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Infant Word Recognition: Insights from TRACE Simulations

Contributors

Mayor, Julien; Plunkett, Kim

Published in

Journal of memory and language, vol. 71, no. 1, p. 89-123

Publication date

2014

Abstract

The TRACE model of speech perception (McClelland & Elman, 1986) is used to simulate results from the infant word recognition literature, to provide a unified, theoretical framework for interpreting these findings. In a first set of simulations, we demonstrate how TRACE can reconcile apparently conflicting findings suggesting, on the one hand, that consonants play a pre-eminent role in lexical acquisition (Nespor, Pena & Mehler, 2003, Nazzi, 2005), and on the other, that there is a symmetry in infant sensitivity to vowel and consonant mispronunciations of familiar words (Mani & Plunkett, 2007). In a second series of simulations, we use TRACE to simulate infants' graded sensitivity to mispronunciations of familiar words as reported by White & Morgan (2008). An unexpected outcome is that TRACE fails to demonstrate graded sensitivity for White & Morgan's stimuli unless the inhibitory parameters in TRACE are substantially reduced. We explore the ramifications of this finding for theories of lexical development. Finally, TRACE mimics the impact of phonological neighbourhoods on early word learning reported by Swingley & Aslin (2007). TRACE offers an alternative explanation of these findings in terms of mispronunciations of lexical items rather than imputing word learning to infants. Together these simulations provide an evaluation of Developmental (Jusczyk, 1993) and Familiarity (Metsala, 1999) accounts of word recognition by infants and young children. The findings point to a role for both theoretical approaches whereby vocabulary structure and content constrain infant word recognition in an experience-dependent fashion, and highlight the continuity in the processes and representations involved in lexical development during the second year of life.

Keywords

  • Phonological specificity
  • Vowels
  • Consonants
  • Lexical representation
  • Lexical competition
  • TRACE model
  • Mutual Exclusivity

UNIGE affiliation entities

UNIGE research groups

Citation (ISO format)

MAYOR, Julien, PLUNKETT, Kim. Infant Word Recognition: Insights from TRACE Simulations. In: Journal of memory and language, 2014, vol. 71, n° 1, p. 89–123. doi: 10.1016/j.jml.2013.09.009

Main files (1)

Article (Published version)

Identifiers

Additional URL for this publication

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749596X13000946

Journal ISSN

0749-596X
885views
704downloads

Technical informations

Creation

12/09/2013 09:44:00

First validation

12/09/2013 09:44:00

Update

17/04/2025 09:59:20

Status update

17/04/2025 09:59:20

Last indexation

17/04/2025 09:59:21
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