Vocabulary Development - Mapping Problem

Mapping Problem

In word learning, the mapping problem refers to the question of how infants attach the forms of language to the things that they experience in the world. There are infinite objects, concepts, and actions in the world that words could be mapped onto. Many theories have been proposed to account for the way in which the language learner successfully maps words onto the correct objects, concepts, and actions.

While domain-specific accounts of word learning argue for innate constraints that limit infants' hypotheses about word meanings, domain-general perspectives argue that word learning can be accounted for by general cognitive processes, such as learning and memory, which are not specific to language. Yet other theorists have proposed social pragmatic accounts, which stress the role of caregivers in guiding infants through the word learning process. According to some research, however, children are active participants in their own word learning, although caregivers may still play an important role in this process. Recently, an emergentist coalition model has also been proposed to suggest that word learning cannot be fully attributed to a single factor. Instead, a variety of cues, including salient and social cues, may be utilized by infants at different points in their vocabulary development.