FASTMAPPING SKILLS IN THE DEVELOPING
LEXICON IN KANNADA SPEAKING CHILDREN
AUTHORS:
Deepthi M., Trupthi. T., Shwetha M.P.
Nikhil Mathur & Deepa M. S
II Msc. IV sem [Speech & Hearing]
JSSISH
1
Learning to talk is a relatively orderly
process,
…not all children acquire all language
ability in the same order and at
identical speed.
There is individual variation.
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COMPONENTS OF LANGUAGE
PHONOLOGY
SYNTAX
AND
SEMANTICS
PRAGMATICS
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Acquisition
of words in
children
RECEPTION
EXPRESSION
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AGE
RECEPTIVE VOCABULARY
8-9 m
1ST words
13 m
50 words
6 yrs
20,000 – 24,000 words
12 yrs
50,000 words
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AGE
EXPRESSIVE VOCABULARY
15 m
10 words
18 m
50 words
20 m
150 words
2 yrs
120-300 words
3 yrs
1000 words
6 yrs
2600-7000 words
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There are several ways in which young children
are believed to be so good at learning (Rice and
Watkins, 1996).
One way is with a process known as..
“FAST MAPPING”
[Crais, 1992; Dollaghan, 1985; Heibeck
and Markman 1987]
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“A lexical acquisition strategy in which a
listener rapidly constructs a representation of
an unfamiliar word on the basis of a single
exposure to it.
This initial representation might contain
information on semantic, phonological, or
syntactic characteristics of the new lexical
item, as well as non-linguistic information
related to the situation in which it is
encountered.”
-Dollaghan (1987)
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Carey and Bartlett (1978) first documented the
phenomenon of ‘fast mapping’ in a pioneering
study of pre school- aged children.
They observed that 3-year-olds appeared to
learn the meaning of a word when contrasted
with another word known to the child.
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Carey (1987) proposed that children learn the
meaning of a word in two separate phases:
(a) a fast mapping phase, in which the child
establishes an initial link between word and
referent, and
(b) a subsequent, slow mapping phase.
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AIM OF THE STUDY:
The aim of the present study is ...
“to shed light on the underlying nature of fast
mapping by exploring children’s emerging ability
to access information in lexical memory”.
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19
PARTICIPANTS
N = 20 native Kannada speaking children
(6 boys and 14 girls)
Age Range = 2 to 4 years were included in the
study.
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They were divided into two groups based upon
their age
2yrs to 3yrs and
3yrs to 4yrs
The first group participated in two word
learning
And second group participated in three word
learning in each trial.
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30 brightly colored photographs of objects
served as stimulus for the study.
The words consisted of two to three syllables.
Twenty common real world objects were
chosen.
Out of them 10 pictures were used as target
ones which are novel words.
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Children participated in both training and testing
phase at each session. Each child was shown
Microsoft power point slides which consisted of 3
pictures in each slide (2 common and one target).
In the training phase the experimenter labeled each
of the three target pictures for minimum of 4 to 6
times in each session.
Words were typically embedded in propositional
statement to support the processing of word
referent pairings.
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

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In each session children were taught novel words. A
total of 5 sessions for the first group and 3 sessions
for the second group were required.
In one session 2 to 3 words were taught and asked
for recall after a gap of 10 minutes.
Before starting the next session i.e. on the next day
children were asked to recall the words taught in the
previous session.
This served as retention trials and word learning trial
started with fresh words.
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25
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grp 1 learning
4
3.5
no of trials
3
2.5
2
Series1
1.5
1
0.5
0
1
2
3
4
5
no of sessions

The Graphs 1 depicts number of trials required in each
session for children in group I to fast map a total of 10
target words.
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grp2 learning
6
5
Series1
trials
4
3
2
1
0
1

2
session
3
4
The Graphs 2 depicts number of trials required in each
session for children in group II to fast map a total of 10
target words.
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


This increase in the number of trial suggest that as
children learn more and more new words they require
more number of trials.
This idea suggests that practice with individual words in
a rapidly expanding lexicon changes the operation of
the lexicon through the accumulated activation of many
items.
This is accomplished through an increase in the base of
lexical and semantic units and the strengthening of
connections between them.
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By comparing the data obtained from group I and group
II it is understood that as the age increases more and
more lexical and semantic units can be learnt with fast
mapping.
The older group learns more number of words in lesser
number of trials.
In the present study we found a modest increase in
receptive and productive vocabulary in children between
3 to 4 years.
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PERCENTAGE OF WORDS
GROUP I RETENTION
70%
60%
50%
40%
Series1
30%
20%
10%
0%
1
2
3
4
5
6
NO OF SESSIONS
GRAPH III: Mean percentage of words recalled by children of 2 to 3
years across the sessions.
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PERCENTAGE OF WORDS
GROUPII RETENTION
67.00%
66.50%
66.00%
65.50%
Series1
65.00%
64.50%
64.00%
63.50%
1
2
3
NO OF SESSION
GRAPH IV: Mean percentage of words recalled by children of 3 to 4
years across the sessions.
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

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As more and more words were fast mapped there was
decrease in number of words recalled.
There was decrease in retention of target words in the
second session but again the retention increased from
2nd to 3rd session.
Whereas, the children could not recall as many
percentages of words they could do in the first session.
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Additionally there were few observation noted in the
retention trial.
All children irrespective of group were able to recall
the first target word till the end of experiment
(/tapalu/).
Children could recall the target words which had
more functional value in daily routine for e.g. children
could recall /hali/ (railway track) and /sasive/
(mustard) easily compared to words like /hima/ (fog)
and /kenda/ (coal).
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When children were asked to name the target
word they were specifying the function of
target word rather than naming it.
And again children could recall newly learnt
word compared to older ones.
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The study opens up many channels in spite of
few limitations about word learning.
The incidental learning of new vocabulary in
the context of one to a few encounters is
known as fast mapping (Carey & Bartlett,
1978), or quick incidental learning (Rice 1990).
The results indicated that the children in
higher group could fast map and recall more
number of words than the lower group.
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
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Learning processes with prior experience,
words and concepts can organize into larger
units that facilitate fast efficient and
parallel access to a broad base of related
past knowledge.
The idea that a small set of contextually
related words can create structural
neighborhood that facilitates the spread of
activation to other newly acquired words.
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In our study children were provided with limited
information about the nature and the function
of target words, yet they were united by all
contexts in which the words were acquired.
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Number of children taken for the study was less.
Gender was not considered as a factor for the study.
Standard test for vocabulary development could not
be administered.
For the 2nd group 4 words were taken for the 3rd
session as compared to precious sessions.
And only 10 target words were considered for the
study.
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