LANGUAGE

(PRECURSORS)

Psyc 445 – Week 5

Tilbe Göksun
Statistical and Rule Learning
Statistical Learning

• Infants learn language very fast

• Extract the rules (input) without an effort

“Sensitivity to regularities in the input”

• Same pattern as in music, speech sounds, visual stimuli

• Domain-general mechanism?
 STATISTICAL LEARNING

High likelihood High likelihood

PRE TTY BA BY
Low likelihood

Continuations within words are systematic

Continuations between words are arbitrary
Transitional probabilities

PRETTY BABY
(freq) pretty
(freq) pre .80

vs.
(freq) tyba .0002
(freq) ty
tokibugikobagopilatipolutokibu
gopilatipolutokibugikobagopila
gikobatokibugopilatipolugikoba
tipolugikobatipolugopilatipolu
tokibugopilatipolutokibugopila
tipolutokibugopilagikobatipolu
tokibugopilagikobatipolugikoba
tipolugikobatipolutokibugikoba
gopilatipolugikobatokibugopila
tokibugikobagopilatipolutokibu
gopilatipolutokibugikobagopila
gikobatokibugopilatipolugikoba
tipolugikobatipolugopilatipolu
tokibugopilatipolutokibugopila
tipolutokibugopilagikobatipolu
tokibugopilagikobatipolugikoba
tipolugikobatipolutokibugikoba
gopilatipolugikobatokibugopila
Beginning of Statistical Learning
Experiments…
• 8-month old infants
• Passive exposure to continuous speech (2 mins)
bidakupadotigolabubidaku…
• Test
bidakubidakubidakubidakubidaku…
kupadokupadokupadokupadokupado…
• Infants listen longer to unfamiliar sequences
• Transitional Probabilities
.33

bi da ku pa do ti

1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0

Saffran, Aslin, & Newport (1996)

 What about other primates?
• Statistical Learning in cotton-top tamarins

Hauser et al. (2001)

Rule learning

• Training

• ABA: ga na ga li ti li
• ABB: ga na na li ti ti

• Testing
• ABA: wo fe wo
• ABB: wo fe fe

Marcus et al. (1999)

#1: ABB vs. ABA
#2: ABB vs. ABA
#3: ABB vs. AAB
Rule learning with pictures

• Rule learning is not specific to language acquisition!

• 7-month-old infants can detect and generalize rule

learning patterns when the elements consist of
pictures of animals (dogs and cats).

Saffran et al. (2007)

EXP1:
Comparison of
ABA and ABB

EXP 2:
Comparison of
AAB and ABB
EXP3: Comparison of ABA and ABB (cats)
Saffran et al. (2007)
Visual Statistical Learning

Kirkham et al. (2002)

Roseberry et al. (2012)
Summary for Statistical Learning

• Infants detect regularities in speech stream

• Not specific to speech domain

• Not specific to human infants

• Helpful for language learning

What do children bring to language learning?

• Individuating objects and events

• Object representation
• Event representation
• Understanding relations

• Language maps onto these representations

Objects
ØAttend to and categorize properties of objects in the
first year of life, e.g., cups vs. plates.

ØInfants at 10 months can map a word onto the most

interesting object they see, regardless of what speaker is
naming!

ØBy 19 months., they notice speaker intent and will label

even a boring object if a speaker is looking at it or
touching it (taking the speaker’s point of view)
Pruden et al. (2006)
Object Individuation

Spelke et al. (1995)

Object Individuation

Xu & Carey (1996)

Event Representation

Infants discriminate between everyday actions by 5.5 months

Bahrick, Gogate, & Ruiz (2002)

Detect goals and sources of actions

(Woodward, 1998) (Lakusta, Wagner, O’Hearn, & Landau, 2007)

 Event Representation

• 10- to 11-month-olds recover attention to action that interrupts

goal-directed behavior.

Completed Action Interrupted Action

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(Baldwin, Baird, Saylor, & Clark, 2001)
 Event Representation

Containment and support Path and manner Figure and ground

Hespos & Spelke, (2004); McDonough et Pulverman et al. (2004); Pulverman et al., Goksun et al. (2011)
al. (2003) (2007); Pruden et al., (2004); Pruden et al., Konishi et al. (2019)
(2008, 2012, 2013); Song et al., (2016)

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Summary

• Infants are ready to learn and map labels onto objects at the
end of the first year

• Object and event representations help learn words for these

• Words map onto these representations

• Other views??