Language learning as ontogenetic adaptation
Manuel Bohna b✉, Marisa Casillasc
- aInstitute of Psychology in Education, Leuphana University Lüneburg, Lüneburg, Germany
- bDepartment of Comparative Cultural Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany. Electronic address: manuel.bohn@leuphana.de
- cDepartment of Comparative Human Development, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA
- ✉Corresponding author
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Abstract
Language learning is a multi-threaded, multi-mechanism process. It is multi-threaded in that it emerges as a byproduct of addressing multiple goals while engaging in social interactions. It is multi-mechanism in that children integrate multiple information sources to infer what is meant and what to say next. These information sources include contextual and social cues, as well as cognitive mechanisms. Focusing on early word learning, this article reviews information sources, how children might sensitively adapt to them, and how we can model their integration using Bayesian inference over multiple probability distributions. We argue that, to advance our understanding of language learning, we must jointly study how children learn from multiple information sources across diverse developmental settings.