-gaze and pointing, are at best noisy markers of reference and that in order to take advantage of these signals fully, learners must integrate information across time. Chapter 3 describes the kinds of inferences that learners can make by assuming that speakers are informative with respect to their intended meaning, introducing and testing a formalization of how Grice's pragmatic maxims can be used for word learning. Chapter 4 presents a model of cross-situational intentional word learning that both learns words and infers speakers' referential intentions from labeled corpus data.
by Michael C. Frank.
Ph.D.
10
Stickgold, Eli (Eli B. ). "Word sense disambiguation through lattice learning". Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/66811.
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Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2011.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 51).
The question of how a computer reading a text can go from a word to its meaning is an open and difficult one. The WordNet[3] lexical database uses a system of nested supersets to allow programs to be specific as to what meaning of a word they are using, but a system that picks the correct meaning is still necessary. In an attempt to capture the human understanding of this problem and produce a system that can achieve this goal with minimal starting information, I created the DISAMBIGUATOR program. DISAMBIGUATOR uses Lattice Learning to capture the concept of contexts, which represent common situations that multiple words are found in, and uses Genesis' system of Things, Sequences, Derivative and Relations to understand some contexts as being related to others (i.e. that 'things which can fly to a tree' and 'things which can fly to Spain' are related in that they are both special cases of the context 'things which can fly'). Using this system, DISAMBIGUATOR can tell us which meaning of 'hawk' we should use if we see it in a sentence like 'the hawk flew to the tree.' DISAMBIGUATOR is implemented in Java as part of the Genesis system, and can disambiguate short stories of around ten related statements with only a single query to the user.
by Eli Stickgold.
M.Eng.
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Feldblyum, Joshua Mark. "Mutual exclusivity in bilingual word learning". Click here for download, 2008. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1564016531&sid=1&Fmt=2&clientId=3260&RQT=309&VName=PQD.
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Coran, Monica. "Novel Word Learning as a Treatment of Word Processing Disorders in Aphasia". Master's thesis, Temple University Libraries, 2018. http://cdm16002.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p245801coll10/id/485434.
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Communication SciencesM.A.
Research suggests that novel word learning tasks engage both verbal short-term memory (STM) and lexical processing, and may serve as a potential treatment for word processing and functional language in aphasia (e.g., Gupta, Martin, Abbs, Schwartz, Lipinski, 2006; Tuomiranta, Grönroos, Martin, & Laine, 2014). The purpose of this study was to gain support for the hypotheses that novel word learning engages verbal STM and lexical access processes and can be used to promote improvements in these abilities in treatment of aphasia. We used a novel word learning task as a treatment with three participants: KT, UP, and CN, presenting with different types and severities of aphasia and predicted that treatment would result in (1) acquisition of trained novel words (2) improved verbal STM capacity and (3) improved access to and retrieval of real words. Twenty novel words were trained for 1 hour x 2 days/week x 4 weeks. Language and learning measures were administered pre- and post-treatment. All three participants showed receptive learning and some improvement on span tasks, while UP and CN demonstrated some expressive learning. KT also improved in performance on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test and the Philadelphia Naming Test. UP showed significant improvement on proportion Correct Information Units (CIUs) in discourse. CN showed some minimal improvement in narrative production for proportion CIUs and proportion of closed class words. These findings support that novel word learning treatment, which engages verbal STM processes and lexical retrieval pathways, can improve input lexical processing. Theoretically, this study provides further evidence for models that propose common mechanisms supporting novel word learning, short-term memory, and lexical processing.
Temple University--Theses
13
Chan, Ka-wai Ricky, i 陳嘉威. "Implicit learning of L2 word stress rules". Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2012. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B4961793X.
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In the past few decades, cognitive psychologists and linguists have shown increasing research interest in the phenomenon of implicit learning, a term generally defined as learning of regularities in the environment without intention and awareness. Some psychologists regard implicit learning as the primary mechanism for knowledge attainment and language acquisition (Reber, 1993), whereas others deny the possibility of learning even simple contingencies in an implicit manner (Lovibond and Shanks, 2002). In the context of language acquisition, while first language acquisition is essentially implicit, the extent to which implicit learning is relevant to second language acquisition remains unclear. Empirical evidence has been found on the implicit learning of grammar/syntactic rules (e.g., Rebuschat & Williams, 2012) and form-meaning connections (e.g., Leung & Williams, 2011) but little investigation of implicit learning has been conducted in the realm of phonology, particularly supra-segmental phonology. Besides, there is still no consensus on the extent to which implicit learning exhibits population variation.
This dissertation reports three experiments which aim to 1) address the possibility of learning second language (L2) word stress patterns implicitly; 2) identify relevant individual differences in the implicit learning of L2 word stress rules; and 3) improve measurement of conscious knowledge by integrating both subjective and objective measures of awareness. Using an incidental learning task and a two-alternative forced-choice post-test, Experiment 1 found evidence of learning one-to-one stress-to-phoneme connections in an implicit fashion, and successfully applied the process dissociation procedure as a sensitive awareness measure.
Experiment 2 found implicit learning effect for more complicated word stress rules which involved mappings between stress assignment and syllable types/types of phoneme, and integrated verbal reports, confidence ratings and inclusion-exclusion tasks as awareness measures. Experiment 3 explored potentially individual differences in the learning of L2 word stress rules. No correlation was found between learning of L2 word stress and working memory, processing speed and phonological short-term memory, supporting the belief that involvement of working memory in implicit learning is minimal, and the view that different stimuli/task-specific subsystems govern different implicit learning tasks. It is concluded that L2 word stress rules may be learnt implicitly with minimal individual variations.published_or_final_version
English
Master
Master of Philosophy
14
Snape, Simon Oliver. "Moving beyond perceptually focused word learning strategies". Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2016. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/6637/.
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The current thesis aimed to explore potential contributing factors to the difficulty that young children may experience with moving past previously effective word learning strategies. The particular focus of this thesis was how children overcome an early tendency to focus on perceptual features as their basis for word meaning and the potentially greater difficulty that children may experience with linking words to relational concepts. These aims were explored through a series of experiments that looked at 2- to 5-year-olds’ extensions of words (e.g. nouns, noun-noun compounds, verbs). Findings suggest: that children’s difficulty with correctly attributing meaning to words which are primarily defined by relations is truly due to their relational nature and not their dynamic nature; that children’s tendency to base word meanings on relations can be increased by explicitly highlighting the relation; that comparisons across more than one exemplars can help children attribute verb meaning to actions alone instead of an object-action combination; that inhibition ability may be a contributing factor in children’s ability to overcome their focus on perceptual features when understanding word meaning; and that children with autism spectrum disorders may not make use of some processes that typically developing children employ to move beyond basing word meaning on shared perceptual features.
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Rocha, Eleomarques Ferreira. "Exploring Storybook Illustrations in Learning Word Meanings". ScholarWorks@UNO, 2011. http://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/351.
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This study explores storybook illustrations in learning word meanings among English learners in a university intensive language program. The impact of children’s literature on the comprehension and vocabulary development of second language children is well-documented. However, the use of the literature with adults still needs to be researched. Therefore, a mixed-method study was designed (1) to investigate whether readers who read an authentic illustrated story differed from those who read the same story without illustrations; and (2) to learn more about the readers’ process of learning words from storybook illustrations. Results suggest that illustrations play an important role in both comprehending the text and learning individual words, however issues related to the accessibility of the text and readers’ ability to use context should also be taken into consideration. The findings support prior research that the benefits of learning from context take time to become robust. The study suggests that illustrated storybooks provide a rich context for adults to infer word meanings and recommends children’s literature as an alternative source of reading in programs serving adult English learners.
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Maher, Elizabeth. "Children's Modality Preference for Novel Word Learning". University of Toledo / OhioLINK, 2004. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=toledo1083594203.
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Maher, Elizabeth Ann. "Children's modality preference for novel word learning /". See Full Text at OhioLINK ETD Center (Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader for viewing, 2004. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=toledo1083594203.
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Thesis (M.A.)--University of Toledo, 2004.Typescript. "A thesis [submitted] as partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Arts degree in Speech-Language Pathology." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 52-62).
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Apfelbaum, Keith S. "Real-Time Competition Processes in Word Learning". Diss., University of Iowa, 2013. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/4813.
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Perceptual processes take time to unfold. Whether a person is processing a visual scene, identifying the category an object belongs to, or recognizing a word, cognitive processes involving competition across time occur. These ongoing competitive processes have been ignored in studies of learning. However, some forms of learning suggest that learning could occur while competition is ongoing, resulting in the formation of mappings involving the competing representations. This dissertation uses word learning as a test case to determine whether such learning exists. In a series of five experiments, participants were taught words under different stimulus and task conditions to encourage or discourage learning during periods of lexical competition. These studies reveal a complex relationship between ongoing lexical competition processes and word learning. Specifically, in cases where learners rely on unsupervised associative learning, they present evidence of learning that is continuous in time, starting during periods of lexical competition and continuing throughout the course of its resolution. These studies offer insight into the nature of associative learning, into the forms of learning that occur when learning new words, and into the ways that task and stimulus structure impinge on how a learner forms new associations.
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Bahl, Megha. "Word Learning by Adults with Learning Disability: Effect of Grammatical Class". Diss., The University of Arizona, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/193598.
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A novel word learning paradigm in a reading context was employed to investigate the ability of adults with and without learning disability to learn new words. The participants were required to read a short English story. The story was based on an Indian folk tale to eliminate any confounding effect of familiarity with content. Two nouns and two verbs from the story were replaced by novel words. The story was read in three sections. The target non-words occurred once in the first section, allowing for fast mapping of the words. The non-words occurred three times each in the second and the third sections of the story allowing for additional slow mapping. After reading each section, participants were tested for different aspects of lexical acquisition such as production of words, comprehension of the content, and grammatical knowledge associated with the non-word. This allowed for an examination of the growth in learning with increased exposure to the words in context. Results indicated that the normal language group performed significantly better than the learning disability group. Moreover, nouns were more easily learned than verbs. The overall performance of both groups improved with each section read, suggesting that more experience with the word assisted learning of novel forms.
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Roembke, Tanja Charlotte. "Forget me, forget me not: unlearning incorrect associations in word learning". Diss., University of Iowa, 2019. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/6845.
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During word learning, many words are associated with many meanings to build a lexicon. A model by McMurray et al. (2012) suggests that vocabulary acquisition may not only depend on building correct associations, but also pruning incorrect ones. Additional evidence for the importance of pruning comes from a word learning analog in pigeons, where the opportunity for pruning incorrect associations between objects and symbols was manipulated during training (Roembke et al., 2016). To investigate pruning in humans, we conducted six supervised word learning experiments. Participants were first trained to link two objects to each word, and subsequently were tested how quickly these were pruned. Across experiments, association strength was measured by using either eye movements to to-be pruned objects, or a post-training accuracy assessment. Learners showed rapid—though potentially not complete—pruning of incorrect associations, but this depended on whether the symbols were auditory words, orthographic words or non-linguistic symbols. Thus, this dissertation provides first evidence that pruning is operative during word learning. We also examined how newly learned words compete against known words for recognition using eye-tracking and found that despite very high accuracy these words were not strong competitors.
21
Saksida, Amanda. "Word learning in the first year of life". Doctoral thesis, SISSA, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11767/4102.
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In the first part of this thesis, we ask whether 4-month-old infants can represent objects
and movements after a short exposure in such a way that they recognize either a repeated
object or a repeated movement when they are presented simultaneously with a new object
or a new movement. If they do, we ask whether the way they observe the visual input is
modified when auditory input is presented. We investigate whether infants react to the
familiarization labels and to novel labels in the same manner. If the labels as well as the
referents are matched for saliency, any difference should be due to processes that are not
limited to sensorial perception. We hypothesize that infants will, if they map words to the
objects or movements, change their looking behavior whenever they hear a familiar label,
a novel label, or no label at all.
In the second part of this thesis, we assess the problem of word learning from a different
perspective. If infants reason about possible label-referent pairs and are able to make
inferences about novel pairs, are the same processes involved in all intermodal learning?
We compared the task of learning to associate auditory regularities to visual stimuli
(reinforcers), and the word-learning task. We hypothesized that even if infants succeed in
learning more than one label during one single event, learning the intermodal connection
between auditory and visual regularities might present a more demanding task for them.
The third part of this thesis addresses the role of associative learning in word learning. In
the last decades, it was repeatedly suggested that co-occurrence probabilities can play an
important role in word segmentation. However, the vast majority of studies test infants
with artificial streams that do not resemble a natural input: most studies use words of
equal length and with unambiguous syllable sequences within word, where the only point
of variability is at the word boundaries (Aslin et al., 1998; Saffran, Johnson, Aslin, & Newport, 1999; Saffran et al., 1996; Thiessen et al., 2005; Thiessen & Saffran, 2003).
Even if the input is modified to resemble the natural input more faithfully, the words with
which infants are tested are always unambiguous – within words, each syllable predicts
its adjacent syllable with the probability of 1.0 (Pelucchi, Hay, & Saffran, 2009; Thiessen
et al., 2005). We therefore tested 6-month-old infants with such statistically ambiguous
words. Before doing that, we also verified on a large sample of languages whether
statistical information in the natural input, where the majority of the words are
statistically ambiguous, is indeed useful for segmenting words. Our motivation was partly
due to the fact that studies that modeled the segmentation process with a natural language
input often yielded ambivalent results about the usefulness of such computation
(Batchelder, 2002; Gambell & Yang, 2006; Swingley, 2005).
We conclude this introduction with a small remark about the term word. It will be used
throughout this thesis without questioning its descriptive value: the common-sense
meaning of the term word is unambiguous enough, since all people know what are we
referring to when we say or think of the term word. However, the term word is not
unambiguous at all (Di Sciullo & Williams, 1987). To mention only some of the classical
examples: (1) Do jump and jumped, or go and went, count as one word or as two? This
example might seem all too trivial, especially in languages with weak overt morphology
as English, but in some languages, each basic form of the word has tens of inflected
variables. (2) A similar question arises with all the words that are morphological
derivations of other words, such as evict and eviction, examine and reexamine, unhappy
and happily, and so on. (3) And finally, each language contains many phrases and idioms:
Does air conditioner and give up count as one word, or two? Statistical word
segmentation studies in general neglect the issue of the definition of words, assuming that
phrases and idioms have strong internal statistics and will therefore be selected as one
word (Cutler, 2012). But because compounds or phrases are usually composed of smaller
meaningful chunks, it is unclear how would infants extracts these smaller units of speech
if they were using predominantly statistical information. We will address the problem of
over-segmentations shortly in the third part of the thesis.
22
Mestres, Missé Anna. "Neural correlates of word learning and meaning acquisition". Doctoral thesis, Universitat de Barcelona, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/2633.
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The series of studies that comprise this dissertation are aimed at simulating vocabulary learning and meaning acquisition of different types of words, namely words which differ in imageability. For this purpose, the human simulation paradigm is the best option to approach the question of how the meanings of words are learned. It also offers the advantage of using electrophysiological and hemodynamic techniques to explore the underlying processes and neural regions that sustain on-line word learning and that, with the use of infants, would have been difficult or impossible to study. In order to study the meaning acquisition of new words, the human simulation paradigm was adopted (Gillette et al., 1999). In the first series of experiments (Chapters 2 and 3), adults were provided with congruent and incongruent semantic contexts from which they had to derive the meanings of new words. This strategy was further applied in order to understand the neural mechanisms involved in learning concrete and abstract words (Chapters 4 and 5).
More specifically, Chapter 2 analyzes the interaction of semantic information congruency and meaning resolution using event-related brain potentials (ERP) (experiments 1 and 3). A different experiment explores the effects of context congruence on lexical acquisition using a self-paced reading paradigm (experiment 2). Chapter 3 examines the localization of cortical areas of successful meaning acquisition with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and investigates the neural network for lexical learning (experiment 4). In Chapter 4, the self¬paced reading paradigm is used to study meaning acquisition of concrete and abstract words. First, a reanalysis of experiment 2 is presented (experiment 2b). Experiment 5 investigates abstract word learning from congruent and incongruent sentential contexts. Afterward, a comparison between experiments 2b and 5 is presented. In experiment 6, the simultaneous acquisition of concrete and abstract words is studied using the self¬paced paradigm. Finally, Chapter 5 examines the localization of cortical areas differently involved in meaning acquisition of concrete and abstract words using fMRI (experiment 7).
El llenguatge és una capacitat humana que ha fet possible aspectes únics del pensament humà, com la creativitat, l'habilitat de pensar sobre el passat i el futur, la lògica i, totes les formes de cognició d'alt nivell. El llenguatge ens donà l'habilitat de mantenir informació de l'entorn en memòria per a poder manipular-la, i en conseqüència, tenir una eina per a comunicar idees. El llenguatge esdevingué la principal manera de transmetre i emmagatzemar el coneixement i la cultura. Degut a la importància d'aquesta increïble, però a la vegada, complicada habilitat, els humans hem d'aprendre'l durant els primers anys de vida. Un dels primers passos en aquest enigmàtic procés d'aprendre el llenguatge és aprendre les etiquetes del món. Donar un nom a quelcom optimitza la informació, i permet fer categoritzacions, que permeten generalitzacions del coneixement que ja existeix a nous exemplars, objectes o conceptes. Sota una etiqueta arbitrària, una convenció social, les característiques, funcions, parts i relacions amb altres paraules d'un concepte són emmagatzemades. L'aprenentatge d'aquestes etiquetes és un dels primers reptes que els infants han d'afrontar. Per tal d'esdevenir un usuari expert del llenguatge els infants primer han d'aprendre com es denominen les coses, quines coses pertanyen al mateix grup i quines no, és a dir, han d'aprendre a categoritzar el món i generalitzar la informació. Els infants són extremadament bons en això. Els nens comencen a produir les primeres paraules al volant del 12 mesos d'edat, aprenent unes 10 paraules noves cada dia fins al final de la secundaria. Nogensmenys, l'aprenentatge de vocabulari no s'atura al final de l'adolescència, constantment trobem paraules noves, neologismes, argots, que hem d'aprendre. A més a més, la majoria de gent haurà d'aprendre com a mínim una llengua estrangera durant la seva vida. Tot i això, l'adquisició de vocabulari en l'adultesa és molt més lenta i probablement depèn més de factors socials.
Aquesta tesi està dedicada a la comprensió de com els adults aprenen el significat de noves paraules a partir del context semàntic, és a dir, estudia la vinculació d'una paraula amb un concepte utilitzant la informació semàntica proporcionada per les oracions en les que la paraula nova es troba.
Així doncs, per a aquest propòsit, s'han realitzat set experiments. Dos experiments amb potencials evocats, un conductual i un utilitzant ressonància magnètica funcional (fMRI) es centren en l'efecte de la congruència del context semàntic en l'adquisició lèxica. Els següents experiments intenten profunditzar en l'aprenentatge de noves paraules investigant l'adquisició de paraules concretes i abstractes. Amb aquest propòsit s'han realitzat dos experiments conductuals i un utilitzant fMRI.
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Cheung, Wai-yan Anissa. "Word learning in normal and language-impaired children". Click to view the E-thesis via HKUTO, 1997. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record/B36209405.
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Thesis (B.Sc)--University of Hong Kong, 1997."A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Science (Speech and Hearing Sciences), The University of Hong Kong, April 30, 1997." Also available in print.
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Elyildirim, Selma. "Lexical word combinations in EFL learning and teaching". Thesis, University of Reading, 1997. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.363457.
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Grover, Ishaan. "A semantics based computational model for word learning". Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/120694.
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Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2018.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 73-77).
Studies have shown that children's early literacy skills can impact their ability to achieve academic success, attain higher education and secure employment later in life. However, lack of resources and limited access to educational content causes a "knowledge gap" between children that come from different socio-economic backgrounds. To solve this problem, there has been a recent surge in the development of Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) to provide learning benefits to children. However, before providing new content, an ITS must assess a child's existing knowledge. Several studies have shown that children learn new words by forming semantic relationships with words they already know. Human tutors often implicitly use semantics to assess a tutee's word knowledge from partial and noisy data. In this thesis, I present a cognitively inspired model that uses word semantics (semantics-based model) to make inferences about a child's vocabulary from partial information about their existing vocabulary. Using data from a one-to-one learning intervention between a robotic tutor and 59 children, I show that the proposed semantics-based model outperforms (on average) models that do not use word semantics (semantics-free models). A subject level analysis of results reveals that different models perform well for different children, thus motivating the need to combine predictions. To this end, I present two methods to combine predictions from semantics-based and semantics-free models and show that these methods yield better predictions of a child's vocabulary knowledge. Finally, I present an application of the semantics-based model to evaluate if a learning intervention was successful in teaching children new words while enhancing their semantic understanding. More concretely, I show that a personalized word learning intervention with a robotic tutor is better suited to enhance children's vocabulary when compared to a non-personalized intervention. These results motivate the use of semantics-based models to assess children's knowledge and build ITS that maximize children's semantic understanding of words.
"This research was supported by NSF IIP-1717362 and NSF IIS-1523118"--Page 10.
by Ishaan Grover.
S.M.
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Rivers, Sue. "Conversations and silence : learning by word of mouse?" Thesis, University of Sheffield, 2008. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/14932/.
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This thesis explores how and what people learn through networked collaborative discussions online, in order to establish whether this can be a rewarding learning experience and to address some of the gaps in our understanding of the underlying theory and pedagogy. The research examined an online distance learning programme aimed at educational professionals who were, or would be, implementing e-Iearning in their institutions in the United Kingdom. Its focus was a series of online collaborative discussions about aspects of e-Iearning. The study's virtual auto-ethnographic approach, in which the researcher experienced online learning first hand as a student, and its use of metaphor analysis and critical event recall to complement content analysis, aimed to put the learner's perspective at the centre of the research. The idea of the student as researcher rather than, for example, the teacher as researcher was also pursued. The study explores the issue of community in online learning and, in particular, the significance of non-participation ('silence') in collaborative discussions and found that valuable learning may occur, despite widespread non-participation and lack of a community of practice. However, while individuals may learn by 'lurking', the learning potential of collaboration may be reduced as a result. It is therefore important to balance the right of individuals to be silent with the group's need for collaboration. There was evidence of a strong link between metaphor and emotion. The study also suggests that online learners' language can transmit aspects of their identity, such as their values and gender, which may be a threat to the democratising nature of online learning. It is important to appreciate the significance and power of language, especially metaphors, as a teaching tool and as a means of expressing emotion, especially negative emotion, and overcoming lack of body language.
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Raiff, Amy Marie, i Amy Marie Raiff. "Strategy Use and Performance on Word Learning Tasks". Thesis, The University of Arizona, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/625127.
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Purpose: We explored performance across time in a word-learning task for second grade children.
Method: Our participants included 107 children: 48 typically developing monolinguals, 30 typically developing bilinguals, 14 dyslexic only, four with language impairment, and 11 with comorbid dyslexia and language impairment. After meeting inclusionary criteria, children participated in six session of pirate-themed games. This study focused on one aspect of the word-learning game, the phonological-visual linking task. We compared participants' average scores across each session to explore the possibilities of distinctive patterns of learning, perseverance, or boredom shown across time.
Results: Cluster analysis revealed five different clusters of performance. The largest cluster, Group 5, contained the largest percentage of children from each category, except the language impairment category. Group 5 performed the best and showed improvement over time. Group 1 was the worst group, starting with fair accuracy and gradually becoming less accurate over time. Group 1 consisted of a fairly even percentage of children from each category.
Conclusion: Impaired children and typically developing children are both capable of increased learning across time in this phonological-visual linking task, and children with impairments are not at significantly greater risk than peers for boredom effects.
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Kwok, Rosa Kit Wan. "Orthographic and phonological processing in English word learning". Thesis, University of York, 2014. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/7403/.
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This thesis investigates the process of orthographic and phonological word learning in adults. Speed of reading aloud is used as the main measure, specifically the reduction in naming reaction times (RTs) to short and long novel words through repetition and the convergence of RTs to short and long items. The first study (Chapter 2) fully described this fundamental learning paradigm and it is then used to compare various types of training in different groups of readers in the following chapters. Second, the role of phonology in visual word learning was investigated in Chapter 3. Novel words that received the training of both orthography and phonology (reading aloud condition) was found to be more efficient and effective compared to solely training the phonology of the novel words (hear-and-repeat with and without distractors). Yet, all three experiments in Chapter 3 also showed that the establishment of a phonological representation of a novel word can be sufficient of result in representations in the mental lexicon even without any encounter with the orthographic form of the novel word. Linear mixed effect modelling also found that literacy and phonological awareness made a significant contribution to nonwords naming speed when vocabulary and rapid digit naming were taken into account. Expressive vocabulary was found to be a significant predictor of the change in naming speed across the learning session when the effects of literacy, phonological awareness were controlled. Third, Chapter 4 then involved the repeated presentation of interleaved high-frequency words, low-frequency words and nonwords to native speakers of English in two testing sessions 28 days apart. Theoretical interest lies in the relative effects of length on naming latencies for high-frequency words, low-frequency words and nonwords, the extent to which those latencies (RTs) converge for shorter and longer words and nonwords, and the persistence of training/repetition effects over a 28-day retention interval. Finally, Chapters 5 and 6 try to bring these theories in a more applied context to understand orthographic word learning in adults with dyslexia and in bilingual speakers.
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Walker, Elizabeth Ann. "Word learning processes in children with cochlear implants". Diss., University of Iowa, 2010. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/616.
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Children with cochlear implants (CIs) typically have smaller lexicons in relation to their same-age hearing peers. There is also evidence that children with CIs show slower rates of vocabulary growth compared to hearing children. To understand why children with CIs have smaller vocabularies, we proposed to investigate their word learning process and determine how it compares to children with normal hearing. The present study explores multiple aspects of word learning - acquisition, extension, and retention - to better inform us about the real-world process of lexical acquisition in children with CIs.
We evaluated 24 children with cochlear implants, 24 children with normal hearing matched by chronological age, and 23 children with normal hearing who were matched by vocabulary size. Participants were trained and tested on a word learning task that incorporated fast mapping, word extension, and word retention over two days. We also administered a battery of tests that included measures of receptive vocabulary and speech perception skills to determine which variables might be significant predictors of fast mapping and word retention.
Children with CIs performed more poorly on word learning measures compared to their age-mates, but similarly to their vocabulary-mates. These findings indicate that children with CIs experience a reduced ability to initially form word-referent pairs, as well as extend and retain these pairs over time, in relation to their same-age hearing peers. Additionally, hearing age-mates and vocabulary-mates showed enhancement in their production of novel words over time, while the CI group maintained performance. Thus, children with CIs may not take the same route in learning new words as typically-developing children. These results could help explain, in part, why this population consistently demonstrates slower rates of vocabulary learning over time. Furthermore, we expected that speech perception and vocabulary size would relate to variations in fast mapping, as well as word retention. Neither of these variables proved to be significant predictors of fast mapping, but they were highly significant for word retention. Based on these findings, we may conclude that the factors that account for acquiring that first link between a word and its referent are not the same as those that are important for storing in a word in long-term memory.
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Dixon, Wallace E. Jr, Allison Lowe, Betsy Caldwell, Hannah Lawman i Andrea Clements. "Temperament Moderates Novel Word Learning at 15 Months". Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2008. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/4939.
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Researchers have been reporting temperament-language correlations in infants for 10 years. However, in order to identify directions of effects between temperament and language, methodologies besides correlations need to be developed. The “competition attention paradigm” is an effort to sidestep some of the direction-of-effect issues by asking infants to learn novel words in the context of environmental distractions designed to tap into children’s temperaments. The purpose of the present study was to explore whether environmental distracters would differentially impact 15-month-olds’ novel wordlearning as a function of children’s temperamental profiles. Twenty-eight 15-month-olds were asked to learn 4 novel words. Novel word learning consisted of initially familiarizing children with two novel objects, and then mapping a novel label to only one of the novel objects five times. Novel word comprehension was tested by asking children to select the newly-labeled object from the pair of novel objects across 4 test trials. A remotely-controlled mechanical spider competed for children’s attention during object familiarization on two of the words. Half the children were distracted on the first two words, half were distracted on the last two. Temperament was assessed via parental reporting using the Early Child Behavior Questionnaire. The environmental distractions did not impact children’s word-learning directly. However, order of distraction presentation did [F(1, 23) = 7.16, p = .014], such that children who were distracted on the first two words performed higher overall than children who were distracted on the last two. Results involving temperament were complex, yielding many significant interaction effects with factors impacting children’s word-learning. For example, children high in fear demonstrated better word-learning in the absence of the spider than in its presence, whereas the spider had no effect on low-fear children, but only when learning the first word in the pair [F(1, 23) = 5.20, p = .032]. Other temperament factors found to impact novel word-learning included attentional focus, cuddliness, impulsivity, frustration, and high intensity pleasure. The results of the present investigation contribute to a growing body of research linking temperament to word learning. The competition attention paradigm suggest ways through which word learning may be impacted by dimensions of temperament. Although not presentable here due to space limitations, the pattern of results also points to attentional focus as playing a central moderating role over other dimensions of temperament. Finally, the present results are the first to link temperament to language acquisition at 15 months.
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Angalliramachandra, Vijayachandra. "The Relationship Between Phonological Working Memory, Phonological Sensitivity, and Incidental Word Learning". Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK, 2007. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1187362187.
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Leung, Dilys Hay Lok. "Infants' use of object category distinctions in word learning". Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/33957.
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How do infants initially determine whether a novel object word labels a specific individual (e.g. Madonna) or an instance of a category (e.g., a person)? The research in this dissertation tested the hypothesis that infants assume words for objects from some categories (e.g., people) label individuals (are proper names) but words for objects from other categories (e.g., artifacts) label instances of the category (are count nouns). This assumption could help infants to identify proper names and count nouns in their language, and thereby facilitate the learning of the linguistic proper name/count noun distinction.
In a preferential looking task, 16- and 17-month-olds heard a novel word for a target person (a face) or artifact, and their willingness to generalize the word to a non-target object was assessed. In Experiment 1, infants restricted the word to the target object when it was paired with a non-target object from a different category, providing evidence that infants can learn a novel word for the target object in this task. In Experiment 2, infants restricted the word to the target object when both the target and non-target objects were people, but not when they were artifacts from the same category. This finding is consistent with the hypothesis that infants interpret words for people as proper names and words for artifacts as count nouns. In Experiment 3, infants were asked to find the referent of a second novel label in a task identical to Experiment 2. Here, infants restricted their looking to the non-target object when the objects were people, but not when they were artifacts. In Experiment 4, infants did not restrict the novel label to a person (a face) when it was inverted. This result provides evidence that infants’ tendency in Experiment 2 to restrict a label to a particular person was not simply due to the greater perceptual complexity of faces.
Together, the findings reveal that infants interpret words for people and words for artifacts differently, raising the possibility that object category distinctions help infants to identify proper names and count nouns in their language and to learn how they are expressed linguistically.
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Gurteen, Paula May. "A behavioural analysis of rapid word learning in infants". Thesis, Bangor University, 2003. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.401923.
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Molnár, Lajos 1975. "Rule based learning of word pronunciations from training corpora". Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/47906.
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Thesis (M.Eng. and S.B.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1998.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 83-85).
This paper describes a text-to-pronunciation system using transformation-based error-driven learning for speech-recognition purposes. Efforts have been made to make the system language independent, automatic, robust and able to generate multiple pronunciations. The learner proposes initial pronunciations for the words and finds transformations that bring the pronunciations closer to the correct pronunciations. The pronunciation generator works by applying the transformations to a similar initial pronunciation. A dynamic aligner is used for the necessary alignment of phonemes and graphemes. The pronunciations are scored using a weighed string edit distance. Optimizations were made to make the learner and the rule applier fast. The system achieves 73.9% exact word accuracy with multiple pronunciations, 82.3% word accuracy with one correct pronunciation, and 95.3% phoneme accuracy for English words. For proper names, it achieves 50.5% exact word accuracy, 69.2% word accuracy, and 92.0% phoneme accuracy, which outperforms the compared neural network approach.
Lajos Molnár.
M.Eng.and S.B.
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Sakhon, Stella, i Stella Sakhon. "Mechanisms of Word-Learning in Typical and Atypical Development". Thesis, The University of Arizona, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/623161.
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The hippocampus plays a critical role in binding together information into an integrated memory, and memory for these arbitrary associations is important when learning new words. Recent studies have investigated a learning mechanism called fast mapping (FM), showing that rapid acquisition of novel arbitrary associations can be learned independent of the hippocampus. In the current study we examine word-learning across two conditions more and less likely to require information integration via the hippocampus in typically developing children and individuals with hippocampal dysfunction (e.g., Down syndrome). Individuals with Down syndrome (DS) manifest hippocampal dysfunction and display memory and learning difficulties, hence could potentially benefit from alternative learning strategies. The current study found no benefit of the FM condition in either group. Both groups performed similarly and above chance level across the two conditions and over a week's delay, but a delay by group interaction suggested that the typically developing children showed improvement across all conditions after 1 week whereas performance in DS stayed consistent. Given evidence for sleep deficits in DS we examined how sleep disturbance related to delayed word retention. Sleep efficiency did not appear to be driving maintenance in either group. Future studies investigating when an individual with DS sleeps after learning, could provide a better understanding of how sleep can influence the word learning process. Additionally, future studies in an older group of children can also provide information on when the hippocampus and sleep dependent learning may develop in childhood.
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Quam, Carolyn, Sara Knight i LouAnn Gerken. "The Distribution of Talker Variability Impacts Infants’ Word Learning". UBIQUITY PRESS LTD, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/623962.
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Infants struggle to apply earlier-demonstrated sound-discrimination abilities to later word-learning, attending to non-constrastive acoustic dimensions (e.g., Hay et al., 2015), and not always to contrastive dimensions (e.g., Stager & Werker, 1997). One hint about the nature of infants' difficulties comes from the observation that input from multiple talkers can improve word learning (Rost & McMurray, 2009). This may be because, when a single talker says both of the to-be-learned words, consistent talker's-voice characteristics make the acoustics of the two words more overlapping (Apfelbaum & McMurray, 2011). Here, we test that notion. We taught 14-month-old infants two similar-sounding words in the Switch habituation paradigm. The same amount of overall talker variability was present as in prior multiple-talker experiments, but male and female talkers said different words, creating a gender-word correlation. Under an-acoustic-similarity account, correlated talker gender should help to separate words-acoustically and facilitate learning. Instead, we found that correlated talker gender impaired learning of word-object pairings compared with uncorrelated talker gender-even when gender-word pairings were always maintained in test-casting doubt on one account of the beneficial effects of talker variability. We discuss several alternate potential explanations for this effect.
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Allen, Sarah Rebekah. "Word learning from videos evidence from 2-year-olds /". Thesis, [Tuscaloosa, Ala. : University of Alabama Libraries], 2009. http://purl.lib.ua.edu/2199.
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Brown, Helen. "Talker-specificity and lexical competition effects during word learning". Thesis, University of York, 2011. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/2200/.
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The experiments reported in this thesis examine the time-course of talker-specificity and lexical competition effects during word learning. It is typically assumed that talker-specificity effects depend on access to highly-detailed lexical representations whilst lexical competition effects depend more on abstract, overlapping representations that allow phonologically-similar words to compete during spoken word recognition. By tracking the time-course of these two effects concurrently it was possible to examine the contributions of episodic and abstract representations to recognition and processing of newly-learned words. Results indicated that talker-specific information affected recognition of both novel and existing words immediately after study, and continued to influence recognition of newly-learned words one week later. However, in the delayed test sessions talker information appeared to be less influential during recognition of recently studied existing words and novel words studied in more than one voice. In comparison, lexical competition effects for novel words were absent immediately after study but emerged one day later and remained relatively stable across the course of a week. Together the evidence is most consistent with a hybrid model of lexical representation in which episodic representations are generated rapidly, but robust abstract representations emerge only after a period of sleep-associated offline consolidation. Possible factors contributing to a change in reliance between episodic and abstract representational subsystems include the novelty of an item and the amount of variability in the input during learning. However, talker-specific lexical competition effects were observed in the one week retest, suggesting either that episodic and abstract representations were co-activated during spoken word recognition at this time point, or that perhaps talker information associated with newly-learned words was consolidated in long-term memory alongside phonological information.
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Fourtassi, Abdellah. "Acquiring sounds and meaning jointly in early word learning". Thesis, Paris, Ecole normale supérieure, 2015. http://www.theses.fr/2015ENSU0049/document.
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Pour acquérir leur langue maternelle, les bébés doivent a la fois apprendre la forme des mots (par exemple, le mot “chien” en français, “dog” en anglais) et leur sens (la catégorie des chiens). Ces deux aspects de l’apprentissage de la langue ont été typiquement étudiés indépendamment. Des découvertes récentes en psychologie du développement et en apprentissage automatique suggèrent, néanmoins, que la forme et le sens pourraient très bien interagir, et ce, dès les premières étapes du développement. La thèse explore cette piste à travers une étude interdisciplinaire qui combine des outils utilisés dans la technologie de la reconnaissance et la psychologie expérimentale. Dans un premier temps, j’ai développé un modèle computationnel capable d’apprendre, à partir des données naturelles, la forme à partir d’une représentation sémantique ambiguë, simulant la connaissance approximative du bébé. Dans un deuxième temps, j’ai testé la plausibilité cognitive du mécanisme sur des sujets adultesTo acquire their native language, babies have to learn both the forms of words (e.g., “dog” in English, “chien” in French) and their meanings (the category of dogs). These two aspects of language learning have typically been studied independently. However, recent findings from developmental psychology and machine learning have pointed out that this assumption is problematic, and have suggested that form and meaning may interact with one another throughout development. This dissertation explores this hypothesis through an interdisciplinary investigation that combines tools from speech recognition and experimental psychology. First, I developed a computational model of joint form and meaning acquisition, capable of learning from a corpus of natural speech. Second, I tested the cognitive plausibility of this model with adult subjects
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Wu, Zhen. "The role of pointing gestures in facilitating word learning". Diss., University of Iowa, 2015. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/1805.
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Previous natural observations have found a robust correlation between infants’ spontaneous gesture production and vocabulary development: the onset and frequency of infants’ pointing gestures are significantly correlated to their subsequent vocabulary size (Colonnesi, Stams, Koster, & Noom, 2010). The present study first examined the correlations between pointing and vocabulary size in an experimental setting, and then experimentally manipulated responses to pointing, to investigate the role of pointing in infants’ forming word-object associations.
In the first experiment, we elicited 12- to 24-month old infants’ pointing gestures to 8 familiar and 8 novel objects. Their vocabulary was assessed by the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory (MCDI): Words and Gestures. Results showed that 12-16 month old infants’ receptive vocabulary was positively correlated to infants’ spontaneous pointing. This correlation, however, was not significant in 19-24 month old infants. This experiment thus generalizes the previous naturalistic observation findings to an experimental setting, and shows a developmental change in the relation between pointing and receptive vocabulary. Together with prior studies, it suggests a possible positive social feedback loop of pointing and language skills in infants younger than 18 months old: the bigger vocabulary size infants have, the more likely they point, the more words they hear, and then the faster they develop their vocabulary.
In the second experiment, we tested whether 16-month-old infants’ pointing gestures facilitate infants’ word learning in the moment. Infants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: the experimenter labeled an unfamiliar object with a novel name 1) immediately after the infant pointed to it (the point contingent condition); 2) when the infant looked at it; or 3) at a schedule predetermined by a vocabulary-matched infant in the point contingent condition. After hearing the objects’ names, infants were presented with a word learning test. Results showed that infants successfully selected the correct referent above chance level only in the point contingent condition, and their performance was significantly better in the point contingent condition than the other two conditions. Therefore, only words that were provided contingently after pointing were learned. Taken together, these two studies further our understanding of the correlation between early gesture and vocabulary development and suggest that pointing plays a role in early word learning.
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Best, Rachel. "Lexical acquisition in naturalistic contexts". Thesis, London South Bank University, 2003. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.271785.
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The thesis investigates ways in which young children acquire meanings of novel words. Various accounts of word learning postulate that the nature of the word exposure context plays a crucial role in supporting lexical acquisition (e.g. Clark. 1997; Nelson, 1988). Children are sensitive to a range of input, such as syntactic cues (Gleitman, 1990), gestures (Kobayashi, 1997) and verbal explanations of word meaning (Dickinson, 1984). The present research aimed to further our understanding of types of word exposure that help children acquire novel words, by examining the process of lexical acquisition in naturalistic contexts. The research was carried out in an educational context; the emphasis was on vocabulary acquisition in the classroom and children's acquisition of science terms, commonly encountered at school. The range of knowledge children acquired about word meanings was assessed using a variety of lexical tasks (e.g. production and comprehension tasks). The research was divided into three phases. Phase 1 focused on the measurement of lexical knowledge. It considered the ways in which drawing-based tasks tap lexical knowledge. Phase 2 evaluated the importance of the word exposure context in lexical acquisition by investigating children's learning of words that were classed as 'difficult' to learn. Finally, phase 3 explored different kinds of word introduction that help children acquire word meanings. This phase of the research was conducted in classroom settings. Drawing assessments were found to make an important contribution to the assessment of lexical knowledge. Findings from phases 2 and 3 showed that ways in which novel words are introduced plays a crucial role in supporting lexical acquisition, and also the range of vocabulary knowledge children acquire (e.g. production and comprehension). Types of exposure that help children acquire words in classroom contexts were identified. The results are discussed in relation to implications for teaching practice and an account of lexical acquisition
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Deibel, Megan E. "Individual Differences in Incidental Learning of Homophones During Silent Reading". Kent State University / OhioLINK, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1594912994777369.
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Ayan, Necip Fazil. "Combining linguistic and machine learning techniques for word alignment improvement". College Park, Md. : University of Maryland, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/1903/3126.
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Thesis (Ph. D.) -- University of Maryland, College Park, 2005.Thesis research directed by: Computer Science. Title from t.p. of PDF. Includes bibliographical references. Published by UMI Dissertation Services, Ann Arbor, Mich. Also available in paper.
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Zens, Naomi Katharina. "Facilitating Word-Learning Abilities in Children with Specific Language Impairment". Thesis, University of Canterbury. Communication Disorders, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10092/2698.
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Children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) often present with difficulties in learning new words compared to age-matched children with typical language development. These difficulties may affect the acquisition, storage, or retrieval of new words. Word-learning deficits impact on children’s vocabulary development and impede their language and literacy development. Findings from a wide range of studies investigating word-learning in children with SLI demonstrated that semantic and phonological knowledge are crucial to the word-learning process. However, intervention studies designed to improve the word-learning abilities in children with SLI are sparse. The experiments described in this thesis addressed this need to understand the effects of interventions on word-learning abilities. Further, the thesis describes the first investigation of word-learning abilities of New Zealand school-aged children with SLI. Specifically, the following three broad questions are asked: 1. What are the word-learning skills of New Zealand school-aged children with SLI compared to children with typical language development and which underlying language skills influence word-learning? 2. What are the immediate and longer term effects of phonological awareness and semantic intervention on word-learning and language skills in children with SLI? 3. What are the error patterns of children with SLI compared to children with typical language development when learning to produce new words and do these patterns change following phonological awareness and semantic intervention? The first experiment compared the word-learning abilities of 19 school-aged children with SLI (aged 6;2 to 8;3) to age-matched children with typical language development and revealed that children with SLI presented with significant difficulties to produce and to comprehend new words. After repeated exposure, children with SLI caught up to the performances of children with typical language development in learning to comprehend new words, but not on production of new words. Correlation analyses demonstrated that there were no correlations between the word-learning skills and other language measures for children with SLI, whereas the word-learning abilities of children with typical language development were correlated to their phonological awareness, semantic, and general language skills. In the second experiment, it was investigated whether there were also qualitative differences during word-learning between children with and without SLI additionally to the quantitative differences as revealed in the first experiment. Children’s erroneous responses during the word-learning tasks were categorised into phonological, semantic, substitution or random errors. A comparison of the children’s error patterns revealed that children with SLI presented with a different error pattern and made significantly more random errors than children with typical language development. However, after repeated exposure, children with SLI demonstrated a similar error pattern as children without SLI. Furthermore, it was examined whether a specific combination of phonological and semantic cues facilitated children’s learning of new words or whether there were word-specific features that facilitated children’s word-learning. No facilitative word-specific features could be identified. Analysis revealed that there were no significant effects of cueing on learning new words, but specific patterns could be derived for children with SLI. Children with SLI learned to comprehend more words that were presented with two semantic cues or one phonological and one semantic cue and learned to produce more words that were presented with two phonological cues. In the third experiment, the effectiveness of a combined phonological awareness and semantic intervention to advance children’s word-learning abilities was examined. Nineteen children with SLI (same participants as in experiment 1) participated in this intervention study that implemented an alternating treatment group design with random assignment of the participants. Children in group A received phonological awareness intervention followed by semantic intervention, whereas children in group B received the same interventions in the reverse order. Children’s word-learning abilities were assessed at pre-test, prior to the intervention, at mid-test after intervention phase 1, and at post-test, immediately following the completion of the second intervention phase. Each intervention itself was effective in significantly improving children’s fast mapping skills, however, gains in children’s word-learning abilities were only found for children in group A for production of new words. Extending the findings of the intervention effectiveness of phonological awareness and semantic intervention on word-learning as reported in experiment 3, it was investigated in experiment 4, whether the implemented intervention additionally influenced the error patterns of children with SLI. The erroneous responses of children with SLI on all word-learning probes at pre-, mid-, and post-test were categorised into the same error groups as described in the second experiment (semantic, phonological, substitution, and random errors). The error analyses revealed that children’s error profiles changed during the course of intervention and treatment specific effects on children’s erroneous responses were found. Post-intervention, children who received phonological awareness followed by semantic intervention displayed the same error patterns as children with typical language development, whereas children who received the same interventions in the reverse order maintained the same error pattern as displayed at pre-test. The final experiment examined the longer-term effects of the combined phonological awareness and semantic intervention reported in experiment 3 on the language and literacy development of children with SLI. Eighteen of the 19 children with SLI, who received the intervention reported in experiment 3, were available for re-assessment 6 months after the completion of the intervention. The children (aged 7;1 to 9;2 years) were re-assessed on a range of standardised and experimental measures. Data analysis revealed that 6 months post-intervention, all children were able to maintain their gains in phonological awareness, semantic, and decoding skills as displayed immediately after the intervention. Children’s general language and reading skills significantly improved following the intervention; however, children who received phonological awareness intervention followed by semantic intervention displayed significantly better reading outcomes than the children who received the same interventions in the reverse order. This thesis revealed that a combination of phonological awareness and semantic intervention can enhance the word-learning abilities of children with SLI. The combined intervention approach was also effective in additionally improving children’s general language skills and the reading of single non-words and real words, as well as connected text. The immediate and longer-term intervention effects provide evidence that advancing the semantic and phonological awareness skills is an effective intervention approach to support children with SLI in their word-learning and to furthermore promote their language and literacy development. However, the order of the implemented interventions played a significant role: Children in the current study profited most when they received phonological awareness intervention first, followed by semantic intervention.
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Wiget, Lukas. "Sublexical representations in auditory word recognition : evidence from lexical learning". Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/2677.
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The main question this thesis addresses is whether auditory word recognition proceeds directly from the input to the lexicon or whether there is a prelexical level of processing where segmental units are recognised. In the first part, I situate the question in a wider context of representational issues, and show that it is a crucial question because it allows us to distinguish two broad types of word recognition models: what may be called direct- and mediated-access models. A review of the research literature addressing this question shows that existing experimental results are inconclusive. The second, experimental, part of the thesis addresses the research question with a lexical learning paradigm. English-speaking subjects are first trained to recognise novel words that contain a non-native speech sound (a voiceless bilabial fricative); they then perform two tasks designed to determine whether they have acquired prelexical representations for the nonnative segment. The tests used are repetition priming and phonetic categorisation. The results of the repetition priming task are consistent with direct-access models; but for methodological reasons they have to be regarded as inconclusive. The results of the phonetic categorisation task favour mediated-access models. They also suggest that the representations used at the prelexical level of processing are more likely to be position-specific segmental representations rather than syllable rhymes. These results are compared with those of other studies. They are consistent with a growing body of evidence that auditory word recognition involves a prelexical level of processing where segmental representations are recognised.
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Ramtohul, Venita S. "Lexical access and representations in children : naming and word learning". Thesis, Open University, 2007. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.446288.
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Forbes, Samuel Henry. "Colour word and colour category learning in infants and toddlers". Thesis, University of Oxford, 2017. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:8ec923a1-fa95-4610-8c90-594033b2e706.
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This thesis examines how and when infants learn colour words, and how the knowledge of colour words affects their comprehension of colour categories. Over the course of seven experimental chapters, the ability of infants and toddlers to learn colour words, use colour words to process colours, and the role that colour words play in learning to perceive colour are all assessed. Chapters 2 and 3 assess claims that colour words are learned late using parental report and eye-tracking methods, finding that colour words are learned as early as 19 months. In contrast to this, Chapter 4 demonstrates that toddlers do not learn to modify colour words as dark or light until much later. Chapter 5 demonstrates that colour words are a crucial component for processing the colours of objects, showing that infants do not look to a colour-matched object unless they comprehend the colour word. Chapters 6 and 7 employ novel paradigms to explore categorical processing of colour, finding that infants have a preference for within-category colours, but that this has no effect on their attention to dynamic coloured stimuli. In Chapter 8, a prototype for an infant colour vision test is shown, demonstrating that the second year of life is crucial for development of visual closure. The generalisability of these results to infant perception and word learning is also discussed.
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Barnes, Sarah Butler. "Individual differences in learning to use a word processing system". Thesis, University of Bristol, 1993. http://hdl.handle.net/1983/661df1aa-04f9-483f-b897-efc8ea38215f.
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Roelike, Haley Ann, i Haley Ann Roelike. "Mechanisms of Word Learning in 2- And 3- Year Olds". Thesis, The University of Arizona, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/625137.
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Children begin to master word learning in infancy (Bergelson & Swingley, 2012). Two
memory tasks, termed explicit encoding (EE) and fast mapping (FM), are typically used to
investigate word learning with children. In adults, explicit encoding, which refers to the clear and
direct naming of a novel object, allows memories to be stabilized rapidly and is supported by the
hippocampus. Fast mapping, which refers to the inference of a novel object by exclusion of a
familiar object, recruits the much slower cortex. Interestingly, the hippocampus is late
developing, meaning that younger children tend to not rely on word-learning and memory
processes that are supported by the hippocampus. Both the EE and FM word-learning methods
were tested with novel object-label pairs among 2-, 2.5- and 3-year olds. Because we presented
younger children with more exposures to these novel pairs in both EE and FM, we predicted
performance to be above chance and relatively similar across age groups and across tasks. Paired
t-tests were run in order to compare children's scores (demonstrated as the percent correct choice
in a two-alternative forced-choice test between two novel objects) in both EE and FM to chance.
Although performance on EE exceeded chance guessing, performance on FM was more variable
across age. Additionally, individual ANOVAs were run comparing EE and FM scores as a
function of age. No significant differences were found in the performance in both tasks across
age groups.
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O'Mahony, Sara. "New word learning in young children with Autism Spectrum Disorder". Thesis, University of Sheffield, 2015. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/12708/.
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At least some children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have sensory processing differences which are likely to impact on speech processing and early language development. There is limited research in this area with the population in this study, i.e., preschool children with ASD and minimal or no language. This study explores the effects of modified speech on fast mapping and learning new words using video modelling, based on evidence in ASD of particular difficulty processing speech in background noise, temporal speech processing and a potential multisensory integration deficit. A case series design with multiple measures was used to compare the impact of modified video modelling with control conditions on learning and fast mapping new words. Video modelling had an overall positive impact on fast mapping and learning new words compared to non-taught control words, but was not superior to live modelling. Artificially slowing speech and background noise had minimal or no effect on taught vocabulary, although this does not preclude effects in natural environments. The atypical effects on fast mapping new words from asynchronous audiovisual presentation was consistent with a multisensory integration deficit in ASD, but the extent to which this supports theories of autism such as an extended multisensory temporal binding window requires further research. Methodological limitations indicate caution generalising findings. There was wide variation in participant performance and profiles, including sensory processing. This suggests the need for detailed assessment of sensory processing alongside other abilities in order to tailor interventions supporting language development to each child’s unique profile. Given evidence of deficits in attention and positive associations between video modelling and attention in this study and the literature, video modelling may be helpful alongside other strategies in supporting young children with ASD fast map or learn new words when they are struggling to do so by other means.