Social Learning of Concepts Sample Clauses

Social Learning of Concepts. In order to understand how humans represent knowledge, much can be learned from studying how infants and young children acquire concepts. There are many experimental studies and theories on concept acquisition in young children (Xxxxxxx and Xxxxx, 2003). Children, for example, employ a number of strategies to facilitate concept acquisition, such as mutual exclusivity, where a word is only related to one object in a context and not to others (Xxxxxxx, 1989), or the preference to bind unfamiliar words with unfamiliar perceptual input: the novel name novel category principle (Xxxxxx and Xxxxxxxx, 1994). Also, language seems to play a crucial role in concept acquisition. Although linguistic relativism —the interaction between language and thought— used to be controversial, recent studies have convincingly shown that language and conceptualization do interact in a number of different domains, such as time, space and color (for example (Xxxxxxxxxx 2001; Xxxxxxx et al., 2006; Xxxxxxx and Xxxxxxxx, 1997; Xxxxxxxx et al., 2005; Xxxxxxx et al., 2007), but see Xxxxxx (2007) for a critical note. Although the evidence for the interaction between language and concepts is convincing, it is only recently that the importance of language for the acquisition of concepts has been noted. Xxxx et al. (1999), for example, show how young children (18-23 months) are already sensitive to linguistic concepts for space (see also Xxxxx et al., 2004). This does not tell whether children actively use language to acquire concepts. However, Xx (2002) shows how 9-month olds use of language can play an important role in learning object concepts and more recently, Xxxxxxxx, Xx and Xxxxx (2008) show how linguistic labels play a causal role in concept learning of 10-month olds. In the tightly controlled experimental settings of above mentioned psychological studies, children are exposed to unidirectional communication: objects and linguistic labels are presented to the infants and they induce concepts from these experiences. These experimental conditions however do not reflect reality, where children and caretakers engage in a rich interaction with joint attention, referential and indexical pointing, and implicit and explicit feedback. It is expected that rich, cultural interaction is essential to cognition (Xxxxxxxxx, 1999). New research should explore the influence of rich interaction on the mental development of robots. It has been argued and, to a certain extent, it has been experimentally...