{"pk":49279,"title":"Distributional learning over meaningful words facilitates semantic inferences about previously unknown words","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Prior research suggests that a small vocabulary of meaningful words (a semantic seed) aids distributional learning. In two experiments, we show that adults who are exposed to a complex artificial language are better at inferring the meaning of previously unknown pseudowords when they were taught a semantic seed prior to distributional exposure. We further show that the benefit of a semantic seed is driven primarily by using seed words to discover the relationship between distributional and semantic classes. These results have implications for how syntactic bootstrapping begins.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"Psychology; Cognitive development; Language acquisition; Statistical learning"}],"section":"Papers with Oral Presentation","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3v49q50n","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Abigail","middle_name":"","last_name":"Laver","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Pennsylvania","department":""},{"first_name":"Heesu","middle_name":"","last_name":"Yun","name_suffix":"","institution":"Northeastern University","department":""},{"first_name":"Albert","middle_name":"E.","last_name":"Kim","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Colorado","department":""},{"first_name":"John","middle_name":"","last_name":"Trueswell","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Pennsylvania","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2025-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/49279/galley/37240/download/"}]}