Word Learning and Concepts

Review Articles

Barner, D., Li, P. & Snedeker, J. (2010). Words as windows to thought: the case of object representation. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 1-6.

Snedeker, J. (2009). Word Learning. In L. R. Squire (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Neuroscience (pp. 503-508). Amsterdam: Elsevier

Novel Word - Novel Concept Learning

de Marchena, A., Worek, A., Ono, K., Eigsti, I. & Snedeker, J. (2011). Mutual exclusivity in autism spectrum disorders: Testing the pragmatic hypothesis. Cognition, 119, 96-113.

Huang, Y. T., Spelke, E. S., & Snedeker, J. (2010). When is four far more than three? Children’s generalization of newly acquired number words. Psychological Science, 21, 600-606.

Zinchenko, E. & Snedeker, J. “The role of functions and motor actions in early tool concepts.”

Barner, D. & Snedeker, J. (2008). Compositionality and statistics in adjective acquisition: 4-year olds interpret tall and short based on the size distributions of novel noun referents. Child Development, 79(3), 594-608.

Havasi, C. & Snedeker, J. (2004). The Adaptability of Language-Specific Verb Lexicalization Biases. Proceedings of the Twenty-sixth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Mahwah, NJ, USA: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Human Simulations

Medina, T.N., Snedeker, J., Trueswell, J.C., & Gleitman, L.R. (2011). How words can and cannot be learned by observation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108: 9014-9019.

Snedeker, J. & Gleitman, L. (2004). Why it is hard to label our concepts. In D. G. Hall & S. R. Waxman (Eds.), Weaving a Lexicon (pp. 257-294). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Snedeker, J., Li, P. & Yuan, S. (2003). Cross-Cultural Differences in the Input to Early Word Learning. Proceedings of the Twenty-fifth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Mahwah, NJ, USA: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Snedeker, J., Brent, L. & Gleitman, L. (2001). The changing character of the mental lexicon: An information-based account of early word learning. Unpublished manuscript.

Snedeker, J. & Li, P. (2000). Can the situations in which words occur account for cross-linguistic variation in vocabulary composition? In J Tai. & Y. Chang (Eds.), Proceedings of the Seventh International Symposium on Chinese Languages and Linguistics.

Snedeker, J. (2000). Cross-situational observation and the semantic bootstrapping hypothesis. In E. Clark (Ed.), Proceedings of the Thirtieth Annual Child Language Research Forum. Stanford, CA: Center for the Study of Language and Information.

Snedeker, J., Gleitman, L. & Brent, M. (1999). The successes and failures of word-to-world mapping. In A. Greenhill, M. Hughs, H. Littlefield, & H. Walsh (Eds.), Proceedings of the Twenty-third Boston University Conference on Language Development. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.

Other Online Resources

Niyogi, S. & Snedeker, J. (2005). Solutions to Fodor’s Problem of Concept Acquisition. Twenty-seventh Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Stresa, Italy, July 2005. (transcript)