Modelling the Informativeness of Non-Verbal Cues in Parent–Child Interaction

• Non-verbal cues from speakers, such as eye gaze and hand positions, play an important role in word learning. This is consistent with the notion that for meaning to be reconstructed, acoustic patterns need to be linked to time-synchronous patterns from at least one other modality. In previous studies of a multimodally annotated corpus of parent–child interaction, we have shown that parents interacting with infants at the early word-learning stage (7–9 months) display a large amount of time-synchronous patterns, but that this behaviour tails off with increasing age of the children. Furthermore, we have attempted to quantify the informativeness of the different nonverbal cues, that is, to what extent they actually help to discriminate between different possible referents, and how critical the timing of the cues is. The purpose of this paper is to generalise our earlier model by quantifying informativeness resulting from non-verbal cues occurring both before and after their associated verbal references.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur -- Jämförande språkvetenskap och allmän lingvistik (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature -- General Language Studies and Linguistics (hsv//eng)

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Data- och informationsvetenskap -- Språkteknologi (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Computer and Information Sciences -- Language Technology (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

language acquisition

child-directed speech

word learning

cross-situational learning

social cues

nonverbal cues

synchrony

datorlingvistik

Computational Linguistics

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)