@article{jbp:/content/journals/10.1075/is.17.1.05two, author = "Twomey, Katherine E. and Morse, Anthony F. and Cangelosi, Angelo and Horst, Jessica S.", title = "Children’s referent selection and word learning: Insights from a developmental robotic system", journal= "Interaction Studies", year = "2016", volume = "17", number = "1", pages = "93-119", doi = "https://doi.org/10.1075/is.17.1.05two", url = "https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/is.17.1.05two", publisher = "John Benjamins", issn = "1572-0373", type = "Journal Article", keywords = "referent selection", keywords = "iCub", keywords = "novelty", keywords = "word learning", keywords = "Epigenetic Robotics Architecture", keywords = "competition", keywords = "self-organizing maps", keywords = "developmental robotics", keywords = "fast mapping", abstract = "It is well-established that toddlers can correctly select a novel referent from an ambiguous array in response to a novel label. There is also a growing consensus that robust word learning requires repeated label-object encounters. However, the effect of the context in which a novel object is encountered is less well-understood. We present two embodied neural network replications of recent empirical tasks, which demonstrated that the context in which a target object is encountered is fundamental to referent selection and word learning. Our model offers an explicit account of the bottom-up associative and embodied mechanisms which could support children’s early word learning and emphasises the importance of viewing behaviour as the interaction of learning at multiple timescales.This article is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.
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