title: Mutual exclusivity and phonological novelty constrain word learning at 16 months.
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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK. emily.mather@psy.ox.ac.uk
authors.forename: Emily
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Mather
authors.forename: Kim
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Plunkett
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D002657:Child Development; D002663:Child Language; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D014706:Verbal Learning