first language term paper
TRANSCRIPT
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Peter Sipes
First Language Acquisition
A cross-sectional look at Expectation of CompetenceIntroduction
Young children accomplish a major feat: they acquire the meanings of thousands of
words in a few short years (Markman, Wasow & Hansen, 2003). Diesendruck and Shemer
(2006) have studied two-year-old children to see how they cope with matching unfamiliar words
with unfamiliar objects. Their claim, supported by the results of this study, is that two-year-old
children assume that adults making requests of them expect that they (the two-year-old child) can
perform the requested task. This concept is called expectation of competency.
This study takes a cross-sectional look at how older children behave in the same
situation. Do three-, four- and five-year-old children show the same behavior as a two-year-old
child when coping with unfamiliar words and unfamiliar objects? While the results are in no way
conclusive due to the limited size of sample both in number of participants (N=4) and trials
where expectation of competence can be put to use, it appears that children as young as 3;0 do
not employ expectation of competence when dealing with requests for unknown objects with
unfamiliar names.
Literature Review
One of the problems a child has to solve in acquiring a language is associating words
with objects, at least where nouns are concerned. To help explain this phenomenon, a group of
researchersDiesendruck, Markman and Markson among others use social-pragmatic
approaches. Like many other angles of study on first language acquisition, it bridges psychology
and linguisticsas made apparent by the journal titles that the research appears in. For example
research on this topic appears in journals likeFirst Language and Cognitive Psychology.
Accordingly, this sort of approach will show children as active participants in social settings. A
social-pragmatic approach is complementary to a Bruner-style1 social interactionist approach, but
1 For a quick introduction to Jerome Bruners work:http:// www. simplypsychology . org/ bruner. html
http://www.simplypsychology.org/bruner.htmlhttp://www.simplypsychology.org/bruner.htmlhttp://www.simplypsychology.org/bruner.htmlhttp://www.simplypsychology.org/bruner.htmlhttp://www.simplypsychology.org/bruner.htmlhttp://www.simplypsychology.org/bruner.htmlhttp://www.simplypsychology.org/bruner.htmlhttp://www.simplypsychology.org/bruner.htmlhttp://www.simplypsychology.org/bruner.htmlhttp://www.simplypsychology.org/bruner.htmlhttp://www.simplypsychology.org/bruner.htmlhttp://www.simplypsychology.org/bruner.htmlhttp://www.simplypsychology.org/bruner.htmlhttp://www.simplypsychology.org/bruner.htmlhttp://www.simplypsychology.org/bruner.htmlhttp://www.simplypsychology.org/bruner.htmlhttp://www.simplypsychology.org/bruner.html -
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the contrast lies in that Bruner proposes that children are using language to affect the world while
social-pragmatics suggests that children are relying heavily on contextual clues within social
interaction.
To help keep experimental procedures straight: most, but not all, of the following studies
involve a child, an interviewer, two objects and something to conceal one of the objects. The
adult asks the child for an object, whether named or not, and records which object the child grabs
or gestures toward.
Expectation of competency
Since this facet of word acquisition is central to this study, it comes first. At its core, this
expectation says that children, two-year-olds in Diesendruck and Shemer (2006), expect that if
an adult requests something from them, that they can perform the task. Thus Expectation of
Competency. In practical terms, two-year-olds, when presented with a novel name and a novel
object, will look in the box. Searching under the box is not motivated by curiosity: rather that
they believe that the novel name refers to the deliberately hidden object (Diesendruck & Shemer,
2006). They further say that this finding runs explicitly contrary to mutual exclusion and lexical
gap filling, both of which will be discussed in later headings (2006).
Mutual exclusivity assumption
One strategy children use in assigning names is the Mutual Exclusivity assumption,
which is to say that children will map a novel label to a novel rather than a familiar object
(Markman, Wasow & Hansen, 2003). By means of example: If you ask for a ball, a child expects
that a ball is a BALL. Conversely if you ask for a pood, it is not a BALL since BALL already
has a name. This fact is one of those principles, like the Premak principle1, that feels intuitive
and obvious, but science needs to define these sorts of things for future useas in the case of
this paper.
1 In short, youve got to eat your vegetables before dessert. More athttp :// www .psywww.com / intropsych /ch 05_ conditioning/premack _ principle. html
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The relevant detail of the Markman et al. study is that by 2 1/2 years of age, children are
highly consistent in mapping a novel object label to an object whose name is as yet unknown in
preference to a previously named object (2003). One of the difficulties is that previous studies
were with older children, which is not a complication in the study performed below. In fact, age
is one of the factors specifically investigated. Markman et al. worked with younger children to
see if mutual exclusion was at play with younger children. Since they come at the study with a
social-pragmatic view, they want to downplay lexical principles and focus on the double
expectation that children are motivated to match referents to objects and that children expect
collaboration in communication (2003).
Expectation of filling lexical gaps
Momen and Merriman build on the principle of mutual exclusion and suggest that
children do not so much rule out the familiar kind as embrace the novel one (2002). This idea,
which they call Lexical Gap Filling, is not a contradiction to mutual exclusion so much as it is
further refinement of it. Again, like the Premak principle, this seems obvious, but again it is
necessary to spell it out. One interesting conclusion is that the stronger the expectation of Lexical
Gap Filling, the stronger should have been their tendency to select the visible picture without
first checking what was in the box (Momen & Merriman 2002).
So what might a reasonable explanation be? Diesendruck and Shemer suggest that young
children should check the box due to expectation of competency, which is the focus of this study.
Sensitivity to parents knowledge
Of course, children do not learn vocabulary in a vacuum. Both mutual exclusivity and
lexical gap filling are centered on the child and his expectations. ONeills study of two-year-old
children suggests that when requesting toys they do take into account their partner's knowledge
(1996). In itself this fact is not surprising: everybody, everywhere takes other peoples
knowledge into account in communication. What is surprising is that two-year-olds are doing
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this. In fact ONeill reports that Ross and Lolliss 1987 study shows nine-month-old infants
increased their efforts at communicating as their adult partner lowered involvement (1996). The
practical effect of their sensitivity to parent knowledge is that the children should, based on this
research, take into account that the interviewer knows which labels belong to which objects.
Avoiding lexical overlap
Diesendruck and Markson (2001) worked with three-year-old children to see how the
children avoid lexical overlap. In a series of three studies, they showed that children tend to
choose an unfamiliar object rather than a familiar one when asked to find the referent of a novel
name (Diesendruck & Markson, 2001). Yes, this fact again. But it is however only the first part
of what children do. The next steps are what is interesting: three-year-old children assume that
names for objects are common knowledge and that children play on that knowledge when
assigning names to objects (Diesendruck & Markson, 2001). The second step of this progression,
assumption of common knowledge, plays into the nature of this study. Children are being asked
to put unfamiliar names to unfamiliar objects in the study, and who would know those names
better? The child herself or the interviewing adult? The child assumes, correctly for virtually any
real-world situation, that the adult knows the name.
Therefore this bit of research ties together mutual exclusivity, lexical gap filling and
assessment of parental knowledge state.
Role of discourse in word learning
Tomasello, Akhtar and Carpenter (1996), like O'Neill, suggest that children pay attention
to the knowledge states of adults and novelty. When a two-year-old child and two adults play
with three novel objects and then the child plays with the fourth object without adults present,
the child assigns the correct name to the novel object in later discussion. This correct assignment
of name happens not because of mutual exclusionit cannot work with multiple novel objects
and one labelbut because children use pragmatic cues. In this case, the adult expresses surprise
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over the last object: Oh, look, a frant! Since the two-year-old knows that both she and the
adults have already seen three of the objects, the exclamation must be over the last one.
Data Collection Methodology
In contrast to Diesendruck and Shemers 2006 work using two-year-old children, the
current study is cross-sectional in nature. I interviewed four children of varying ages ranging
from 2;3 to 5;9 (further information in the Subject Population section).
In Diesendruck and Shemer (2006), the data-collection procedure was quite involved and
vastly more extensive than this study. It took many stages. Since I had limited time and money
and was working with children who were older, I had to pare down Diesendruck and Shemer's
procedure.
Diesendruck and Shemer showed two-year-old children a series ofobjects (2006). In the
first stage oftheir work, it was established that there was always an object in the bucket. Because
of time limitations, I explained to the three older children that there would always be something
under the basket. With the youngest child, I had to spend more time establishing the ground rules
through play, though this play took minimal time in this studys one-to-one setting.
In Diesendruck and Shemers next stage, children were shown two objects: one in view
and one in the bucket (2006). This stage of their experiment is the focus of this study. The
children were asked to get either the object in view or the object under the basket.
Finally, in the third stage of Diesendruck and Shemers experiment, children were shown
three objects: two in view and one in the bucket. The purpose of the third stage was to have the
familiarity of one item underline the novelty of the other. During the second and third stages
children were asked to either point out or give an object to the interviewer. This stage was
skipped altogether in this study.
Furthermore, Diesendruck and Shemer divided the questions directed to children into two
types (2006). Sometimes they asked for an object by name. Sometimes the object was not
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named. In this study, this division was not made. All objects were asked for by name.
Methods specific to this study
Each child was presented with twenty trials, conducted in English, distributed over the
four possible combinations shown in the following table.
Table 1: Four possible situations for two objects
Seen object is
known unknown
Unseenobject is
known 1 2
unknown 3 4
Situation 2, when unknown objects are asked for, and situation 4, whether the requested
object was known or unknown are subject to Expectation of Competency. These specific
circumstances are reported in the data as Aligns with EoC. Situation 2, when a known object is
requested; situation 1; and situation 3 are all used as controls to show that the child understands
the proper procedure.
For each trial, I covered my inventory of objects, pictured in Figures 1 and 2 with the
basket and then placed one object in view and the other out of view in the basket. In all cases, I
asked for a specific object and never asked can you give me something? I asked either Where
is the ball? or Can you give me the ball? Each decision made by the child was recorded.
The unfamiliar objects, seen in Figure 1, were given a list of possible names that did not
violate the phonetics of English (e.g. pood, feth), though they were not used in any consistent
manner during trials. The familiar objects are shown in Figure 2.
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Figure 1: The selection of unfamiliar objects Figure 2: The selection of familiar objects
Data
The following tables are the compilation of how the children performed in the interviews.
Note on terms: For seen and unseen objects, KNOWN and UNKNOWN refer to objects
that the children know labels for or do not know labels for. The requested object is either SEEN,
BASKET or NOVEL. Seen and unseen refer to known objects that are either seen or unseen.
Novel objects are objects are objects that children do not have a name for, either seen or unseen.
In the response column, SEEN and BASKET indicate whether the child chose the seen object or
the object under the basket.
Table 2: Data for child AC, 5;9
Trial Seen Object Unseen Object Requested
Object
Response Aligns with
EoC?
1 known unknown seen seen -
2 unknown unknown novel seen N
3 known known basket basket -
4 unknown known basket basket -
5 known known seen seen -
6 known unknown basket basket -
7 known unknown seen seen -
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8 unknown unknown novel seen N
9 unknown known basket basket -
10 known unknown basket basket -
11 unknown known novel seen N
12 unknown unknown novel seen N
13 known known basket basket -
14 known known basket basket -
15 unknown known novel basket Y
16 known unknown basket basket -
17 known unknown seen seen -
18 known known basket basket -
19 unknown unknown novel seen N
20 unknown known basket basket -
Table 3: Data for child SE, 4;6
Trial Seen Object Unseen Object Requested
Object
Response Aligns with
EoC?
1 known unknown seen seen -
2 unknown unknown novel seen N
3 known known basket seen *
4 unknown known basket basket -
5 known known seen seen -
6 known unknown basket basket -
7 known unknown seen seen -
8 unknown unknown novel seen N
9 unknown known basket basket -
10 known unknown basket basket -
11 unknown known novel seen N
12 unknown unknown novel seen N
13 known known basket basket -
14 known known basket basket -
15 unknown known novel seen N
16 known unknown basket basket -
17 known unknown seen seen -
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18 known known basket basket -
19 unknown unknown novel basket Y, with
hesitation
20 unknown known basket basket -
Note to trial 3: Child was testing me to see what I would do if she selected the wrong objectafter she was asked to find an unfamiliar object.
Table 4: Data for child AV, 3;0
Trial Seen Object Unseen Object Requested
Object
Response Aligns with
EoC?
1 known unknown seen seen -
2 unknown unknown novel seen N
3 known known basket basket -4 unknown known basket basket -
5 known known seen seen -
6 known unknown basket basket -
7 known unknown seen seen -
8 unknown unknown novel seen N
9 unknown known basket basket -
10 known unknown basket basket -
11 unknown known novel seen N12 unknown unknown novel seen N
13 known known basket basket -
14 known known basket basket -
15 unknown known novel seen N
16 known unknown basket basket unsure of
referent
17 known unknown seen seen -
18 known known basket basket -
19 unknown unknown novel seen N
20 unknown known basket basket -
Table 5: Data for child CE, 2;3
Trial Seen Object Unseen Object Requested
Object
Response Aligns with
EoC?
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1 known unknown seen seen -
2 unknown unknown novel basket Y
3 known known basket basket -
4 unknown known basket basket -
5 known known seen seen -
6 known unknown basket basket -
7 known unknown seen seen -
8 unknown unknown novel basket Y
9 unknown known basket basket -
10 known unknown basket seen *
11 unknown known novel basket Y
12 unknown unknown novel basket Y
13 known known basket basket -
14 known known basket basket -
15 unknown known novel basket Y
16 known unknown basket basket -
17 known unknown seen seen -
18 known known basket basket -
19 unknown unknown novel basket Y
20 unknown known basket basket -
*Note to trial 10: Child selected the seen object since it was a ball and was more appealing tohim than looking for whatever else he was supposed to find
For the most part the children did well on tests where they were asked for familiar
objects. In only three instances was there any misstep. Child CE, 2;3, was asked to find an
unseen object while a ball was in view: he only wanted the ball. In following trials, the ball was
never visible.
Child AV, 3;0, was unsure of one of the familiar objects, though she did eventually select
the correct object (in a non-expectation of competency trial). Finally, child SE, 4;6, deliberately
selected a wrong item. I believe she was testing me to determine the rules of the game. Not
surprisingly, the older the child, the faster the trials went.
Subject Population
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Four children ranging from 2;3 to 5;9 took part in the study. They are two sets of siblings
living in the Chicago suburbs who are cousins (my children and my brothers children). All
children are growing up in two-language households, and English is one of the languages. Their
ages at the time of the study were as follows: Child AC was 5;9, Child SE was 4;6, Child AV
was 3;0 and Child CE was 2;3.
Results and Discussion
The three older children all behaved contrary to expectation of competency, while the
youngest child behaved as suggested in earlier studies.
The youngest child, CE, behaved exactly as Diesendruck and Shemer (2006) predicted
in fact, he behaved in perfect alignment. In each of the six trials that could show expectation of
competency behavior, i.e. he was presented with an unfamiliar object and the request was for an
unfamiliar word, he went for the hidden object. The odds of him selecting the hidden object this
way in all six trials is about 2% if it were purely random chance. Given the poor odds of chance,
his behavior supports their conclusion that very young children operate on the expectation of
competency rather than chance.
The other, older children behaved in a completely different way. When asked for an
unfamiliar object with an unfamiliar name, two of the three chose the unfamiliar object in sight
83% of the time. The odds of a child choosing the same direction in five out of six trials is
calculated at about 9% if it were random chance. While it is certainly conceivable that this could
have happened randomly, for two of the three older children to exhibit the same rare pattern is
not likely chance. Likely chance is not at play.
The problem is that if chance is not at play and the children are not behaving in alignment
with expectation of competence, what principle might they be employing?
Now why this shift in strategies should appear is not something I feel confident about
explaining, but one explanation is appealing. The typical two-year-old has a vocabulary of about
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200 words; the typical three-year-old has a vocabulary of about 800 words (Hart & Risely, 20031.
Since the two-year-old has a smaller vocabulary, he may feel it is useful to check under the
basket. While he is confident that the adult knows he can execute the task (Expectation of
Competency), he may want to check to make sure. The three-year-old on the other hand has a
much larger vocabulary than the two-year-old, and indeed child AV, 3;0, has an apparently larger
vocabulary than child CE, 2;3. Is it possible that she knows that she has a larger vocabulary than
she used to? If so, that could account for why she was not bothering to check the basket when
presented with a request using a novel name and a novel object visible.
One possible way this could function: the older children are hearing an unfamiliar word
and seeing an unfamiliar object and making the reasonable inference that the visible object has
the new name, which aligns with Momen and Merriman (2002). As this is happening, they are
skipping mutual exclusion since they have ruled out that they do not know what the object is
when compared against their current knowledge of the world and relying on lexical gap filling.
After all, the presented object is novel and must have a name, which adults with their greater
knowledge must know. Diesendruck and Markson's research indicates that this explanation is
likely.
If this study were to be done again, two things could be brought into play. First, it would
be good to have more children available. While the number of trials available to demonstrate
expectation of competence behavior might not increase for any child, the number of children
involved would improve the statistical validity of any conclusions.
Another possibility and a possible way to test it
Another possibility is that older children are employing a wholly different approach to
their decision making. Instead of applying a pragmatics-based approach, they apply a more
statistical approach. According to Diesendruck and Markson's research (2001), children want to
1 Finding typical size of vocabulary over the ages studied in this study was not easy.
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avoid lexical overlap. As Momen and Merriman (2002) show, children want to fill lexical gaps.
So when confronted with a novel object that has a name as of yet unknown to the children, they
make a calculation, which could be similar to the Monty HallLet's Make a Dealdilemma.
(And has a gorgeous, predictable format.)
In the Monty Hall problem, there are two participants. One, after the game show host
Monty Hall, runs a game with three doors, one of which has a prize behind it. The other player
selects a door. At this point, the host opens one of the remaining non-winning doors. At this point
the player may opt to choose to stay with his initial selection or switch to the other door. For
statistical reasons, the correct thing to do is switch doors. It is the winner 2/3 of the time.
Younger children, 8th-grade and younger in De Neys (2006), tend to stick with their original
choice. As children mature into adulthood, they perceive the odds as being equal. Both are
wrong, but this could lead to an interesting study to see if older children are employing a similar
mental algorithm.
The variation is this: a child will be asked to select one of three doors, which all hide an
unknown object. The host will then tell the child something like this, One of these objects is a
feth. You can see one object. There are two hidden. I will now open a door. The object behind
that door is not a feth. Is the first object you selected the feth? At any point after the reveal of
the second object, the child may peek at the remaining object: a peek at this point could indicate
that the child is using expectation of competence. The child whether peeking or not may stay or
switch, as in the standard Monty Hall problem.
A group of older children could be interviewed to see if they have shifted away from the
pragmatics-oriented expectation of competence decision making process to a more
mathematically-oriented Monty Hall decision making process. This approach may not lend itself
to language acquisition as much as it would lend itself to psychology, but it is one possible
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avenue of follow-up research. It would probably be necessary to modify the set-up of the study
in order to capture the difference between pragmatic vs. mathematical strategies.
Conclusion
This study indicates that at some point between their second and third birthdays children
come to rely less on expectation of competency and more on other principles of object naming
when presented with an novel object, a hidden object and an unknown name. In all cases the
children are relying on their adult conversation partners knowledge of the world. Two-year-olds
assume that the adult is asking them because they can do it: expectation of competence.
Older children, presumably, assume that the adult knows what the object is named and is
using the name properly: mutual exclusion and lexical gap filling. While suggestive, this study is
not conclusive and further research with more children would be needed to shore up this claim
about older children.
Bibliography
Akhtar, Nameera, Carpenter, Malinda, & Tomasello, Michael. (1996). The role of discourse
novelty in early word learning. Child Development, 67, 635645 doi:0009-3920/96/6702-
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Diesendruck, Gil & Markson, Lori. (2001). Childrens avoidance oflexical overlap: a pragmatic
account. Developmental Psychology, 37, 630641 doi:10.1037//0012-1649.37.5.630
Diesendruck, Gil & Shemer, Ginnat. (2006). Young children's expectation ofcompetence in
word learning. Journal ofChild Language, 33, 321338
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Hart, B., & Risley, T. R. (2003). The early catastrophe: The 30 million word gap by age 3.
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Momen, Nausheen & Merriman, William E. (2002). Two-year-olds expectation that lexical gaps
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Monty Hall Resources
De Neys, Wim. (2006). Developmental trends in decision making: the case of the Monty Hall
dilemma. In Jeanine A. Ellsworth (Ed.), Psychology of Decision Making in Education
(pp. 5565). Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers, Inc.