Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T21:46:47.403Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Explaining the disambiguation effect: Don't exclude mutual exclusivity*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 June 2009

VIKRAM K. JASWAL
VIKRAM K. JASWAL*
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
*
Address for correspondence: Vikram Jaswal, Department of Psychology, 102 Gilmer Hall, P.O. Box 400400, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4400. tel: (434) 982-4709; fax: (434) 982-4766; e-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

When they see a familiar object and an unfamiliar one, and are asked to select the referent of a novel label, children usually choose the unfamiliar object. We asked whether this ‘disambiguation effect’ reflects an expectation that each object has just one label (mutual exclusivity), or an expectation about the intent of the speaker who uses a novel label. In Study 1, when a speaker gazed at or pointed toward the familiar object in a novel–familiar pair, children aged 2 ; 6 (N=64) selected that object in response to a neutral request, but were much less likely to do so in response to a label request. In Study 2, when a speaker both gazed at and pointed toward the familiar object, toddlers (N=16) overwhelmingly selected the familiar object in response to a label request. The expectation that each object has just one label can lead children to discount some individual behavioral cues to a speaker's intent, though it can be overridden given a combination of pragmatic cues.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , January 2010 , pp. 95 - 113
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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

[*]

Thanks to the children and parents who participated in these studies. Thanks also to Heather Burns, Christin Chambers, Christina Cheung, Lindsay Goldman, Lauren Malone, Mayra Perez and Anna Walters for assistance with data collection and coding, and to Andrei Cimpian and Rechele Brooks for helpful discussion. This research was supported by NICHD Grant HD-053403.

References

REFERENCES

Baldwin, D. A. (1991). Infants' contribution to the achievement of joint reference. Child Development 62, 875–90.Google Scholar
Baldwin, D. A. (1993). Infants' ability to consult the speaker for clues to word reference. Journal of Child Language 20, 395–418.Google Scholar
Baron-Cohen, S. (1995). Mindblindness: An essay on autism and theory of mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Behne, T., Carpenter, M. & Tomasello, M. (2005). One-year-olds comprehend the communicative intentions behind gestures in a hiding game. Developmental Science 8, 492–99.Google Scholar
Behrend, D. A. (1990). Constraints and development: A reply to Nelson (1988). Cognitive Development 5, 313–30.Google Scholar
Bloom, P. (2000). How children learn the meanings of words. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Callanan, M. A. & Sabbagh, M. A. (2004). Multiple labels for objects in conversations with young children: Parents' language and children's developing expectations about word meanings. Developmental Psychology 40, 746–63.Google Scholar
Carey, S. & Bartlett, E. (1978). Acquiring a single new word. Papers and Reports on Child Language Development 15, 17–29.Google Scholar
Clark, E. V. (1988). On the logic of contrast. Journal of Child Language 15, 317–35.Google Scholar
Clark, E. V. (1990). On the pragmatics of contrast. Journal of Child Language 17, 417–31.Google Scholar
Clark, E. V. (1991). Acquisitional principles in lexical development. In Gelman, S. A. & Byrnes, J. P. (eds), Perspectives on language and thought: Interrelations in development, 31–71. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Clark, E. V. (1997). Conceptual perspective and lexical choice in acquisition. Cognition 64, 1–37.Google Scholar
Clark, E. V. & Grossman, J. B. (1998). Pragmatic directions and children's word learning. Journal of Child Language 25, 1–18.Google Scholar
Couillard, N. L. & Woodward, A. L. (1999). Children's comprehension of deceptive points. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 17, 515–21.Google Scholar
Diesendruck, G. & Markson, L. (2001). Children's avoidance of lexical overlap: A pragmatic account. Developmental Psychology 37, 630–41.Google Scholar
Evey, J. A. & Merriman, W. E. (1998). The prevalence and the weaknesses of an early name mapping preference. Journal of Child Language 25, 121–47.Google Scholar
Gathercole, V. C. (1987). The contrastive hypothesis for the acquisition of word meanings: A reconsideration of the theory. Journal of Child Language 14, 493–531.Google Scholar
Gathercole, V. C. (1989). Contrast: A semantic constraint? Journal of Child Language 16, 685–702.Google Scholar
Golinkoff, R. M., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Bailey, L. M. & Wenger, N. R. (1992). Young children and adults use lexical principles to learn new nouns. Developmental Psychology 28, 99–108.Google Scholar
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, 125–55.Google Scholar
Graham, S. A., Poulin-Dubois, D. & Baker, R. K. (1998). Infants' disambiguation of novel object words. First Language 18, 149–64.Google Scholar
Haryu, E. (1991). A developmental study of children's use of mutual exclusivity and context to interpret novel words. Japanese Journal of Educational Psychology 39, 11–20.Google Scholar
Haryu, E. & Imai, I. (1999). Controlling the application of the mutual exclusivity assumption in the acquisition of lexical hierarchies. Japanese Psychological Research 41, 21–34.Google Scholar
Hollich, G. J., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Golinkoff, R. M., Brand, R. J., Brown, E., Chung, H. L. et al. (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), v–123.Google Scholar
Jaswal, V. K. & Hansen, M. B. (2006). Learning words: Children disregard some pragmatic information that conflicts with mutual exclusivity. Developmental Science 9(2), 158–65.Google Scholar
Johnson, S. C., Ok, S. J. & Luo, Y. (2007). The attribution of attention: 9-month-olds' interpretation of gaze as goal-directed action. Developmental Science 10, 530–37.Google Scholar
Kaminski, J., Call, J. & Fischer, J. (2004). Word learning in a domestic dog: Evidence for ‘fast mapping’. Science 304, 1682–83.Google Scholar
Kemler Nelson, D. G., Egan, L. C. & Holt, M. B. (2004). When children ask, ‘what is it?’ what do they want to know about artifacts? Psychological Science 15, 384–89.Google Scholar
Liittschwager, J. C. & Markman, E. M. (1994). Sixteen- and 24-month-olds' use of mutual exclusivity as a default assumption in second-label learning. Developmental Psychology 30, 955–68.Google Scholar
Markman, E. M. (1989). Categorization and naming in children: Problems of induction. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Markman, E. M. (1992). Constraints on word learning: Speculations about their nature, origins, and domain specificity. In Gunnar, M. R. & Maratsos, M. (eds), Modularity and constraints in language and cognition, 59–101. Hillsdale, NJ: LEA.Google 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.Google Scholar
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.Google Scholar
Merriman, W. E. (1991). The mutual exclusivity bias in children's word learning: A reply to Woodward and Markman. Developmental Review 11, 164–91.Google 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 (Serial 220), 54(3–4).Google Scholar
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, 1288–1301.Google Scholar
Nelson, K. (1988). Constraints on word learning? Cognitive Development 3, 221–46.Google Scholar
Preissler, M. A. & Carey, S. (2005). The role of inferences about referential intent in word learning: Evidence from autism. Cognition 97, B13–B23.Google Scholar
Scofield, J. & Behrend, D. A. (2007). Two-year-olds differentially disambiguate words and facts. Journal of Child Language 34, 875–89.Google Scholar
Tomasello, M. (2001). Perceiving intentions and learning words in the second year of life. In Bowerman, M. & Levinson, S. C. (eds), Language acquisition and conceptual development, 132–58. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Woodward, A. L. & Markman, E. M. (1998). Early word learning. In Kuhn, D. & Siegler, R. (eds), Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 2. Cognition, perception, and language, 371–420. New York: John Wiley and Sons.Google Scholar