Learn locally, think globally: Exemplar variability supports higher-order generalization and word learning

Psychological Science

Volumn 21, Issue 12, 2010, Pages 1894-1902

  Perry, Lynn K ^a,b   Samuelson, Larissa K ^a,b   Malloy, Lisa M ^a   Schiffer, Ryan N ^c  

^a E11 SSH   (United States)

^b Missouri State Extension Service   (United States)

^c UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA CHAMPAIGN   (United States)

Author keywords

cognitive development; language development; learning

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; CHILD DEVELOPMENT; FEMALE; HUMAN; INFANT; LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT; LEARNING; LEARNING CURVE; LINGUISTICS; LONGITUDINAL STUDY; MALE; TEACHING;

CHILD DEVELOPMENT; FEMALE; GENERALIZATION (PSYCHOLOGY); HUMANS; INFANT; LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT; LEARNING; LEARNING CURVE; LONGITUDINAL STUDIES; MALE; TEACHING MATERIALS; VOCABULARY;

EID: 78650328074     PISSN: 09567976     EISSN: 14679280     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0956797610389189     Document Type: Article

References (39)

1. Baayen, R.H., Davidson, D.J., & Bates, D.M. (2008). Mixed-effects modeling with crossed random effects for subjects and items. Journal of Memory and Language, 59, 390-412.
2. Castro, L., Young, M.E., & Wasserman, E.A. (2007). Effects of number of items and visual display variability on same-different discrimination behavior. Memory & Cognition, 34, 1689-1703.
3. Childers, J., & Paik, J. (2009). Korean- and English-speaking children use cross-situational information to learn novel predicate terms. Journal of Child Language, 36, 201-224.
4. Colunga, E., & Smith, L.B. (2005). From the lexicon to expectations about kinds: A role for associative learning. Psychological Review, 112, 347-382.
5. Cowper, W. (1855). The timepiece, Book II. In The task (pp. 29-51). London, England: James Nisbet. (Original work published 1785).
6. Dale, P.S., & Fenson, L. (1993). LEX: A lexical development norms database. Seattle, WA: University of Washington.
7. Estes, W.K., & Burke, C.J. (1953). A theory of stimulus variability in learning. Psychological Review, 60, 276-286.
8. Euripides. (1910). Orestes. In Plays of Euripides (Vol. 1, pp. 198-243; R. Potter, Trans.). London, England: J.M. Dent & Sons.
9. Fenson, L., Dale, P.S., Reznick, J.S., Bates, E., Thal, D.J., & Pethick, S.J. (1994). Variability in early communicative development. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 59(5).
10. Gentner, D., Loewenstein, J., & Hung, B. (2007). Comparison facilitates children's learning of names for parts. Journal of Cognition and Development, 8, 285-307.
11. Gershkoff-Stowe, L., & Smith, L.B. (2004). Shape and the first hundred nouns. Child Development, 75, 1098-1114.
12. Goldstone, R. (1994). An efficient method for obtaining similarity data. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 26, 381-386.
13. Gomez, R.L. (2002). Variability and detection of invariant structure. Psychological Science, 13, 431-436.
14. Hahn, U., Bailey, T.M., & Elvin, L.B.C. (2005). Effects of category diversity on learning, memory, and generalization. Memory & Cognition, 33, 289-302.
15. Hudson Kam, C.L., & Newport, E.L. (2005). Regularizing unpredictable variation: The roles of adult and child learners in language formation and change. Language Learning and Development, 1, 151-195.
16. Jaeger, T.F. (2008). Categorical data analysis: Away from ANOVAs (transformation or not) and towards logit mixed models. Journal of Memory and Language, 59, 434-446.
17. Jaeger, T.F. (2009, May 14). Random effects: Should I stay or should I go? [Web log message]. Retrieved June 15, 2010, from http://hlplab.wordpress.com/2009/05/14/random-effect-structure/.
18. Jones, S.S., & Smith, L.B. (1993). The place of perception in children's concepts. Cognitive Development, 8, 113-139.
19. Jones, S.S., & Smith, L.B. (2005). Object name learning and object perception: A deficit in late talkers. Journal of Child Language, 32, 223-240.
20. Lively, S.E., Logan, J.S., & Pisoni, D.B. (1993). Training Japanese listeners to identify English /r/ and /l/. II: The role of phonetic environment and talker variability in learning new perceptual categories. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 94, 1242-1255.
21. Loewenstein, J., & Gentner, D. (2001). Spatial mapping in preschoolers: Close comparisons facilitate far mappings. Journal of Cognition and Development, 2, 189-219.
22. Munsinger, H., & Kessen, W. (1966). Preference and recall of stimulus variability. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 72, 311-312.
23. Murphy, G. (2002). The big book of concepts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
24. Oakes, L.M., Coppage, D.J., & Dingel, A. (1997). By land or by sea: The role of perceptual similarity in infants' categorization of animals. Developmental Psychology, 33, 396-407.
25. Perry, L.K., Cook, S.W., & Samuelson, L.K. (2010). An exploration of context, task, and stimuli effects on similarity perception. Manuscript in preparation.
26. Posner, M.I., Goldsmith, R., & Welton, K.E., Jr. (1967). Perceived distance and the classification of distorted patterns. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 73, 28-38.
27. Posner, M.I., & Keele, S.W. (1968). On the genesis of abstract ideas. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 77, 353-363.
28. Rost, G., & McMurray, B. (2009). Speaker variability augments phonological processing in early word learning. Developmental Science, 12, 339-349.
29. Samuelson, L.K. (2002). Statistical regularities in vocabulary guide language acquisition in connectionist models and 15-20-montholds. Developmental Psychology, 38, 1016-1037.
30. Samuelson, L.K., Horst, J.S., Schutte, A.R., & Dobbertin, B. (2008). Rigid thinking about deformables: Do children sometimes overgeneralize the shape bias? Journal of Child Language, 35, 559-589.
31. Samuelson, L.K., & Smith, L.B. (1999). Early noun vocabularies: Do ontology, category structure and syntax correspond? Cognition, 73, 1-33.
32. Siegler, R.S. (1996). Emerging minds: The process of change in children's thinking. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
33. Siegler, R.S. (2007). Cognitive variability. Developmental Science, 10, 104-109.
34. Smith, L.B. (2003). Learning to recognize objects. Psychological Science, 14, 244-250.
35. Smith, L.B., Colunga, E., & Yoshida, H. (2003). Making an ontology: Cross-linguistic evidence. In L. Oakes & D. Rakison (Eds.), Early category and concept development: Making sense of the blooming, buzzing confusion (pp. 275-302). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
36. Smith, L.B., Jones, S.S., Landau, B., Gershkoff-Stowe, L., & Samuelson, L.K. (2002). Object name learning provides on-the-job training for attention. Psychological Science, 13, 13-19.
37. Thelen, E., Corbetta, D., Kamm, K., Spencer, J.P., Schneider, K., & Zernicke, R.F. (1993). The transition to reaching: Mapping intention and intrinsic dynamics. Child Development, 64, 1058-1098.
38. Yoshida, H., & Smith, L.B. (2001). Early noun lexicons in English and Japanese. Cognition, 82, 63-74.
39. Zentall, T.R., Wasserman, E.A., Lazareva, O.F., Thompson, R.K.R., & Rattermann, M.J. (2008). Concept learning in animals. Comparative Cognition & Behavior Reviews, 3, 13-45.