Evidence map›Paper›PMID 29593089›Full record

ArticleJournal of the Royal Society, Interface2018

Language acquisition with communication between learners.

Rasmus Ibsen-Jensen, Josef Tkadlec, Krishnendu Chatterjee, Martin A Nowak

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Journal of the Royal Society, Interface, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
0citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

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.

2 · The registry

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.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

0 citing papers in PubMed.

No citing paper in PubMed yet.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors.

Rasmus Ibsen-JensenIST Austria, Klosterneuburg 3400, Austria ribsen@ist.ac.at.
Josef TkadlecIST Austria, Klosterneuburg 3400, Austria.ORCID 0000-0002-1097-9684
Krishnendu ChatterjeeIST Austria, Klosterneuburg 3400, Austria.ORCID 0000-0002-4561-241X
Martin A NowakProgram for Evolutionary Dynamics, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Department of Mathematics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.ORCID 0000-0001-5489-0908

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

We consider a class of students learning a language from a teacher. The situation can be interpreted as a group of child learners receiving input from the linguistic environment. The teacher provides sample sentences. The students try to learn the grammar from the teacher. In addition to just listening to the teacher, the students can also communicate with each other. The students hold hypotheses about the grammar and change them if they receive counter evidence. The process stops when all students have converged to the correct grammar. We study how the time to convergence depends on the structure of the classroom by introducing and evaluating various complexity measures. We find that structured communication between students, although potentially introducing confusion, can greatly reduce some of the complexity measures. Our theory can also be interpreted as applying to the scientific process, where nature is the teacher and the scientists are the students.

Indexed as

LanguageModels, BiologicalHumansLearninginductive inferencelanguage learningpopulation structures in learning

Identifiers

PMID29593089
PMCPMC5908541

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

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.