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FASTMAPPING SKILLS IN THE DEVELOPING LEXICON IN KANNADA SPEAKING CHILDREN

AUTHORS:Deepthi M., Trupthi. T., Shwetha M.P. Nikhil Mathur & Deepa M. S II Msc. IV sem [Speech & Hearing]JSSISH

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Learning to talk is a relatively orderly process,

…not all children acquire all language ability in the same order and at

identical speed.

There is individual variation.

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COMPONENTS OF LANGUAGE

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EXPRESSION

RECEPTION

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AGE RECEPTIVE

VOCABULARY8-9 m 1ST words13 m 50 words6 yrs 20,000 – 24,000 words

12 yrs 50,000 words

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AGE EXPRESSIVE VOCABULARY

15 m 10 words18 m 50 words20 m 150 words2 yrs 120-300 words3 yrs 1000 words6 yrs 2600-7000 words

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There are several ways in which young children are believed to be so good at learning (Rice and Watkins, 1996).

One way is with a process known as..

“FAST MAPPING” [Crais, 1992; Dollaghan, 1985; Heibeck

and Markman 1987]

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“A lexical acquisition strategy in which a listener rapidly constructs a representation of an unfamiliar word on the basis of a single exposure to it.

This initial representation might contain information on semantic, phonological, or syntactic characteristics of the new lexical item, as well as non-linguistic information related to the situation in which it is encountered.” -Dollaghan (1987)

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Carey and Bartlett (1978) first documented the phenomenon of ‘fast mapping’ in a pioneering study of pre school- aged children.

They observed that 3-year-olds appeared to learn the meaning of a word when contrasted with another word known to the child.

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Carey (1987) proposed that children learn the meaning of a word in two separate phases:

(a) a fast mapping phase, in which the child establishes an initial link between word and referent, and

(b) a subsequent, slow mapping phase.

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AIM OF THE STUDY:

The aim of the present study is ...

“to shed light on the underlying nature of fast

mapping by exploring children’s emerging ability

to access information in lexical memory”.

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PARTICIPANTS

N = 20 native Kannada speaking children (6 boys and 14 girls)

Age Range = 2 to 4 years were included in the study.

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They were divided into two groups based upon their age

2yrs to 3yrs and

3yrs to 4yrs

The first group participated in two word learning

And second group participated in three word learning in each trial.

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30 brightly colored photographs of objects served as stimulus for the study.

The words consisted of two to three syllables.

Twenty common real world objects were chosen.

Out of them 10 pictures were used as target ones which are novel words.

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Children participated in both training and testing phase at each session. Each child was shown Microsoft power point slides which consisted of 3 pictures in each slide (2 common and one target).

In the training phase the experimenter labeled each of the three target pictures for minimum of 4 to 6 times in each session.

Words were typically embedded in propositional statement to support the processing of word referent pairings.

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In each session children were taught novel words. A total of 5 sessions for the first group and 3 sessions for the second group were required.

In one session 2 to 3 words were taught and asked for recall after a gap of 10 minutes.

Before starting the next session i.e. on the next day children were asked to recall the words taught in the previous session.

This served as retention trials and word learning trial started with fresh words.

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The Graphs 1 depicts number of trials required in each session for children in group I to fast map a total of 10 target words.

grp 1 learning

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

4

1 2 3 4 5

no of sessions

no o

f tria

ls

Series1

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grp2 learning

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

1 2 3 4session

trial

s

Series1

The Graphs 2 depicts number of trials required in each session for children in group II to fast map a total of 10 target words.

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This increase in the number of trial suggest that as children learn more and more new words they require more number of trials.

This idea suggests that practice with individual words in a rapidly expanding lexicon changes the operation of the lexicon through the accumulated activation of many items.

This is accomplished through an increase in the base of lexical and semantic units and the strengthening of connections between them.

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By comparing the data obtained from group I and group II it is understood that as the age increases more and more lexical and semantic units can be learnt with fast mapping.

The older group learns more number of words in lesser number of trials.

In the present study we found a modest increase in receptive and productive vocabulary in children between 3 to 4 years.

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GRAPH III: Mean percentage of words recalled by children of 2 to 3 years across the sessions.

GROUP I RETENTION

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

1 2 3 4 5 6

NO OF SESSIONS

PERC

ENTA

GE

OF

WO

RDS

Series1

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GRAPH IV: Mean percentage of words recalled by children of 3 to 4 years across the sessions.

GROUPII RETENTION

63.50%

64.00%

64.50%

65.00%

65.50%

66.00%

66.50%

67.00%

1 2 3

NO OF SESSION

PERC

ENTA

GE

OF

WO

RDS

Series1

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As more and more words were fast mapped there was decrease in number of words recalled.

There was decrease in retention of target words in the second session but again the retention increased from 2nd to 3rd session.

Whereas, the children could not recall as many percentages of words they could do in the first session.

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Additionally there were few observation noted in the retention trial.

All children irrespective of group were able to recall the first target word till the end of experiment (/tapalu/).

Children could recall the target words which had more functional value in daily routine for e.g. children could recall /hali/ (railway track) and /sasive/ (mustard) easily compared to words like /hima/ (fog) and /kenda/ (coal).

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When children were asked to name the target word they were specifying the function of target word rather than naming it.

And again children could recall newly learnt word compared to older ones.

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The study opens up many channels in spite of few limitations about word learning. The incidental learning of new vocabulary in the context of one to a few encounters is known as fast mapping (Carey & Bartlett, 1978), or quick incidental learning (Rice 1990). The results indicated that the children in higher group could fast map and recall more number of words than the lower group.

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Learning processes with prior experience, words and concepts can organize into larger units that facilitate fast efficient and parallel access to a broad base of related past knowledge.

The idea that a small set of contextually related words can create structural neighborhood that facilitates the spread of activation to other newly acquired words.

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In our study children were provided with limited information about the nature and the function of target words, yet they were united by all contexts in which the words were acquired.

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Number of children taken for the study was less.

Gender was not considered as a factor for the study.

Standard test for vocabulary development could not be administered.

For the 2nd group 4 words were taken for the 3rd session as compared to precious sessions.

And only 10 target words were considered for the study.

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Dale, P.S, & Fenson, L. (1996). Lexical development norms for young children. Behavior research methods, instruments and computers, 28, 125-127.

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Dollaghan, C. A. (1985). Child meets word: “Fast mapping” in pre school children. Journal of speech and hearing, 28, 449-454.

Dollaghan, C. A (1987). Fast mapping in normal and language impaired children. Journal of speech and hearing disorders, 52, 218-222.

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Heibeck, T., & Markman, E. (1987). Word learning in children: an examination of fast mapping. Child development, 58, 1021-1034.

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McDuffie, A. S. Sindberg H.A. Hesketh, L., Chapman, R.(2007). Use of speaker intent and grammatical cues in fast mapping by adolescents with Down syndrome. Journal of speech language and hearing research, 50, 1546-1561.

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