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.

翻译：课程学习已成为BabyLM挑战中提升小规模语言模型认知合理性的常用策略，但该方法相较于非课程模型尚未带来显著改进。本研究评估理论语言学习得理论能否用于制定更精细的课程学习策略，通过构建四个类型学距离较远语系的儿童导向言语年龄序列语料库，实现跨语言的小规模语言模型及受习得理论启发的课程设计。通过比较三种精确复现习得理论预测的客观课程（递进式、内聚式与MMM）在标准小规模语言模型架构上的表现，我们发现：精细化的习得启发式课程能够超越非课程基线模型，且通过制定精确复现语言习得理论的精细化语言特定课程，可以衍生出小规模语言模型中课程策略的性能优势。