Attentional constraints and statistics in toddlers' word learning

Abstract

Recent research supports the notion that word learning can be conceptualized as a statistical learning process. As many have noted however, statistical learning is constrained by processes such as attention and memory. In the current study, we observed, through toddler-perspective head cameras, toddlers' visual input as parents labeled novel objects during an object-play session. We then analyzed the co-occurrence statistics between words and objects that accumulated over the session. We also analyzed the constrained co-occurrence statistics which took into consideration the perceptual properties of the objects (e.g., object size) at the times words were uttered. We compared the information in these two types of statistical structures and examined which of the two best fit with the patterns of children's object-name learning. Implications of these results for statistical learning accounts of early word learning are discussed.