Rapid infant learning of syntactic-semantic links.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
; 120(1): e2209153119, 2023 01 03.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-36574655
ABSTRACT
In the second year of life, infants begin to rapidly acquire the lexicon of their native language. A key learning mechanism underlying this acceleration is syntactic bootstrapping the use of hidden cues in grammar to facilitate vocabulary learning. How infants forge the syntactic-semantic links that underlie this mechanism, however, remains speculative. A hurdle for theories is identifying computationally light strategies that have high precision within the complexity of the linguistic signal. Here, we presented 20-mo-old infants with novel grammatical elements in a complex natural language environment and measured their resultant vocabulary expansion. We found that infants can learn and exploit a natural language syntactic-semantic link in less than 30 min. The rapid speed of acquisition of a new syntactic bootstrap indicates that even emergent syntactic-semantic links can accelerate language learning. The results suggest that infants employ a cognitive network of efficient learning strategies to self-supervise language development.
Palavras-chave
Texto completo:
1
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Semântica
/
Aprendizagem
Limite:
Humans
/
Infant
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
Ano de publicação:
2023
Tipo de documento:
Article
País de afiliação:
França