Why Are There Developmental Stages in Language Learning? A Developmental Robotics Model of Language Development

Abstract

Most theories of learning would predict a gradual acquisition and refinement of skills as learning progresses, and while some highlight exponential growth, this fails to explain why natural cognitive development typically progresses in stages. Models that do span multiple developmental stages typically have parameters to "switch" between stages. We argue that by taking an embodied view, the interaction between learning mechanisms, the resulting behavior of the agent, and the opportunities for learning that the environment provides can account for the stage-wise development of cognitive abilities. We summarize work relevant to this hypothesis and suggest two simple mechanisms that account for some developmental transitions: neural readiness focuses on changes in the neural substrate resulting from ongoing learning, and perceptual readiness focuses on the perceptual requirements for learning new tasks. Previous work has demonstrated these mechanisms in replications of a wide variety of infant language experiments, spanning multiple developmental stages. Here we piece this work together as a single model of ongoing learning with no parameter changes at all. The model, an instance of the Epigenetic Robotics Architecture (Morse et al 2010) embodied on the iCub humanoid robot, exhibits ongoing multi-stage development while learning pre-linguistic and then basic language skills.

Analisis Pola Asuh Orang Tua terhadap Keterlambatan Bicara pada Anak Usia Dini

“…Perkembangan bahasa anak sangatlah mengagumkan karena dalam waktu singkat anak mampu mengusai bahasa yang sangat kompleks. Penelitian mengemukakan bahwa bayi sangatlah peka terhadap bahasa yang diungkapkan oleh lingkungannya, terlihat dari sensitifitas bayi terhadap perubahan fonem yang terjadi bahkan ketika fonem tersebut berubah menjadi bahasa non-pribumi (Morse & Cangelosi, 2017). Selain itu, menurut (Golinkoff, Can, Soderstrom, & Hirsh-Pasek, 2015) menyatakan bahwa sebelum bayi belajar bahasa, bayi akan memperhatikan dan membedakan dari suara yang ada di lingkungannya.…”

From Babies to Robots: The Contribution of Developmental Robotics to Developmental Psychology

“…One is the realization of neural readiness, that is, the focus on changes in the neural substrate from ongoing learning that facilitate acquiring knowledge and skills. The second is perceptual readiness, that is, the focus on the multimodal perceptual requirements supporting learning new tasks (see for a discussion of these two developmental mechanisms).…”

Connecting YARP to the Web with Yarp.js

“…Unarguably, the most successful example of YARP application is the iCub (Metta et al, 2008), a humanoid robot adopted by more than 30 laboratories worldwide: Exploiting the flexibility of YARP functionalities, computational models developed by a number of different research groups to perform diverse tasks ranging from torque control (Fumagalli et al, 2010(Fumagalli et al, , 2012Del Prete et al, 2012) to grasping (Gori et al, 2014), balancing (Pucci et al, 2016), visual attention (Ruesch et al, 2008), visual or haptic object recognition (Ciliberto et al, 2013;Higy et al, 2016), supervised learning (Gijsberts and Metta, 2011), can be combined on the same platform, enabling the robot with advanced cognitive capabilities such as in Ivaldi et al (2013); Fischer and Demiris (2016); Morse and Cangelosi (2017).…”