Critically evaluate the claim that infants learn words through domain-general
attentional mechanisms.
Word production in infants starts at around twelve months and typically begins to develop
slowly. Research has attempted to explore the mechanisms by which infants learn and
interpret words. Many have suggested that children learn words through domain-general
mechanisms. This means that they obtain information through exploring their environment,
and paying attention to the world around them. This way, whole knowledge is internalised
from experience. However, other researchers have proposed that knowledge is actually
obtained through more specialised structures, and children learn language through a more
active mechanism than simply ‘paying attention’.
Smith and Yu (2007) addressed the ‘mapping problem’ (Quine, 1960) and proposed that the
pairing of a word and a scene may not always be enough for an infant to learn the meaning of
a word, particularly after one encounter with the novel word. Quine describes the problem of
mapping meanings onto words by illustrating a scene where a stranger points to a rabbit and
says “gavagai”. He explained that someone who is not familiar with the language would be
unsure as to what the stranger is referring to. For example, he could be describing the rabbit,
or specifically the rabbit’s ears, a tree, or the grass. Although, despite this indeterminacy
problem, it seems that children do manage to determine word meanings from such encounters
(Smith, 2000). This supports the idea that infants learn words through domain-general
attentional mechanisms because this way, words are learned by internalising information
gathered from encounters where meanings are ‘mapped’ onto words. It is suggested that
words are learned in the same way as other domains of knowledge: by just ‘paying attention’.
Following on from this, Smith and Yu explained that the ‘word-scene pairing’ process is not
likely to be the only mechanism through which infants learn words.
Not all scenarios where fast-mapping has been demonstrated are as straight-forward as some
examples have suggested. For instances, everyday encounters where there is the opportunity
for language development, infants will often be exposed to many words, and limited cues as
to what these words refer to. Therefore, Smith and Yu (2007) thought on one hand, it may be
that infants ignore information in settings where word learning is too complicated, and only
pay attention to contexts that are less ambiguous. On the other hand, they proposed that the
learner may gather knowledge from multiple experiences and puts the information together to
interpret and internalise word meaning. Werker et al. (1998) provided evidence that 14-
month-old infants can rapidly learn associations between words and objects in their ‘switch’
design experiment. They found that 8- to 12- month old infants were not able to form the
associations, however they did appear to process both the word and the object information.
Therefore, this research supports the notion that infants learn words through domain-general
attentional mechanisms. In addition, from this research it seems that infants’ learning is
developed in stages according to age.
Piaget (1953) believed that intelligence develops as we adapt to meet the needs of our
environment. He proposed stages of intellectual development and believed that all knowledge
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