Year: 2005
Type: article
Abstract: In this paper we provide a computational exploration of changes in levels of representation in children's language development.Children demonstrate a progression from awareness of larger units in their language, such as words or syllables, and only later do they develop the ability to manipulate phoneme level representations.We employed a minimum description length approach to encode a corpus of child-directed speech.The analysis indicated that, for early stages of language learning, a word level representation was most efficient, whereas after extended exposure, a phoneme level representation was more efficient.The analysis also accurately predicted which phonemes children would be able to distinguish from syllables at different stages of development.
Authors: Nick Chater, Charles Hulme, Padraic Monaghan
Institutions: University of Warwick, University of York
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2587948185