Word learning in the field: Adapting a laboratory-based task for testing in remote Papua New Guinea.

ABSTRACT: Adapting laboratory psycholinguistic methods to fieldwork contexts can be fraught with difficulties. However, successful implementation of such methods in the field enhances our ability to learn the true extent and limitations of human behavior. This paper reports two attempts to run word learning experiments with the small community of Nungon speakers in Towet village in the Saruwaged Mountains, Papua New Guinea. A first attempt involved running a cross-situational task in which word-object pairings were presented ambiguously in each trial, and an explicit word learning task in which pairings were presented explicitly, or unambiguously, in each trial. While this quickly garnered a respectable 34 participants over the course of a week, it yielded null results, with many participants appear

SUBMITTER: Mulak KE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8445465 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature