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arXiv · 2410.22886

Less is More: Pre-Training Cross-Lingual Small-Scale Language Models with Cognitively-Plausible Curriculum Learning Strategies

Suchir Salhan·Richard Diehl Martinez·Zébulon Goriely·Paula Buttery
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Abstract

Curriculum Learning has been a popular strategy to improve the cognitive plausibility of Small-Scale Language Models (SSLMs) in the BabyLM Challenge. However, it has not led to considerable improvements over non-curriculum models. We assess whether theoretical linguistic acquisition theories can be used to specify more fine-grained curriculum learning strategies, creating age-ordered corpora of Child-Directed Speech for four typologically distant language families to implement SSLMs and acquisition-inspired curricula cross-lingually. Comparing the success of three objective curricula (Growing, Inwards and MMM) that precisely replicate the predictions of acquisition theories on a standard SSLM architecture, we find fine-grained acquisition-inspired curricula can outperform non-curriculum baselines and performance benefits of curricula strategies in SSLMs can be derived by specifying fine-grained language-specific curricula that precisely replicate language acquisition theories.

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Suchir Salhan, Richard Diehl Martinez, Zébulon Goriely, Paula Buttery. 2025-02-21. Less is More: Pre-Training Cross-Lingual Small-Scale Language Models with Cognitively-Plausible Curriculum Learning Strategies. https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.22886

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