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Mapping Hypothesis

Mapping hypothesis is a model of word learning in early language development in which the child follows the adult’s attention to identify the referent and create a mental map between the referent and the label that the adult provided. The model is increased to include a priori constraints on the possible hypotheses children test and to differentiate fast and slow mapping. Mapping hypothesis is an associative model of word learning, primarily used to describe the acquisition of object labels.

Some researchers have used the term mapping hypothesis to describe the interpretation of sentences with multiple subjects. This work led to a therapeutic approach to increasing sentence comprehension for individuals with nonfluent aphasia. Another separate use of the term direct mapping hypothesis is used by a faction of researchers in experimental research to refer to the process children undergo in the development of letter–sound correlations. This entry provides an overview of mapping hypothesis as it relates to the word learning process, as well as provides a critique of reducing the complexities of word learning down to mapping hypothesis.

Word Learning Process

Mapping hypothesis describes the acquisition of vocabulary using the associative metaphor of mapping between the referent and the label. The basic model includes a two-part process of word learning. First, the child is exposed to the ostensive definition, which means the adult and the child share attention on an unfamiliar object and the adult labels the object. The child creates multiple hypotheses about how the unfamiliar label may possibly map onto the real world. Then, the child tests these hypotheses to eliminate all but the correct referent. By eliminating all other possibilities, a process that has been explained with innate constraint principles, the child maps the word used to the real-world object.

At the completion of the mapping process, the child is assumed to have a similar mental concept mapped to the word as that of the adult partner. The metaphorical mapping of word to world achieves reference, and according to the theory of mapping hypothesis, this is assumed to mean that the child has achieved full conceptual knowledge of the meaning of the word.

Referent Constraints

In his 1960 book Word and Object, Willard Quine, using the adult linguist’s attempt to learn an unknown language as a model for children’s learning, argued that all possible hypotheses would be too much to eliminate. Experimental researchers have attempted to explain how mapping hypothesis could still explain word learning by adding to the model a priori principles that would constrain the child’s attention and anchor him or her, preventing the child from being lost in a sea of all possible hypotheses.

In the 1980s, researchers concluded that these abstract constraints cause children’s attention to shift to taxonomic relations to create hypothesis of the mapping relation of unfamiliar words. Later, this view was expanded to specify that children are more likely to assume labels refer to whole objects rather than parts or characteristics of objects.

Fast and Slow Mapping

In the 1980s, the mapping hypothesis model has been further expanded to contrast fast mapping and slow mapping. Fast mapping, also called incidental learning, is an initial stage of processing in which the child achieves the use of the word after only a minimum exposure. Slow mapping, also called extended mapping, is the clarifying process in which the child’s understanding of the word continues to be refined with increased usage and exposure to the word.

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