Computational models of early language acquisition (LA) play an important role in understanding the acquisition and processing of spoken language. Since language is an extremely complex phenomenon, computational studies typically address only a specific aspect of the LA at a time. This calls for a huge number of assumptions regarding the other cognitive processes of the learning system, and these assumptions can have significant consequences to the ecological plausibility of the simulations. In this paper, we review the developmental status of a number of cognitive processes during the first year of infant's life that are typically involved in the computational simulations of LA. How these findings are related to the plausibility of different simplifications and assumptions in computational models are also discussed.

Index Terms: language acquisition, computational modeling, statistical learning