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Toddlers May Learn Language By Data Mining
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Feb 05, 2008 11:47 PM
from the network-effects dept.
from the network-effects dept.
Ponca City, We Love You writes "Toddlers' brains can effortlessly do what the most powerful computers with the most sophisticated software cannot: learn language simply by hearing it used. A ground-breaking new theory postulates that young children are able to learn large groups of words rapidly by data-mining. Researchers Linda Smith and Chen Yu attempted to teach 28 children, 12 to 14 months old, six words by showing them two objects at a time on a computer monitor while two pre-recorded words were read to them. No information was given regarding which word went with which image. After viewing various combinations of words and images, however, the children were surprisingly successful at figuring out which word went with which picture. Yu and Smith say it's possible that the more words tots hear, and the more information available for any individual word, the better their brains can begin simultaneously ruling out and putting together word-object pairings, thus learning what's what. Yu says if they can identify key factors involved in this form of learning and how it can be manipulated, they might be able to make learning languages easier for children and adults. Understanding children's learning mechanisms could also further machine learning."
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Interesting, but... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Interesting, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Interesting, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Interesting, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes it's true that children will learn the rules and then apply them, sometimes inappropriately, until they learn the exceptions. I expect that your nieces/nephews who use "ran" have simply heard that word used more often in the right context and have therefore learned this particular irregularity.
My own son gave a classic example some time ago of a sentence showing he was part way through this learning process. I can't for the life of me remember what it was, which is very annoying, but he was using two
Re:Interesting, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, the first sound (aside from crying) that a baby is capable of forming is the sound 'ma', and subsequently 'ma-ma'. Unfortunately, all those mothers who believe their child is referring to them are mistaken, although the term rapidly becomes associated with mother anyway, so it gets to be true after a while.
It should be obvious really, how else would every child ever born (that could vocalise) select the same sound?
I'm less sure about da-da. I know 'da' is another sound that a child can form earlier, but that's all.
Parent
Re:Interesting, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Interesting, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Eventually he abandoned that behaviour and later replaced it with a more sophisticated model. Presumably he had then collected enough data to get a better idea of how our language worked.
Re: (Score:2)
You're right. This is old wine in new bottles. Notice the source: a University of Indiana press release. One wonders how this bit of ho-hum research made its way to Slashdot...
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Buzz-words aside, this is common knowledge. Babies and toddlers can learn as astounding rates at that age. Just talk to them as you would normally and they'll be talking themselves sooner than you can expect. 18 months is p
Re:Interesting, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone who is raised with a single language does not even hear certain sounds in other languages because their brain has long since rejected those sounds as irrelevant 'noise'. The same thing applies to vision, a baby sees every meercat face as different but adults don't (without a lot of practice).
A babies brain actually loses a lot of connectivity between neurons in the first year of life (not so much data minning as connection breaking/forming). In other words we are all programmed by our early environment to exclude irrelevant stimuli, hacking into that 'code' later in life can be extremely difficult.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
And get off my lawn you jabbering monkey!
under feeling the (Score:4, Funny)
got that?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Interesting (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I also let her run around the park while her brethren are in various classes. I guess she'll never be president. I do wish I knew Spanish, though - that seems to be a more and more popular language these days in the US.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Funny)
I'm pretty sure that qualifies as child abuse.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
It's child abusers like you that need to be locked up for a long time.
Hamlet in C (Score:4, Funny)
It always equates to true, so I guess Shakespeare was onto something.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
My GF's nephew grew up in a Spanish-speaking household and was basically fluent at 4. But now, at age 13, he seems to have mostly forgotten it in favor of his dominant language, English. Same thing happened with a GF I had when I was much younger. Kids have a tremendous ability to learn things. But also to utterly forget them.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Want multilingual kids? (Score:4, Insightful)
Do what my mum did: buy albums of kids songs in foreign languages (in my case only French). When I was about four, I could sing in a perfect French accent. Didn't have a clue what I was saying, but the accent was there. When I started learning French about 8 years later I had no problems. My ear was primed and my mouth was primed, so I could handle the sound system without problems, and it's the sounding like a foreigner/lunatic that frustrates most people when learning languages.
HAL.
Parent
Effortless? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Effortless? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
My almost two year old is quite expressive - but his 'words' at the moment are single syllables. He quite clearly has a large vocabulary and knows what he means, but I have difficulty working out what he means. For example, on the bus the other day he kept saying "T", "T", "T". I couldn't work it out? Toe? T-shirt? No, I eventually worked out it was Tree. He was pointing to everyone he could see, and there were rather a
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It takes time for a child to learn language. A toddler can get frustrated when parents (or others) don't understand what they want. But the language acquisition process is not hard in the same way as learning is hard for adults. They do not need to conciously do it. It is more instinctive and automatic than if I were to try to learn another language. Furthermore, the problem is not understanding and learning the language - the problem is expressin
Re:Effortless? (Score:4, Insightful)
Depending on your definition, most kids would not be considered fluent with their first language until the age of 4 or 5, and then generally still speak it with an accent. I would say that this is not all really any different than an adult. They are actually probably a little slower.
Parent
This just in..... (Score:3, Funny)
no scientific content here (Score:5, Informative)
Mining but not for data (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
What did she do with it, bring it back to the dealer?
Taking it a step further. (Score:5, Interesting)
The first phase of the project was to teach these children the sign-alphabet. After this, I'm not sure if they were going to teach the full english or spanish sign-language (seems there's not an international standard for sign-language), but the point is that after a year, the experiment was deemed a failure and abandoned.
Then a couple of years later, reports started trickling out of these deaf-mute children exchanging unintelligible gibberish with their hands. A couple of researchers flew in, and were astonished to discover that these kids, using the sign-alphabet as a starting point, had developed a complete, unique language of their own in just two or three years - the first ever documented report of a fully formed, structured language bursting spontaneously into existence. These children are, of course, now adults in their thirties, still in touch with each other and communicating amongst themselves in the language they invented three decades ago.
And now, for something completely different...
Terrence McKenna, that lovable old psychonaut, postulated an empirical assumption in the eighties and nineties - language was created over many generations, via deep psilocybin trance rituals, of which the whole tribe partook. One by one, abstract concepts emerged in the back and forth play between members of the tribe, led and refereed of course by the shaman.
The Nicaraguan kids have poked serious holes into McKenna's whimsical idea. As it turns out, children can develop fully formed languages almost overnight! And so, with concrete data, a new possibility has arisen - languages burst upon the world from the mouths of children, and never mind the psychedelic substances.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Before the 1970s, the was no deaf community in Nicaragua. Each deaf child had to make their own way in life, usually aided by a crude system of signs--called a home signing system--developed with their speaking parents. In the 1970s, however, a school for the deaf was founded and children from all over Nicaragua came to it. There was some debate over which sign language was going to be taug
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaraguan_Sign_Language [wikipedia.org]
In unrelated news... (Score:3, Funny)
Multiple languages (Score:5, Interesting)
But I personally believe that the human brain does a hell of a lot more data mining than we give it credit for. There's a damn good reason why things seem clearer after a good night's sleep. The human brain is designed for massively parallel information processing, and we can't possibly handle it all in a conscious processing context. A lot happens behind the scenes. I'm guessing it's going to be quite some time still until we can fully understand the "inner workings" of the human brain.
Rosetta Stone (Score:5, Interesting)
Child language acquisition (Score:4, Interesting)
When children start coming up with overregularizations like "goed" instead of "went" or "playses" in place of "plays," that kind of attempt at applying regular morphological rules to irregular items, is when you might say they are acquiring language via data mining. I.e., they hear a form used often enough that it becomes part of their knowledge about words, to the extent that that form is unconsciously applied even to make words they have certainly never heard in adult speech before.
(Disclaimer:
1. I will graduate this May with a B.A. in linguistics.
2. First language acquisition is not wholly understood as of yet, but suffice it to say that it's more complicated and there are many more factors involved than the article makes it seem.
3. Sorry if I'm misunderstanding what they mean by "data mining.")
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
In both cases he seemed to think his version rolled of the tongue better and should be used.
If I have a point it is that the child is to some extent making the language up as they go. As with other parts of their development they test boundaries all the time. If the language they learn is deficient in some way they w
Baby's first word (Score:2)
Okay, it's mining (Score:4, Funny)
Every time a car pulls up next to us now he looks at it and says "Dear God!" And the last time his mom had to slam on brakes he giggled and said "What the fuck, huh?" And when she shrieked at him, that was just gasoline on the fire. For the rest of drive home all he could do was giggle and say "What the fuck, Mommy? Mommy? What the fuck, Mommy?"
This is not improving my sex life.