The influence of object pre-exposure on two-year-olds' disambiguation of novel labels.
We investigated whether manipulating the perceived novelty of nameless objects would influence two-year-olds' tendency to map novel words to these objects. In Experiment 1, children who had been pre-exposed to target nameless objects were more likely to map novel words onto those objects than children who were not pre-exposed to the objects or children who were pre-exposed to non-target members of the nameless object categories. In Experiment 2, children who were pre-exposed to a nameless object were more likely to assign the novel label to that object than to either a familiar object or an unfamiliar object that had not been pre-exposed. The results of these studies suggest that reducing the novelty of nameless objects increases two-year-olds' tendency to map a novel word to a nameless object.
Graham
Susan A
SA
Department of Psychology, University of Calgary, Canada. grahams@ucalgary.ca
Turner
Juanita N
JN
Henderson
Annette M E
AM
D002663:Child Language; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008037:Linguistics; D008297:Male; D013068:Speech Production Measurement; D014705:Verbal Behavior