Word learning biases

Word learning biases are certain biases or assumptions that allow children to quickly rule out unlikely alternatives in order to effectively process and learn word meanings. They begin to manifest themselves around 18 months, when children begin to rapidly expand their vocabulary. These biases are important for children with limited processing abilities if they are to be successful in word learning. The guiding lexical principles have been defined as implicit and explicit strategies towards language acquisition. When a child learns a new word they must decide whether the word refers to the whole object, part of the object, its substance, color or texture. The following sources are used to solve this indeterminacy problem.

One way in which children constrain the meaning of novel words is through the whole object assumption. When an adult points to an object and says a word, a child assumes this word labels the entire object, not parts or characteristics of the object. For example, if a child is shown an object and given the label "truck", the child will assume "truck" refers to the entire object instead of the tires, doors, color or other parts.Ellen Markman pioneered work in this field. Her studies suggest that even in cases where color or a dynamic activity are made salient to children, they will still interpret the new word as a label for whole objects.

According to cognitive psychologist Elizabeth Spelke, infants' perception of the physical world is guided by three constraints on the behavior of physical objects: objects must move as wholes, objects move independently of each other, and objects move on connected paths. These three constraints help guide children's interpretations of scenes, and, in turn, explains how the whole object bias reflects the non-linguistic status of objects.

It is often questioned if the word-learning constraints are specific to the domain of language, or if they apply to other cognitive domains. As for the whole object assumption, evidence suggests that the idea of objects is more advantaged than characteristics or relations. Children assume a label refers to a whole object because the object is more salient than its properties. The whole object assumption may reflect non-linguistic levels of an object and exploits the cognitive tendency to analyze the world through a whole object lens, meaning the whole object assumption can be applied to cognitive domains outside of language.

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