Fast Mapping

Fast mapping is the ability, prominent in young children acquiring language, to form a usable initial link between a new word and its meaning after only a single, brief exposure, without requiring the repeated, deliberate instruction that most other kinds of learning need. A child who hears an unfamiliar word applied to an unfamiliar object in conversation can typically infer the word's approximate meaning immediately and go on to use it, though full, adult-level knowledge of the word is refined through many further encounters. The phenomenon helps explain how children build a vocabulary of thousands of words in the first few years of life far faster than explicit teaching alone could account for.