Cross-Situational Word Learning in the Right Situations

• Published in: Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition Vol. 40; no. 3; pp. 892 - 903
• Main Authors: Dautriche, Isabelle, Chemla, Emmanuel
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States American Psychological Association 01.05.2014
• Subjects: Adult; Ambiguity (Context); Ambiguity (Semantics); Cognitive Processes; Context Effect; Experiments; Female; Humans; Hypothesis Testing; Language; Language Acquisition; Learning - physiology; Learning Strategies; Male; Memory; Mental Recall - physiology; Recall (Psychology); Semantics; Vocabulary; Vocabulary Development

Upon hearing a novel word, language learners must identify its correct meaning from a diverse set of situationally relevant options. Such referential ambiguity could be reduced through "repetitive" exposure to the novel word across diverging learning situations, a learning mechanism referr...