Learning New Words on the Fly

What is it about?

Humans are unique in our ability to learn and use thousands of meaningful communicative signals — i.e., words. What’s especially remarkable is that we can often figure out what a new word means just by seeing or hearing it in the context of everyday language. For instance, even if you’ve never seen or heard about rambutans before, a sentence like “Rambutans boast a juicy, sweet flavor” gives you strong clues that rambutans are a kind of fruit. The experiments in this study explored how we pick up words from these language context clues. The findings point to a key ingredient: the ability to briefly hold those clues in mind (like “juicy” and “sweet”) and link the meaning they suggest to the new word.

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Photo by Ling App on Unsplash

Photo by Ling App on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Our findings shed light on how our minds absorb so many words just from picking up clues to what word mean from the surrounding language context. Intriguingly, it doesn’t matter whether the helpful clues come before or after the new word. Either way, learning involves keeping the clues active in mind while connecting them to a new word.