Language is about symbols, and those symbols must be grounded in the physical world. Children learn to associate language with sensorimotor experiences during their development. In light of this, we first provide a computational account of how words are mapped to their perceptually grounded meanings. Moreover, the main part of this work proposes and implements a computational model of how word learning influences the formation of object categories to which those words refer. This model simulates the bi-directional relationship between word and object category learning: (1) object categorization provides mental representations of meanings that are mapped to words to form lexical items; (2) linguistic labels help object categorization by providing additional teaching signals; and (3) these two learning processes interplay with each other and form a developmental feedback loop. Compared with the method that performs these two tasks separately, our model shows promising improvements in both word-to-world mapping and perceptual categorization, suggesting a unified view of lexical and category learning in an integrative framework. Most importantly, this work provides a cognitively plausible explanation of the mechanistic nature of early word learning and object learning from co-occurring multisensory data.

This study investigates children's ability to use language to guide their choice of individuation criterion in the domains of objects and events. Previous work (Shipley, E. F., & Shepperson, B. (1990). Countable entities: developmental changes. Cognition, 34, 109 -- 136.) has shown that children have a strong bias to use a spatio-temporal individuation strategy when counting objects and that children will ignore a conflicting linguistic description in favor of this spatio-temporal bias. Experiment 1 asked children (3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds) and adults to count objects and events under different linguistic descriptions. In the object task, subjects counted pictures of familiar objects split into multiple pieces (as in Shipley, E. F., & Shepperson, B. (1990). Countable entities: developmental changes. Cognition, 34, 109 -- 136.) and described either using an appropriate kind label (e.g. "car") or the general term "thing". In the event task, subjects watched short animated movies consisting of a goal-oriented event achieved via multiple, temporally separated steps. The events were described either with an appropriate telic predicate targeting the goal (e.g. "paint a flower") or with an atelic predicate targeting the steps in the process (e.g. "paint") and the subjects' task was to count the events. Relative to adults, children preferred a spatio-temporal counting strategy in both tasks; there was no difference among the three groups of children. However, children were able to significantly change their counting strategy to follow the linguistic description in the event but not the object task. Experiment 2 extended the object task to include counting of other types of non-spatio-temporal units such as sub-parts of objects and collections. Results showed that children could ...

Four experiments investigated whether 12-month-old infants use perceptual property information in a complex object individuation task, using the violation-of-expectancy looking time method (Xu, 2002; Xu & Carey, 1996). Infants were shown two objects with di#erent properties emerge and return behind an occluder, one at a time. The occluder was then removed, revealing either two objects (expected outcome, if property di#erences support individuation) or one object (unexpected outcome). In Experiments 1--3, infants failed to use color, size, or a combination of color, size, and pattern di#erences to establish a representation of two distinct objects behind an occluder. In Experiment 4, infants succeeded in using cross-basic-level-kind shape di#erences to establish a representation of two objects but failed to do so using withinbasic -level-kind shape di#erences. Control conditions found that the methods were sensitive. Infants succeeded when provided unambiguous spatiotemporal information for two objects, and they encoded the property di#erences during these experiments. These findings suggest that by 12 months, di#erent properties play di#erent roles in a complex object individuation task. Certain salient shape di#erences enter into the computation of numerical distinctness of objects before other property di#erences such as color or size. Since shape di#erences are often correlated with object kind di#erences, these results converge with others in the literature that suggest that by the end of the first year of life, infants# representational systems begin to distinguish kinds and properties.

This paper presents an object categorization method. Our approach involves the following aspects of cognitive vision: machine learning and knowledge representation. A major element of our approach is a visual concept ontology composed of several types of concepts (spatial concepts and relations, color concepts and texture concepts). Visual concepts contained in this ontology can be seen as an intermediate layer between domain knowledge and image processing procedures. This paper details this approach which is composed of three phases: a knowledge acquisition phase, a learning phase and a categorization phase. A major issue is the symbol grounding problem (symbol grounding consists in linking meaningfully symbols to sensory information). We propose a solution to this difficult issue by showing how learning techniques can map numerical features to visual concepts.

In addition to having communicative functions, verbal labels may play a role in shaping concepts. Two experiments assessed whether the presence of labels affected category formation. Subjects learned to categorize ‘‘aliens’’ as those to be approached or those to be avoided. After accuracy feedback on each response was provided, a nonsense label was either presented or not. Providing

All students of cognitive development agree that the central questions in development are 1) specifying the initial state of a human infant, 2) specifying the final state of development for a human adult, and 3) specifying how to get from the initial state to the final state. Then academic disputes ensue. Cognitive developmental psychologists are roughly divided into two camps: those who are more or less nativists and those who are more or less empiricists. Some psychologists do not like these terms, and some alternatives are “those who believe in innate knowledge ” and “those who believe in learning, ” or “those who believed in initial conceptual knowledge ” and “those who believe in initial perceptual capabilities. ” This division is also correlated with whether a researcher believes in domain specificity or not: nativists tend to argue for domain-specific knowledge (even at the beginning of development) and domain-specific learning mechanisms; empiricists tend to argue for domain-general learning mechanisms that may result in domain-specific knowledge some years into development (for some representative explications of these views, see Carey &

Using the violation-of-expectancy method, we investigated 10-month-old infants’ ability to rely on dynamic features in object individuation processes. Infants were first familiarized to events in which two different objects repeatedly appeared and disappeared, one at a time from behind a screen; at test, the screen was removed, revealing either one or two objects. In Experiment 1, one self-moving non-rigid agent and one inert object were involved in each trial, while in Experiment 2 two different agents were presented. Infants preferred to look at one-object outcomes in Experiment 1, but they did not show any preference for one- or two-object outcomes in Experiment 2. The results suggest that infants can use dynamic information to detect agents in complex individuation tasks before they can rely on shape or surface features. We propose that the sortals AGENT and INERT OBJECT appear in development before 12 months without a substantial contribution of linguistic experience. These findings may motivate a revision of current theories on the development of kind-based individuation and object files.

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HE topic of this Special Issue is that action and language are interwoven. Driven by traditional approaches that prevail in our education, we might be surprised about the connection between language and action, since we are inclined to view language as a symbolic system as it connects entities in the world with the corresponding conceptions that a perceiver has in mind. Action, on the other hand, was considered to be an event in the world that has to be perceived first. Only then, could it also be labeled by a perceiver, so a particular conception of it could be represented in the mind. The research from perspective on how cognition develops, however, contributed to findings suggesting that what we know about action, language and interaction emerge in parallel and have an impact on each other ([1], [2], [3]). This parallel development seems to provide a ground for further mental growth. For a

The current review focuses on how exposure to linguistic input, and count nouns in particular, affect performance on various cognitive tasks, including individuation, categorization and category learning, and inductive inference. We review two theoretical accounts of effects of words. Proponents of one account argue that words have top-down effects on cognitive tasks, and, as such, function as supervisory signals. Proponents of the other account suggest that early in development, words, just like any other perceptual feature, are first and foremost part of the stimulus input and influence cognitive tasks in a bottom-up, non-supervisory fashion. We then review evidence supporting each account. We conclude that, although much research is needed, there is a large body of evidence indicating that words start out like other perceptual features and become supervisory signals in the course of development.