HESP Seminar: Sophie Domanski (HESP)

Language and Location: The Role of Non-linguistic Context Cues in Word Learning

Abstract: The spatial context of everyday speech to children is remarkably consistent. Words tend to repeatedly occur in the same locations, and these words are learned earlier than those which are more scattered in use. Yet little is known about how spatial contextualization itself influences word learning. In this talk I will discuss how word learning is influenced by different levels of spatial contextualization in naturalistic scenes, and how the need for inductive inference mediates reliance on spatial context.