Running Head: STATISTICAL LEARNING

Statistical Learning by infants

[Name of Student]

[Name of Instructor]
Abstract

In this study I have critiqued article of Saffran, J.R., ““Statistical Learning by 8-Month-

Old Infants”. According to this article learners depend on an arrangement of experience-

dependent and experience-independent mechanisms to explore information by the environment.

Both mechanisms types are involved in language acquisition, however, most theorists focus the

related significance of experience-independent mechanisms. Saffran (1996) study showed the

basic tasks of acquisition of language, words segmentation by fluent speech, could be attained by

eight month old infants solely based on statistical connections among neighboring speech sounds

(Saffran, 1996). Furthermore, this segmentation of word was dependent on statistical learning by

just two minutes of exposure, recommending that kids have access to the strong mechanism for

statistical properties computation of language input.

Introduction

Strong statistical learning mechanisms are possessed by young infants that they could use

to search for word boundaries in flowing speech. Like, in landmark research by Saffran (1996),

Headturn Preference process was used to get train English-learning eight month old infant to the

artificial language consisting of no signals to word boundaries rather than transitional

probabilities among syllables (Saffran, 1996). Let’s start this review through placing statistical

learning theories in the center of the query that how infant detect structure environment. We have

gave evidence to recommend that sensitivity of infant to the statistical words is not just wide,

applied across domains and modalities, however focused also, attending to the varying

perception goals and specific of input. We have recommended that basically statistical learning is

also part of common determinism among the environment and human brain mechanisms, in
which each supports shape the others, possibly crucially linked with the human memory structure

itself.

Background

The article discussed in this critique looked at how eight months old infants learn to

divide a speech stream into words- which is evaluating which part in a speech stream constitute a

word (in spite of a sentence, a phrase, a syllable, etc). First when I heard about the query

underlying this article, my first reaction was that it is trivial- are not the words identified by

pauses on each side (for example how words are separated by spaces in documentation)? Then it

turns out that this is not true all the times! For instance here is the sound sign from me saying the

sentence “I really like Mississippi”. (I select this phrase because of variety in syllables number

per word, not because of any specific interest with Mississippi word; I have never actually been

to Mississippi”). We can observe that sometimes the boundaries of word line up with pauses in

sign, like as between words “I and really”. And other times, there is pretty no gap between words

like between words “really and like”. Then also other time there is large gap within a word, like

in Mississippi word. Thus, gaps or pauses are actually not a good sign of word boundaries!

Thus before I continue I could not resist sharing my little story- I had never focused on how hard

the issue of identifying boundaries of word in speech is till I see my husband learn Tamil, this is

the language my family speak (Saffran, 2018). He heard someone saying “I ate an ice cream

cone last Tuesday” (in Tamil language) and he started asking me questions that what is astute

meaning in English and what’s an eamco? I got so frustrated due to this because if did not know

what he was asking me about! All I mean to say is that segmenting a speech stream into chunks
of word is really hard actually, though, in native language we learn effortlessly to do this!

Saffran (1996) studies how kids learn to divide a speech stream into words.

Terminology

Language acquisition

Language acquisition is procedure by which people acquire the skill to comprehend and

perceive language (in different words, gain the skill to understand and become aware of

language), and also to use and produce sentences and words to communicate. The acquisition of

language involves representation, rules and structures. The skill to successfully use language

needs one to attain a number of tools incorporating an extensive vocabulary, semantics, syntax,

morphology, and phonology. Language could be written as in sign and expressed as in speech

(Romberg, 2010).

Statistical learning

Statistical leaning is basically the skill for human being to extract statistical rules from

the environment across them to get familiar about the environment. Though, now statistical

learning is believed as a general learning mechanism, but first the phenomenon was identified in

infant language acquisition. For these learning statistical abilities the earliest evidence comes

from Jenny Saffran study, in which an eight month old baby was offered with non-sense

monotone speech streams. All streams were made up of 4 three-syllable "pseudowords” which

were randomly repeated. For two minutes after exposure to speech stream, infants differently

reacted to hearing these pseudowords as contrast to the non-words by the speech stream, and

where non-words were made up of similar syllables that baby had been shown to, however in a
distinct arrangement. It signifies that babies are capable of learning statistical links between

syllables with even very limited language exposure. That is, babies learn “which syllables occur

only together relatively rarely” and “which one are always paired together”, signifying that they

are two different unit’s parts. This learning method is believed to be one method that babies learn

which syllables groups form individual words (Romberg, 2010).

Discussion

One possible strong sign that can be utilized to identify boundaries of word is statistical

symmetries in how one frequently sound to follow other in speech stream (Johnson, 2003).

Saffran (1996) give the phrase example like “pretty baby”- over a large corpus of speech (for

example what you may hear spoken on many days), sound “ty” is possibly to follow the “pre”

sound than “ba” sound is to follow “ty”. Moreover if someone wants to keep record of how

different sounds possibly are to follow over time other sounds, they may find out that one word

chunk is pretty and baby is other chunk of word (just knowing of course how one likely sound is

to follow other does not provide idea of word meaning; that is another query to solve!).

Previously Saffran (1996) had showed that these probabilities could be used by adults to learn to

divide speech into words, this they wished to extend this research to observe if babies could use

this information also (Saffran, 1996).

The researchers in experiment 1 formed a made-up language, which had four non-sense

words and each word had three syllables. These words were padoti, bidaku, golabu, and tupiro.

(These were words for 1 of 2 cases; they assessed 2 children groups with 2 different words ser, to

ensure that children did not have any bias for specific nonsense word). Then they played a

constant speech stream that included these four words constantly repeated in random
arrangement for two minutes. Thus, the speech may have sounded just like

“tupirogolabubidakupadotigolabubidaku…” In a monotone they words were verbalized, and also

there were no stresses or pauses on particular syllables that may have signified where boundaries

of words were present. Also note that because there were no acoustic cues (like stress, tone, etc.)

and breaks between words, the only difference among non-words and words were how one

syllable frequently followed another. Thus, for instance, in bidaku, always ku followed da, with

hundred percent probabilities, however, pa will nfollow only ku in situation where padoti words

followed bidaku- this will signify that ku and da go together, and pa and ku generally don’t.

Then they assessed whether the babies can differentiate the non-sense sentences from non-words

in the made-up language. A test set was created by the researchers that included 2 of non-sense

words (like golabu and tupir) and 2 same non-words that babies had not heard in speech stream

(tilado and dapiku). Not that in non-words all of syllables were shown in words in speech stream,

however not in the similar order, For instance, “pi” and “da” were syllables both there were

overheard in stream, however “da” was never followed by “pi”. Then the infants were assessed

to observe whether they can differentiate between non-words and words(Saffran, 2018).

Researchers did this by observing whether babies paid longer focus after hearing non-words

(they were not present in speech stream they had earlier listened to) compared to words that they

heard- here the idea is that babies pay focus longer to stimuli (visual objects, sounds, etc.) that

they have not seen or heard before ad compared to their familiar stimuli. And, researchers

evaluated that babies did pay longer focus after hearing non-words (almost on average a

complete second longer). This signifies that babies had learned what syllables follow each other,

even after just listening speech stream for two minutes! However, just knowing the arrangement

in which syllables must go is not enough to divide speech stream into words. For instance, with
“tupirogolabubidaku….” Stream, knowing the order of syllables does not tell whether a word is

bubida or golabu.

A second experiment is conducted by the researcher, where the assessment set included

two part-words and two words. All of part-words were 3 syllables also, and were made up of

joining a word’s final syllable with first 2 syllables of distinct word (for example bubida- a

mixture of “golabu and bidaku”). The babies in this case may have listened the part-words in

speech stream- for instance, there is a chance that golabu could be followed by bidaku, and the

babies in that case will hear bubida. But they will hear far less bubida frequently as compared to

either bidaku or golabu because relatively “bi” is doubtful to follow “bu”, because it spans

boundary of a word. As compared to experiment one, experiment 2 was bit trickier, because the

non-words were mixture that the babies will have heard in two minutes stream, though less often

than words. The babies even with increased task difficulty were able still to differentiate the

words by the non-words!

This experiment reveals that babies use statistics focusing speech sounds to produce a

language’ mental representation and they could utilize them to help them memorize where in

speech word boundaries occur. What is more, they could do this very quickly.

Conclusion

Reading this article, it is amazing that such young babies were able to grasp so much

knowledge after hearing to a speech stream including words they had not listened earlier, for

such a little time. This novelty effect was interpreted by Saffran (1996) as evidence that babies

are good in statistical learning. Moreover, they also argue that in early segmentation of word

statistical learning may play a significant role. Further research by the similar author group
revealed that babies are also capable of tracking conditional probabilities among syllables. The

results that babies could divide an artificial language comprising no word boundaries cues other

than strength of transitional probabilities among syllables are impressive finding. But the

drawback of this research is the language used in this research by Saffran (1996) was simplified

highly with regards to “natural language input”. Therefore, one could not assume automatically

that babies could utilized statistical cues to divide a natural language, specifically given past

researches showing that effects of statistical learning rapidly disappear as the stimulus patterns

complexity increase.

There is also enough evidence that babies are good in multiple domains at statistical

learning. Moreover, there is proof that babies seem to pay focus to “transitional probabilities”

when dividing words by English passages. But this study’s results recommend that statistical

learning capabilities of infants may be of narrow use in setting of natural language. Therefore we

should be careful before summarizing that statistical learning defines the majority of how babies

start segmenting words. Rather we should start to ask how statistical learning process of infants

can be applied realistically in early word segmentation domain.

 References

Johnson, E.K. and Jusczyk, P.W., 2003. Exploring statistical learning by 8-month-olds: The role

of complexity and variation. Jusczyk Lab final report, pp.141-148.

Romberg, A.R. and Saffran, J.R., 2010. Statistical learning and language acquisition. Wiley

Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 1(6), pp.906-914.

Saffran, J.R. and Kirkham, N.Z., 2018. Infant statistical learning. Annual review of psychology,

69, pp.181-203.

Saffran, J.R., Aslin, R.N. and Newport, E.L., 1996. Statistical learning by 8-month-old infants.

Science, 274(5294), pp.1926-1928.