ArticleJournal of memory and language2016
Observational Word Learning: Beyond Propose-But-Verify and Associative Bean Counting.
Article in Journal of memory and language, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed.
- Trial
- From Recognition to Production: Receptive and Expressive Cross-Situational Word Learning in Monolingual and Bilingual Children.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Prediction During Within- and Cross-Language Phrase Comprehension: Evidence from Eye-Tracking.Journal of cognition · 2026Article
- How do multiple meanings affect word learning and remapping?Memory & cognition · 2025Article
- Unlearning Incorrect Associations in Word Learning: Evidence From Eye-Tracking.Cognitive science · 2025Article
- From meaning to sound: how word learning shapes non-native speech perception.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- The effects of speaker and exemplar variability in children's cross-situational word learning.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2024Article
- What have we learned from 15 years of research on cross-situational word learning? A focused review.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Review
- Building lexical networks: Preschoolers extract different types of information in cross-situational learning.Journal of experimental child psychology · 2022Article
- What Children with Developmental Language Disorder Teach Us About Cross-Situational Word Learning.Cognitive science · 2022Article
- Cross-situational Learning From Ambiguous Egocentric Input Is a Continuous Process: Evidence Using the Human Simulation Paradigm.Cognitive science · 2021Article
- Multiple components of statistical word learning are resource dependent: Evidence from a dual-task learning paradigm.Memory & cognition · 2021Article
- Cross-situational statistical learning in younger and older adults.Neuropsychology, development, and cognition. Section B, Aging, neuropsychology and cognition · 2021Article
- Cross-Situational Statistical Learning of New Words Despite Bilateral Hippocampal Damage and Severe Amnesia.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2019Article
- Symbolic flexibility during unsupervised word learning in children and adults.Journal of experimental child psychology · 2018Article
- Learning Object Names at Different Hierarchical Levels Using Cross-Situational Statistics.Cognitive science · 2018Article
- The company objects keep: Linking referents together during cross-situational word learning.Journal of memory and language · 2018Article
- Word learning mechanisms.Wiley interdisciplinary reviews. Cognitive science · 2017Review
- Grounding statistical learning in context: The effects of learning and retrieval contexts on cross-situational word learning.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2017Article
- Learning During Processing: Word Learning Doesn't Wait for Word Recognition to Finish.Cognitive science · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Learning new words is difficult. In any naming situation, there are multiple possible interpretations of a novel word. Recent approaches suggest that learners may solve this problem by tracking co-occurrence statistics between words and referents across multiple naming situations (e.g. Yu & Smith, 2007), overcoming the ambiguity in any one situation. Yet, there remains debate around the underlying mechanisms. We conducted two experiments in which learners acquired eight word-object mappings using cross-situational statistics while eye-movements were tracked. These addressed four unresolved questions regarding the learning mechanism. First, eye-movements during learning showed evidence that listeners maintain multiple hypotheses for a given word and bring them all to bear in the moment of naming. Second, trial-by-trial analyses of accuracy suggested that listeners accumulate continuous statistics about word/object mappings, over and above prior hypotheses they have about a word. Third, consistent, probabilistic context can impede learning, as false associations between words and highly co-occurring referents are formed. Finally, a number of factors not previously considered in prior analysis impact observational word learning: knowledge of the foils, spatial consistency of the target object, and the number of trials between presentations of the same word. This evidence suggests that observational word learning may derive from a combination of gradual statistical or associative learning mechanisms and more rapid real-time processes such as competition, mutual exclusivity and even inference or hypothesis testing.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.