[2] The process was first formally articulated and the term 'fast mapping' coined Susan Carey and Elsa Bartlett in 1978.
[5] Typically, words such as "blue" and "yellow" appear in their vocabularies and they produce them in appropriate places in speech, but their application of individual color terms is haphazard and interchangeable.
A study conducted by Yu & Ballard (2007), introduced cross-situational learning,[7] a method based on Locke's theory.
A popular theory to explain this inductive reasoning is that children apply word-learning constraints to the situation where a novel word is introduced.
There are speculations as to why this is; Markman and Wachtel (1988) conducted a study that helps explain the possible underlying principles of fast mapping.
An experiment performed in October 2012 by the Department of Psychology by University of Pennsylvania,[12] researchers attempted to determine if fast mapping occurs via cross-situational learning or by another method, "Propose but verify".
However, more recent studies have shown that words learned by fast mapping tend to be forgotten over time.
This is a possible explanation for why previous studies showed high retention of words learned by fast mapping.
[16] By the time a bilingual child is of school age, they perform equally on naming tasks when compared to monolingual children.
[17] By the age of adulthood, bilingual individuals have acquired word-learning strategies believed to be of assistance on fast mapping tasks.
[18] One example is speech practice, a strategy where the participant listens and reproduces the word in order to assist in remembering and decrease the likelihood of forgetting .
[19] Bilingualism can increase an individual's cognitive abilities and contribute to their success in fast mapping words, even when they are using a nonnative language.
[21] Children from low SES families were able to use multiple sources of information in order to fast map novel words.
[22] Three learning supports that have been proven to help with the fast mapping of words are saliency, repetition and generation of information.
[14] The amount of face-to-face interaction a child has with their parent affects his or her ability to fast map novel words.
Interaction with a parent leads to greater exposure to words in different contexts, which in turn promotes language acquisition.
[23] When a child is asked to generate the word it promotes the transition to long-term memory to a larger extent.
The researchers, who conducted the experiment, mention the possibility that a language acquisition device specific to humans does not control fast mapping.
In these sentences, syntax was altered in various contexts to prove she had not just memorized full phrases or inferred the expectation through gestures from her evaluators.
[30] A study by Lederberg et al., was performed to determine if deaf and hard of hearing children fast map to learn novel words.
The results of the study indicated that deaf and hard of hearing children do perform fast mapping to learn novel words.
In 2013, "Word Learning Processes in Children with Cochlear Implants" by Elizabeth Walker and others indicated that although there may be some levels of increased vocabulary acquisition in CI individuals, many post-implantees generally were slower developers of his/her own lexicon.
The conclusion draws from the experiment revealed that adults with ADHD were the least accurate at "mapping semantic features and slower to respond to lexical labels."
"[38] Fast mapping in individuals with aphasia has gained research attention due to its effect on speaking, listening, reading, and writing.
Because individuals with Wernicke's aphasia are only limited in their understanding of semantic meaning, it makes sense that the participant's novel stimulus recall would not be affected.
[40] This implies that expressive language deficits are unrelated to the ability to connect word and referent in a single exposure.
Even though all groups in the study had fast mapping performances above chance levels, in comparison to boys showing typical development, those with ASD and FXS demonstrated much more difficulty in comprehending and remembering names assigned to the novel objects.
The authors concluded that initial processes involved in associative learning, such as fast mapping, are hindered in boys with FXS and ASD.