The graphics/visualization is breathtaking but what they learned from all of that analysis seems very limited: Apparently, when caregivers discover that a child is learning a word they simplify their use of that word till the child grasps it and then revert back to normal usage once the child can use the word.
It could very well be that their regular usage of the word that the child is learning is unaffected, but in addition they use the word more often in simple sentences around the child, and once the child understand the word revert back to regular usage patterns/frequency. That would explain the results and does not seem that interesting.
I am studying Natural Language Processing, so I have been interested in how humans learn language, in order to understand if the process can be replicated such that a computer can learn a human language. I think we would have to read the actual paper to really understand their findings, but the main thing I took away from this is: in order for a child to learn a language the parents apparently subconsciously alter the way they speak (whether it is just to or also around the child), language learning appears to be tied to psychical locations and children seem to rely heavy on feedback by their care takers.
That would be an indication that there is a limit to what computers can learn about human language by analyzing textual data (like e.g. Google Translate does). This is related to the poverty of the stimulus argument in linguistics. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_of_the_stimulus)
The graphics/visualization is breathtaking but what they learned from all of that analysis seems very limited: Apparently, when caregivers discover that a child is learning a word they simplify their use of that word till the child grasps it and then revert back to normal usage once the child can use the word.
It could very well be that their regular usage of the word that the child is learning is unaffected, but in addition they use the word more often in simple sentences around the child, and once the child understand the word revert back to regular usage patterns/frequency. That would explain the results and does not seem that interesting.