First Language Term Paper

7/28/2019 First Language Term Paper

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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
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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.

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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 -



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11 unknown known novel seen N




15 unknown known novel basket Y






Table 3: Data for child SE, 4;6


Object


EoC?



3 known known basket seen *
















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19 unknown unknown novel basket Y, with

hesitation


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


Object


EoC?



3 known known basket basket -4 unknown known basket basket -







11 unknown known novel seen N12 unknown unknown novel seen N




16 known unknown basket basket unsure of

referent





Table 5: Data for child CE, 2;3


Object


EoC?


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2 unknown unknown novel basket Y








10 known unknown basket seen *











*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-

0024S01.00

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

doi:10.1017/S0305000906007343

Hart, B., & Risley, T. R. (2003). The early catastrophe: The 30 million word gap by age 3.

American Educator, 27(1), 4-9.

Markman, Ellen M., Wasow, Judith L., & Hansen, Mikkel B. (2003). Use of the mutual

exclusivity assumption by young word learners. Cognitive Psychology, 47, 241275

doi:10.1016/S0010-0285(03)00034-3


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Momen, Nausheen & Merriman, William E. (2002). Two-year-olds expectation that lexical gaps

will be filled. First Language, 22, pp 225247 doi:10.1177/014272370202206601

ONeill, Daniela K. (1996). Two-year-old childrens sensitivity to a parents knowledge state

when making requests. Child Development, 67, 659677 doi:0009-3920/96/6702-00 ll$O

1.00

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.

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First Language Term Paper