The Dynamics of Visual Attention and Word Learning

Learning a word is much more complex than it might at first appear. It requires many different behaviours (looking, listening, pointing), and is supported by multiple perceptual and cognitive processes (attention, memory, categorisation). And word learning is extended in time; a child can respond to their name from 4 months of age, but will not usually say their first word until 12 months, and will be adding words to their vocabulary for many years to come. Explanations of early word learning must bring together processes of visual attention, visual looking and learning, processes for tracking of what things are where in the world and linking the right perceptual features together, and processes for the formation and updating of mappings between words and referents. Critically, such explanations must be dynamic – able to capture how these processes work together as children behave in the moment and how they change over learning and development.

The goal of this project is to test the first formal theory of early word learning that integrates understanding of how we perceive objects and things in the world, and word learning both in the minutes of an individual naming instance and the days, weeks and years of learning the many names for things in a young child’s vocabulary. Multiple individual experiments provide information on how children’s attention to novel things and growing word knowledge interact and change from 12-months to 3-years and beyond. We use what we learn from these studies to build and test a computer model of the process. In the future we hope this model will help us to understand what goes wrong when children are slow to learn words and language, and what we can do to help.

Click here to read about Dr Laia Fibla Reixachs' research relating language input to early language processes in early development

Read more about PhD student, Milena Bakopoulou, talking about her research looking at infant's memories for pairs of visual objects and how it relates to children's abilities to learn new words.

Our research is funded by:

National Institutes of Health​

Publications:

Word-Object Learning via Visual Exploration in Space (WOLVES): A neural process model of cross-situational word learning. AA Bhat, JP Spencer, LK Samuelson. Psychological Review

Toward a Precision Science of Word Learning: Understanding Individual Vocabulary Pathways. LK Samuelson. Child Development Perspectives 15 (2), 117-124

Learning Words in Space and Time: Contrasting Models of the Suspicious Coincidence Effect. GW Jenkins, L Samuelson, WD Penny, J Spencer. Cognition