Evidentiality

Peer reviewe

Words cluster phonetically beyond phonotactic regularities

Recent evidence suggests that cognitive pressures associated with language acquisition and use could affect the organization of the lexicon. On one hand, consistent with noisy channel models of language (e.g., Levy, 2008), the phonological distance between wordforms should be maximized to avoid perceptual confusability (a pressure for dispersion). On the other hand, a lexicon with high phonological regularity would be simpler to learn, remember and produce (e.g., Monaghan et al., 2011) (a pressure for clumpiness). Here we investigate wordform similarity in the lexicon, using measures of word distance (e.g., phonological neighborhood density) to ask whether there is evidence for dispersion or clumpiness of wordforms in the lexicon. We develop a novel method to compare lexicons to phonotactically-controlled baselines that provide a null hypothesis for how clumpy or sparse wordforms would be as the result of only phonotactics. Results for four languages, Dutch, English, German and French, show that the space of monomorphemic wordforms is clumpier than what would be expected by the best chance model according to a wide variety of measures: minimal pairs, average Levenshtein distance and several network properties. This suggests a fundamental drive for regularity in the lexicon that conflicts with the pressure for words to be as phonologically distinct as possible. Keywords: Linguistics; Lexical design; Communication; Phonotactic

Response to Comment on “Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science”

Gilbert et al. conclude that evidence from the Open Science Collaboration's Reproducibility Project: Psychology indicates high reproducibility, given the study methodology. Their very optimistic assessment is limited by statistical misconceptions and by causal inferences from selectively interpreted, correlational data. Using the Reproducibility Project: Psychology data, both optimistic and pessimistic conclusions about reproducibility are possible, and neither are yet warranted.status: publishe

Judging words by their covers and the company they keep: probabilistic cues support word learning.

Statistical learning may be central to lexical and grammatical development. The phonological and distributional properties of words provide probabilistic cues to their grammatical and semantic properties. Infants can capitalize on such probabilistic cues to learn grammatical patterns in listening tasks. However, infants often struggle to learn labels when performance requires attending to less obvious cues, raising the question of whether probabilistic cues support word learning. The current experiment presented 22-month-olds with an artificial language containing probabilistic correlations between words' statistical and semantic properties. Only infants with higher levels of grammatical development capitalized on statistical cues to support learning word-referent mappings. These findings suggest that infants' sensitivity to correlations between sounds and meanings may support both word learning and grammatical development

Does Sleep Improve Your Grammar? : Preferential Consolidation of Arbitrary Components of New Linguistic Knowledge

We examined the role of sleep-related memory consolidation processes in learning new form-meaning mappings. Specifically, we examined a Complementary Learning Systems account, which implies that sleep-related consolidation should be more beneficial for new hippocampally dependent arbitrary mappings (e.g. new vocabulary items) relative to new systematic mappings (e.g. grammatical regularities), which can be better encoded neocortically. The hypothesis was tested using a novel language with an artificial grammatical gender system. Stem-referent mappings implemented arbitrary aspects of the new language, and determiner/suffix+natural gender mappings implemented systematic aspects (e.g. tib scoiffesh + ballerina, tib mofeem + bride; ked jorool + cowboy, ked heefaff + priest). Importantly, the determiner-gender and the suffix-gender mappings varied in complexity and salience, thus providing a range of opportunities to detect beneficial effects of sleep for this type of mapping. Participants were trained on the new language using a word-picture matching task, and were tested after a 2-hour delay which included sleep or wakefulness. Participants in the sleep group outperformed participants in the wake group on tests assessing memory for the arbitrary aspects of the new mappings (individual vocabulary items), whereas we saw no evidence of a sleep benefit in any of the tests assessing memory for the systematic aspects of the new mappings: Participants in both groups extracted the salient determiner-natural gender mapping, but not the more complex suffix-natural gender mapping. The data support the predictions of the complementary systems account and highlight the importance of the arbitrariness/systematicity dimension in the consolidation process for declarative memories

Sometimes it is better to know less: How known words influence referent selection and retention in 18 to 24-month-old children

Young children are surprisingly good word learners. Despite their relative lack of world knowledge and limited vocabularies, they consistently map novel words to novel referents and, at later ages, show retention of these new word–referent pairs. Prior work has implicated the use of mutual exclusivity constraints and novelty biases, which require that children use knowledge of well-known words to disambiguate uncertain naming situations. The current study, however, presents evidence that weaker vocabulary knowledge during the initial exposure to a new word may be better for retention of new mappings. Children aged 18–24 months selected referents for novel words in the context of foil stimuli that varied in their lexical strength and novelty: well-known items (e.g., shoe), just-learned weakly known items (e.g., wif), and completely novel items. Referent selection performance was significantly reduced on trials with weakly known foil items. Surprisingly, however, children subsequently showed above-chance retention for novel words mapped in the context of weakly known competitors compared with those mapped with strongly known competitors or with completely novel competitors. We discuss implications for our understanding of word learning constraints and how children use known words and novelty during word learning

Children’s Selective Trust in Promises

There has been extensive research into the development of selective trust in testimony, but little is known about the development of selective trust in promises. The present research investigates children’s (N = 264) selective trust in others’ promises to help. In Study 1, 6-year-olds selectively trusted speakers who had previously kept a promise. In Study 2, 5-year-olds displayed selective trust for speakers who had previously kept a prosocial promise (promise to help). In Study 3, 5-year-olds trusted a speaker, who kept a prosocial promise, over a helper. These data suggest that from the age of 5 children show selective trust in others’ promises using prosociality, promise keeping, or both to inform their judgments

Türkçe'deki geçmiş zaman bildirme kiplerinin tümce hatırlamaya etkisi

Bu çalışmada, Türkçe'deki geçmiş zaman bildirme eklerinin, tümcelerin hatırlanmasına olan etkisi incelenmiştir. Gelişimsel alan yazın kapsamında, bilginin kaynağını dilde zorunlu olarak, doğrudan (-dI eki ile) ya da dolaylı olarak (-mIŞ eki ile) kodlamaya yarayan bu eklerin varlığının, zihin kuramının daha erken anlaşılmasına yol açabileceği sıklıkla tartışılmaktadır. Buna rağmen, geçmiş zaman-kaynak bildirme eklerinin zihinde nasıl temsil edildiği ile ilgili çok az sayıda araştırma vardır. Bu çalışmanın bulgularına göre -dI eki ile ifade edilen tümcelerin hatırlanma oranı –mIş eki ile ifade edilen tümcelere göre daha yüksektir. Buna göre, ana dili Türkçe olan bireyler için, birinci el kaynaktan elde edilen bilginin, dolaylı yoldan elde edilen bilgiye göre zihinde daha kuvvetli temsil edildiği fikri desteklenmektedir. Bulguların niteliği, dil ve düşünce arasındaki ilişkiyi konu alan kuramsal çerçeveler ışığında tartışılmış ve alan yazına olan katkısı değerlendirilmiştir

Adult Prediction Error Processing is Associated with Vocabulary Size

How do individuals learn language when there are so many possible potential referents for each word? Prediction-basedtheories of language learning propose that predictions enable individuals to learn from implicit negative evidence bycomparing the predictions to outcomes. However, the role of prediction errors for learning has yet to be established.Traditionally, prediction errors have been believed to hinder learning. Recently though, prediction errors have been as-sociated with improved novel word acquisition in cross situational learning. This present study used a cross-situationalword learning task to examine the relation between prediction error-based processes during word learning and vocabularysize. The results showed that learners who switched their gaze more quickly from the non-target to the target image whenthey had to detect and correct prediction errors had higher productive vocabularies. This research supports the theory thatproductive vocabulary is strongly tied to predictive processes