{"pk":25623,"title":"Referential cues modulate attention and memory\nduring cross-situational word learning","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Tracking word-object co-occurrence statistics can reduce referential\nuncertainty during word learning. But human learners\nare constrained by limits on attention and memory, and therefore\nmust store a subset of the information available—how do\nthey select what information to store? We hypothesize that the\npresence of referential cues like eye gaze guides how learners\nallocate their attention. In three large-scale experiments\nwith adults, we test how the presence of referential cues affects\ncross-situational word learning. Referential cues shift learners\naway from multiple hypothesis tracking towards storing only a\nsingle hypothesis (Experiments 1 and 2). In addition, learners\nare sensitive to the reliability of a referential cue and when it is\nless reliable, they are less likely to use the cue and more likely\nto store multiple hypotheses (Experiment 3). Together, the data\nsuggest a rational tradeoff: In conditions of greater uncertainty,\nlearners tend to store a broader range of information.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"statistical learning"},{"word":"word learning"},{"word":"referential\ncues"},{"word":"resource rationality"}],"section":"Papers","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5rx7w4kb","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Kyle","middle_name":"","last_name":"MacDonald","name_suffix":"","institution":"Stanford University","department":""},{"first_name":"Daniel","middle_name":"","last_name":"Yurovsky","name_suffix":"","institution":"Stanford University","department":""},{"first_name":"Michael","middle_name":"C","last_name":"Frank","name_suffix":"","institution":"Stanford University","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2015-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/25623/galley/15247/download/"}]}