Psychology Application Essay: Fast Mapping

            Single mapping is the thought that holds that children have the capability of learning a word on the ground of one exposure.  This is because children have been established to be fast at picking words as well as establishing how they can use the words (Shaffer, 2010). Fast mapping concept holds that children learn on how to utilize a certain word after hearing it for the first time and they are thus able to know how to use the word.  The children accomplish to use the word effectively even after hearing it for the first time this is because they utilize the information and knowledge that they have in order to know where to position the word (Shaffer, 2010).  More often children are bound to light the meaning of the given word by excluding the existing possibilities that they hold several words that are attached to them. The children, therefore, apply the learned word to several actions or objects which have no known names to them. 

            Fast mapping concept is effective in explaining why children are fully able to learn the mother tongue language without being engaged in active learning (Shaffer, 2010).  They learn the language by selecting up words as well as what they mean through daily activities and from those that surrounds them. Language mapping is an important concept during the acquisition process of language in young individuals and this, therefore, explains the high rate of children in learning vocabularies.  However in order for the fast mapping process to be fully effective  a child is therefore required to be a holder  of  retention and  selection referent of a word.  This can be accomplished by kids who are as young as two years old even with the presence of distracters or time constraint (Shaffer, 2010).

            The concept of fast mapping helps children to retain the memory of the word for a substantial time amount after being exposed for the first time.  Even with a single exposure child are able to retain the word even a week after without hearing the word for the second time.  The ability to recall novel words in young children exceeds their aptitude of recalling different types of information such as facts in regard to the novel (Shaffer, 2010). Therefore, a fast mapping is an effective mechanism which is more specified in learning words.

            In my own personal experience, I visited my aunt’s place several weeks ago and my kid who is almost two years old cousin was playing on the floor. As I was talking to my aunt I noticed that their family picture on the wall was somehow tilted and I told my aunt that the picture was tilted. My cousin was able to pick the word tilted despite the fact that he was fully involved in his play.  Lately, when he points at the picture and say that the picture is tilted. Rom this it is clear that the kid was able to pick the world tilted from our conversation and figured out on how to use it in his wording. The concept of fast mapping is thus true that children have the aptitude for learning wording application which helps them in developing a language without being engaged in active teachings.  The integral fast mapping concept is that children utilize the knowledge that they acquire in contracting options of the things that the word they acquired would be referring to (Shaffer, 2010).

 

 

            Reference

Shaffer, D. R., & Kipp, K. (2010). Developmental psychology: Childhood and adolescence.         Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.