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Hi,<br><br>
Thanks to everyone for their responses to my recent query<br>
on word learning tasks. The initial query and all responses <br>
are included just below.<br><br>
Best,<br><br>
Michael Ullman<br><br>
<br><br>
<br>
Initial query:<br><br>
<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">We are looking for a task or
tasks that probe word learning. Ideally we would<br>
be able to use the task (or variants of it) in both cognitively impaired
and<br>
intact kids and adults.<br><br>
We are *not* looking for episodic memory types of tasks such as<br>
the AVLT or CVLT, in which the subjects have to remember a list of real
words.<br>
Rather we want to test learning of new words, ideally in a <br>
(relatively) naturalistic context.<br>
Note that fast mapping tasks seem to be good in principle, though<br>
in practice one would likely get ceiling effects for adults.<br><br>
Any ideas?<br>
</blockquote><br>
Responses:<br><br>
(1)<br>
Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 12:30:49 -0600<br>
From: "McGregor, Karla K"
<karla-mcgregor@uiowa.edu><br><br>
Hi,<br><br>
If you have a large enough set of novel words, you can keep the
adults<br>
away from ceiling. You might try a "quick incidental learning
paradigm,"<br>
the variant on fast mapping that Mabel Rice has used in the past in<br>
which multiple new targets are embedded in a story script. <br><br>
You might also try multiple dependent variables, the children with<br>
cognitive impairments might demonstrate learning in recognition
tasks<br>
only or in production tasks when given multiple retrieval cues; the<br>
children with normal development and the adults may learn well
enough<br>
for production without the need of scaffolding.<br><br>
I'll be interested to see the other suggestions,<br><br>
Karla K. McGregor, Ph.D.<br>
Associate Professor<br>
Speech Pathology and Audiology<br>
University of Iowa<br>
121c WJSHC<br>
Iowa City, IA 52242<br>
phone 319-335-8724<br>
fax 319-335-8851<br><br>
(2)<br>
Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 12:47:30 -0600<br>
From: "Aleka A. Blackwell" <ablackwe@mtsu.edu><br><br>
Dear Michael,<br><br>
I am teaching a course this spring called "The Science of
Words" and I plan to <br>
explore the question you pose below. I have reviewed some of the
literature <br>
on lexical acquisition, and it seems Anglin's work seems most diverse in
its <br>
methodology for testing word meaning knowledge. I understand from
your <br>
message that you are interested in word learning, instead, especially
since <br>
you refer to fast mapping. I am also in the process of thinking
about ways to <br>
probe adjective learning (property concept word mapping vs. object
concept <br>
word mapping), but I am not satisfied with the design I am
using.<br><br>
Would you be so kind to forward the ideas you receive as a result of your
<br>
posting. I would appreciate it. <br><br>
Best,<br>
Aleka Blackwell<br><br>
(3)<br>
Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 11:41:46 -0800<br>
From: Gedeon Deák <deak@cogsci.ucsd.edu><br>
Fast mapping is overrated. You tend to get shallow, transitory
representations of new lexemes.<br>
for example--<br>
<font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4><i>Proceedings of the Annual
Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 25, 318-323<br>
</i>“Slow Mapping” in Children’s Learning of Semantic Relations<br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>Gedeon O. Deák
(deak@cogsci.ucsd.edu)<br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times">Department of Cognitive
Science, 9500 Gilman Dr.<br>
La Jolla, CA 92093-0515 USA<br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>Jennifer Hughes
Wagner<br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times">Department of Psychology and
Human Development, Box 512 GPC, Vanderbilt University<br>
Nashville, TN 372003 USA<br><br>
</font>Problem is that as I'm sure you know, "word learning" is
not one thing. If you're looking for learning novel phonological
patterns, it's one thing; exact subcategorization frame is another,
nuances of meaning is another; pragmatically appropriate usage yet
another.<br><br>
We have a long-term project examining multiple measures of learning
(comprehension, production, & generalization) of object words, over
the first 5 ostensive exposures to a word (or other kinds of
information), which shows SOME dissociation of these measures, though
they're all significantly correlated.<br><br>
As far as "naturalistic," it's a very difficult order, and what
counts will be quite different for older kids than for adults;
populations with different disabilities that are associated with
different cultural learning environments further complicates the picture
(e.g., for a child who has a dedicated tutor during much of the school
day, one-on-one ostensive learning from an unrelated adult might actually
be more "natural" than for a typical 10-year-old, or
adult.<br><br>
In short, no standardized test such as you're looking for exists, to my
knowledge. Most of the experimental tests people have used don't do a
very good job w/ regard to the constraints you've mentioned. That are a
few older studies (e.g. Nelson & Bonvillian) that did a better job,
but those tested infants/toddlers. Studies of vocab. learning in L2
students (often adults) are closer, but the ones I've seen have limited
ecological validity, shallow testing of what's been learned, or both--in
short, not valid, sensitive tests of individual differences.<br><br>
Best of luck!<br><br>
(4)<br>
Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 15:17:14 -0500<br>
From: Barbara Pearson <bpearson@comdis.umass.edu><br><br>
Dear Michael, <br><br>
You might look at the DELV-NR (Seymour, Roeper, & <br>
de Villiers, 2005). There is a long section on Fast-mapping <br>
in the Semantics domain (and we have even more items from <br>
the pilot version, the Dialect Sensitive Language Test). <br>
And Valerie Johnson has even more in her dissertation <br>
(UMass, 2001, "<font face="Times, Times" size=4>Fast mapping verb
meaning from argument structure.")</font> <br>
There are fairly complex "complement" sentences <br>
as well as easier intransitives. <br><br>
When we tried it with children 4 to 12, it is one of the few <br>
areas we didn't get a ceiling effect, although I don't know <br>
how it would be for "intact adults." <br>
There's a scaled score for the children 4 to 9, but of course <br>
you can use it with older people. <br><br>
Let us all hear what you come up with. <br><br>
Cheers, <br>
Barbara Pearson <br><br>
<font size=2>Barbara Zurer Pearson, Ph. D. <br>
Project Manager, Research Assistant <br>
Dept. of Communication Disorders <br>
University of Massachusetts <br>
Amherst MA 01003 <br>
413.545.5023 <br>
fax: 545.0803 <br>
bpearson@comdis.umass.edu <br>
<a href="http://www.umass.edu/aae/">http://www.umass.edu/aae/</a></font>
<br><br>
(5)<br>
Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 15:51:20 -0600<br>
From: Margaret Fleck <mfleck@cs.uiuc.edu><br><br>
Does it matter what sorts of (unfamiliar) objects you use?
E.g.<br>
does the (relative) performance of adults and children differ<br>
if you make them learn (say)<br><br>
-- unfamiliar animals<br>
-- unfamiliar abstract objects<br>
-- unfamiliar kitchen tools<br>
-- new Pokemon characters<br><br>
Can choice of domain be exploited to help keep the adults
off-balance?<br><br>
Margaret Fleck, U. Illinois, Computer Science<br><br>
(6) <br>
Date: Thu, 01 Dec 2005 10:52:48 +0000 (GMT)<br>
From: p.monaghan@psych.york.ac.uk<br><br>
Hello,<br><br>
Gareth Gaskell and colleagues have looked at testing word learning
by<br>
investigating cohort effects resulting from when the novel word is
entered<br>
into the lexicon. This only works well if your novel words have late<br>
uniqueness points (like cathedruke interfering with cathedral):<br><br>
Gaskell, M. G., & Dumay, N. (2003). Lexical competition and the<br>
acquisition of novel words. Cognition, 89, 105-132.<br><br>
Padraic Monaghan<br><br>
(7)<br>
Date: Thu, 01 Dec 2005 14:30:02 -0500 (EST)<br>
From: Marnie Arkenberg <mearken@andrew.cmu.edu><br><br>
Hi,<br>
I'm not sure if this will be helpful or not-- We taught children
(normal-language 4-year-olds) 450 novel words (150 dogs, birds, and
horses)over 3 months during free play sessions (2-3 per week for 45
minutes). To test their learning we assessed the number of items
children could remember at the next session. This helped us get
some learning rate information but we did not assess what children
remembered after the study was over so we do not know what overall
retention was. Children learned between 35% and 95% of the words when
assessed during the following session, but I doubt that they retained
that much. <br>
I'm currently putting together an experiment that will *hopefully*
tap into what words children remember from story books. Please let
me know if any of this sounds like what you are looking for and might be
helpful.<br>
Cheers,<br>
Marnie<br><br>
<br>
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