Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-7qhmt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-27T19:06:03.326Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Mutual exclusivity and phonological novelty constrain word learning at 16 months*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 November 2010

EMILY MATHER*
Affiliation:
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford
KIM PLUNKETT
Affiliation:
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford
*
Address for correspondence: Emily Mather, Department of Experimental Psychology, South Parks Road, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK. OX1 3UD. tel: +44(0)1865 271522; e-mail: emily.mather@psy.ox.ac.uk

Abstract

Studies report that infants as young as 1 ; 3 to 1 ; 5 will seek out a novel object in response to hearing a novel label (e.g. Halberda, 2003; Markman, Wasow & Hansen, 2003). This behaviour is commonly known as the ‘mutual exclusivity’ response (Markman, 1989; 1990). However, evidence for mutual exclusivity does not imply that the infant has associated a novel label with a novel object. We used an intermodal preferential looking task to investigate whether infants aged 1 ; 4 could use mutual exclusivity to guide their association of novel labels with novel objects. The results show that infants can successfully map a novel label onto a novel object, provided that the novel label has no familiar phonological neighbours. Therefore, as early as 1 ; 4, infants can use mutual exclusivity to form novel word–object associations, although this process is constrained by the phonological novelty of a label.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

[*]

This research was supported by a Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council grant (BBE0074061). We thank Lucy Holdstock, Rosie Minnigin and Emily Ruzich for their assistance, and all the parents and infants who made this research possible.

References

REFERENCES

Baldwin, D. A. (1993). Infants' ability to consult the speaker for clues to word reference. Journal of Child Language 20, 395418.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Baldwin, D. A., Markman, E. M., Bill, B., Desjardins, N., Irwin, J. M. & Tidball, G. (1996). Infants' reliance on a social criterion for establishing word–object relations. Child Development 67(6), 3135–53.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clark, E. (1987). The principle of contrast: A constraint on language acquisition. In MacWhinney, B. (ed.), Mechanisms of language acquisition, 133. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Dempster, A. P., Laird, N. M. & Rubin, D. B. (1977). Maximum likelihood from incomplete data via the EM algorithm. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B 39(1), 138.Google Scholar
Dewar, K. & Xu, F. (2007). Do 9-month-old infants expect distinct words to refer to kinds? Developmental Psychology 43, 1227–38.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Golinkoff, R. M., Mervis, C. B. & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (1994). Early object labels – the case for a developmental lexical principles framework. Journal of Child Language 21(1), 125–55.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Halberda, J. (2003). The development of a word-learning strategy. Cognition 87, B23B34.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hamilton, A., Plunkett, K. & Schafer, G. (2000). Infant vocabulary development assessed with a British Communicative Development Inventory. Journal of Child Language 27, 689705.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hollich, G., Hirsch-Pasek, K. & Golinkoff, R. M. (2000). Breaking the language barrier: An emergentist coalition model for the origins of word learning. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 65(3) (Serial No. 262).Google ScholarPubMed
Horst, J. S. & Samuelson, L. K. (2008). Fast mapping but poor retention by 24-month-old infants. Infancy 13(2), 128–57.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Houston-Price, C., Mather, E. & Sakkalou, E. (2007). Discrepancy between parental reports of infants' receptive vocabulary and infants' behaviour in a preferential looking task. Journal of Child Language 34(4), 701724.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Houston-Price, C., Plunkett, K. & Harris, P. L. (2005). Word learning ‘wizardry’ at 1 ; 6. Journal of Child Language 32, 175–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hutchinson, J. E. (1986). Children's sensitivity to the contrastive use of object category terms. Papers and Reports on Child Language Development 25, 4956.Google Scholar
Markman, E. M. (1989). Categorization and naming in children: Problems of induction. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Markman, E. M. (1990). Constraints children place on word meanings. Cognitive Science 14(1), 5777.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Markman, E. M. & Wachtel, G. F. (1988). Children's use of mutual exclusivity to constrain the meanings of words. Cognitive Psychology 20, 121–57.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Markman, E. M., Wasow, J. L. & Hansen, M. B. (2003). Use of the mutual exclusivity assumption by young word learners. Cognitive Psychology 47, 241–75.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mather, E. & Plunkett, K. (2009). Learning words over time: The role of stimulus repetition in mutual exclusivity. Infancy 14(1), 6076.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mather, E. & Plunkett, K. (2010). Novel labels support 10-month-olds' attention to novel objects. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 105, 232–42.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Meints, K., Plunkett, K., Harris, P. L. & Dimmock, D. (2004). The cow on the high street: Effects of background context on early naming. Cognitive Development 19(3), 275–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merriman, W. E. & Bowman, L. L. (1989). The mutual exclusivity bias in children's word learning. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 54(3–4) (Serial no. 220).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Merriman, W. E., Marazita, J. & Jarvis, L. (1995). Children's disposition to map new words onto new referents. In Tomasello, M. & Merriman, W. E. (eds), Beyond names for things: Young children's acquisition of verbs, 147–83. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Merriman, W. E. & Schuster, J. M. (1991). Young children's disambiguation of object name reference. Child Development 62(6), 1288–301.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mervis, C. B. & Bertrand, J. (1994). Acquisition of the novel name-nameless category (n3c) principle. Child Development 65(6), 1646–62.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schafer, G. & Plunkett, K. (1998). Rapid word learning by 15-month-olds under tightly controlled conditions. Child Development 69(2), 309320.Google Scholar
Schafer, G., Plunkett, K. & Harris, P. L. (1999). What's in a name? Lexical knowledge drives infants' visual preferences in the absence of referential input. Developmental Science 2(2), 187–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swingley, D. & Aslin, R. N. (2000). Spoken word recognition and lexical representation in very young children. Cognition 76(2), 147–66.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Swingley, D. & Aslin, R. N. (2007). Lexical competition in young children's word learning. Cognitive Psychology 54, 99132.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
White, K. S. & Morgan, J. L. (2008). Sub-segmental detail in early lexical representations. Journal of Memory and Language 59, 114–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar