What have we learned from 15 years of research on cross-situational word learning? A focused review

Tanja C Roembke; Matilde E Simonetti; Iring Koch; Andrea M Philipp

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1175272

What have we learned from 15 years of research on cross-situational word learning? A focused review

Front Psychol. 2023 Jul 4:14:1175272. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1175272. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Tanja C Roembke¹, Matilde E Simonetti¹, Iring Koch¹, Andrea M Philipp¹

Affiliation

¹ Chair of Cognitive and Experimental Psychology, Institute of Psychology, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany.

Abstract

In 2007 and 2008, Yu and Smith published their seminal studies on cross-situational word learning (CSWL) in adults and infants, showing that word-object-mappings can be acquired from distributed statistics despite in-the-moment uncertainty. Since then, the CSWL paradigm has been used extensively to better understand (statistical) word learning in different language learners and under different learning conditions. The goal of this review is to provide an entry-level overview of findings and themes that have emerged in 15 years of research on CSWL across three topic areas (mechanisms of CSWL, CSWL across different learner and task characteristics) and to highlight the questions that remain to be answered.

Keywords: cross-situational statistical learning; cross-situational word learning; language acquisition; referential ambiguity; review; word learning.

Publication types

Review