Abstract
Recent work suggests that cultural transmission can lead to the emergence of linguistic structure as speakers' weak individual biases become amplified through iterated learning. However, to date, no published study has demonstrated a similar emergence of linguistic structure in children. This gap is problematic given that languages are mainly learned by children and that adults may bring existing linguistic biases to the task. Here, we conduct a large-scale study of iterated language learning in both children and adults, using a novel, child-friendly paradigm. The results show that while children make more mistakes overall, their languages become more learnable and show learnability biases similar to those of adults. Child languages did not show a significant increase in linguistic structure over time, but consistent mappings between meanings and signals did emerge on many occasions, as found with adults. This provides the first demonstration that cultural transmission affects the languages children and adults produce similarly.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Proceedings of the 38th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2016 |
Editors | Anna Papafragou, Daniel Grodner, Daniel Mirman, John C. Trueswell |
Publisher | The Cognitive Science Society |
Pages | 1643-1648 |
Number of pages | 6 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9780991196739 |
State | Published - 2016 |
Event | 38th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Recognizing and Representing Events, CogSci 2016 - Philadelphia, United States Duration: 10 Aug 2016 → 13 Aug 2016 |
Publication series
Name | Proceedings of the 38th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2016 |
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Conference
Conference | 38th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Recognizing and Representing Events, CogSci 2016 |
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Country/Territory | United States |
City | Philadelphia |
Period | 10/08/16 → 13/08/16 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2016 Proceedings of the 38th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2016. All rights reserved.
Keywords
- cultural transmission
- developmental differences
- iterated learning
- language evolution