Monolingual and bilingual children's use of the mutual exclusivity constraint.
The use of the mutual exclusivity constraint was examined in three-year-old and six-year-old children who were either monolingual in English (N = 32) or bilingual in English/Urdu (N = 32) or in English/Greek (N = 32). Three tests of the constraint were used: disambiguation rejection, and restriction. On the disambiguation test, the mutual exclusivity bias was significantly more evident in five- and six-year-old monolingual children than in their same-age bilingual peers. Monolingual children were also more likely than bilingual children to reject a new name for a familiar object. However, using a restriction test, neither monolingual nor bilingual children readily accepted and restricted typical names for hybrid objects. Developmental differences were also found, as older (five- to six-year-old) monolingual children's responses on the tests were generally more consistent with the constraint than younger (three- to four-year-old) children's responses. Nevertheless, bilingual children did use the constraint, but not to the extent of monolingual children.
Davidson
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D
Department of Psychology, Loyola University, Chicago, IL 60626, USA. ddavids@luc.edu
Jergovic
D
D
Imami
Z
Z
Theodos
V
V
D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007807:Language Tests; D008297:Male; D019303:Multilingualism; D014705:Verbal Behavior; D014825:Vocabulary