Child Development and Language Model Training: Comparing Psychological Theories of Learning
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.4396/2025SFL03Keywords:
linguistics, philosophy of language, language models, language acquisition, cognitive developmentAbstract
This article presents a comparison between language model training techniques and the phenomenon of child language learning. The concept of learning, while central to human cognition, has struggled to find a stable place within the theoretical debate on language models, largely because training procedures appear to bear little resemblance to human learning and are markedly less efficient. The paper provides an overview of the relationship between the two processes, examining the theoretical challenges raised by dominant approaches in both the language model and developmental psychology literatures. Its aim is to assess whether learning and training are fundamentally incommensurable, or whether a comparison between the two might yield insights into both models’ behaviour and child cognitive development. The analysis reveals interesting points of contact, shifting the focus of the discussion away from biological and psychological innate constraints toward environmental and linguistic learning conditions.
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