Other ‘routes in’? Has the ‘fast’ in the fast mapping concept led us astray?

The notion of fast mapping originated in an effort to explain the remarkable adeptness and acceleration with which toddlers learn new words. Yet, by abstracting selected elements of fast mapping away from the embodied, richly concrete, intermeshed social-interactional experiences of the word-learning child, we may be missing opportunities to understand how adults with amnesia also may acquire new semantic knowledge.