Discourse continuity promotes children's learning of new objects labels

Jessica F. Schwab, Casey Lew-Williams

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

5 Scopus citations

Abstract

The present study examined the influence of continuity of reference (i.e., discourse continuity) on children's learning of new objects labels. Four-year-old children were taught three new label/objects pairs, where the speaker's references to objects were either continuous (i.e., clusters of utterances referred to the same object) or discontinuous (i.e., no two sequential sentences referred to the same object). In two experiments, children learned new word/object mappings more successfully when object labels were accompanied by continuous references to the same object. This research reveals how discourse cues support children's encoding of new words, and in doing so, advances our understanding of the specific features of parents' language input that facilitate children's language development.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationCogSci 2017 - Proceedings of the 39th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society
Subtitle of host publicationComputational Foundations of Cognition
PublisherThe Cognitive Science Society
Pages3101-3106
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9780991196760
StatePublished - 2017
Event39th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Computational Foundations of Cognition, CogSci 2017 - London, United Kingdom
Duration: Jul 26 2017Jul 29 2017

Publication series

NameCogSci 2017 - Proceedings of the 39th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Computational Foundations of Cognition

Conference

Conference39th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Computational Foundations of Cognition, CogSci 2017
Country/TerritoryUnited Kingdom
CityLondon
Period7/26/177/29/17

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

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

Keywords

  • child-directed speech
  • discourse continuity
  • word learning

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Discourse continuity promotes children's learning of new objects labels'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this