Learning and Playing in Wubble World

Children do not learn the meanings of words from parsing and understanding gigabytes of text; instead meanings are learned from competent speakers who relate language to what's happening in the child's environment. We present a word learning algorithm that operates in a video game environment where the players fill the role of the competent speakers and train softbots to learn language as a child would. We provide empirical evidence that the word learning algorithm successfully learns the meanings for some words in this environment and the children enjoy playing the game.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: AIIDE
• Authors: Wesley Kerr, Paul R. Cohen, Yu-Han Chang
• Keywords: AIIDE 2008, Artificial Intelligence, Competent Speakers, Video Game Environment, Word Learning Algorithm