MOSAIC+: a cross-linguistic model of verb-marking in typically developing children and children with Developmental Language Disorder

Freudenthal, Daniel; Gobet, Fernand; Pine, Julián M.

doi:10.31234/osf.io/7hfm5

Cited by 3 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…The production pressures and the resulting compensatory behavior may result in comprehension–production dissociation in mapping forms to meanings (Gershkoff‐Stowe & Smith, 1997; Kapatsinski & Harmon, 2017; Leonard & Dispaldro, 2013; Naigles & Gelman, 1995, see also Barak et al., in revision, for computational modeling of this phenomenon). In this way, accessibility‐driven compensation explains defaulting to high‐frequency forms that has been shown to be influential in accounting for cross‐linguistic differences in morphosyntactic problems observed in children with DLD (e.g., Freudenthal et al., 2021a, 2021b).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The competition–compensation account of developmental language disorder

Harmon

Barak

Shafto

et al. 2023

Developmental Science

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Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) regularly use the bare form of verbs (e.g., dance) instead of inflected forms (e.g., danced). We propose an account of this behavior in which processing difficulties of children with DLD disproportionally affect processing novel inflected verbs in their input. Limited experience with inflection in novel contexts leads the inflection to face stronger competition from alternatives.Competition is resolved through a compensatory behavior that involves producing a more accessible alternative: in English, the bare form. We formalize this hypothesis within a probabilistic model that trades off context-dependent versus independent processing. Results show an over-reliance on preceding stem contexts when retrieving the inflection in a model that has difficulty with processing novel inflected forms. We further show that following the introduction of a bias to store and retrieve forms with preceding contexts, generalization in the typically developing (TD) models remains more or less stable, while the same bias in the DLD models exaggerates difficulties with generalization. Together, the results suggest that inconsistent use of inflectional morphemes by children with DLD could stem from inferences they make on the basis of data containing fewer novel inflected forms. Our account extends these findings to suggest that problems with detecting a form in novel contexts combined with a bias to rely on familiar contexts when retrieving a form could explain sequential planning difficulties in children with DLD.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The competition–compensation account of developmental language disorder

Harmon

Barak

Shafto

et al. 2023

Developmental Science

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“…The MOSAIC model has also been used to study the mixed productivity period (Freudenthal et al., 2006, 2010, 2023). MOSAIC is a distributional learning model with strong utterance‐final position bias.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Most previous models of morphology acquisition have focused on capturing (1) the cognitive mechanism that allows for limited generalization, that is, applying the past tense –ed to regular forms and not for irregular forms and/or (2) a possible stage of overgeneralization in which irregular verbs are occasionally produced with the regular inflection, for example, goed (Corkery, Matusevych, & Goldwater, 2019; Cottrell & Plunkett, 1994; Hare & Elman, 1995; Hoeffner, 1992; Kirov & Cotterell, 2018; Legate & Yang, 2007; MacWhinney & Leinbach, 1991; O'Donnell, 2015; Pinker & Prince, 1988; Plunkett & Juola, 1999; Rumelhart & McClelland, 1986; Yang, 2016). Those that have tried to capture the variable production of the regular –ed suffix and the bare form have either assumed that children's grammars contain incorrect form‐meaning mappings, that is that they erroneously associate past tense to bare forms (Legate & Yang, 2007) or have made predictions about form production without distinguishing whether or not children are trying to specifically produce past tense meanings in these cases (Freudenthal, Gobet, & Pine, 2023; Freudenthal, Pine, & Gobet, 2010, 2006; Freudenthal, Pine, Jones, & Gobet, 2015; Freudenthal, Ramscar, Leonard, & Pine, 2021).…”

Section: The Acquisition Of Past Tense Regular Formmentioning

confidence: 99%

When Children's Production Deviates From Observed Input: Modeling the Variable Production of the English Past Tense

Barak,

Harmon,

Feldman

et al. 2023

Cognitive Science

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As children gradually master grammatical rules, they often go through a period of producing form‐meaning associations that were not observed in the input. For example, 2‐ to 3‐year‐old English‐learning children use the bare form of verbs in settings that require obligatory past tense meaning while already starting to produce the grammatical –ed inflection. While many studies have focused on overgeneralization errors, fewer studies have attempted to explain the root of this earlier stage of rule acquisition. In this work, we use computational modeling to replicate children's production behavior prior to the generalization of past tense production in English. We illustrate how seemingly erroneous productions emerge in a model, without being licensed in the grammar and despite the model aiming at conforming to grammatical forms. Our results show that bare form productions stem from a tension between two factors: (1) trying to produce a less frequent meaning (the past tense) and (2) being unable to restrict the production of frequent forms (the bare form) as learning progresses. Like children, our model goes through a stage of bare form production and then converges on adult‐like production of the regular past tense, showing that these different stages can be accounted for through a single learning mechanism.

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“…The usage‐based turn in functionalism led to an explosion of interest in frequency effects, with frequency understood as estimating the number of episodes of a particular type of experience. However, until recently, usage‐based linguists have not produced explicit models of learning (though see Freudenthal, Pine, & Gobet, 2006, 2023; McCauley & Christiansen, 2019).…”

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confidence: 99%

Defragmenting Learning

Kapatsinski

2023

Cognitive Science

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In the 1990s, language acquisition researchers and theoretical linguists developed an interest in learning mechanisms, and learning theorists rediscovered the verbal learning tradition. Nonetheless, learning theory and language acquisition continued to develop largely independently, which has stymied progress in both fields. However, exciting progress is happening in applying learning theory to language, and, more recently, in using language learning data to advance domain-general learning theory. These developments raise hopes for a bidirectional flow of information between the fields. The importance of language data for learning theory and of learning theory for understanding language is briefly discussed.

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MOSAIC+: a cross-linguistic model of verb-marking in typically developing children and children with Developmental Language Disorder

Cited by 3 publications

References 25 publications

The competition–compensation account of developmental language disorder

The competition–compensation account of developmental language disorder

When Children's Production Deviates From Observed Input: Modeling the Variable Production of the English Past Tense

Defragmenting Learning

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