title: Discourse bootstrapping: preschoolers use linguistic discourse to learn new words.
abstract: When children acquire language, they often learn words in the absence of direct instruction (e.g. 'This is a ball!') or even social cues to reference (e.g. eye gaze, pointing). However, there are few accounts of how children do this, especially in cases where the referent of a new word is ambiguous. Across two experiments, we test whether preschoolers (2- to 4-year-olds; n = 239) can learn new words by inferring the referent of a new word from the surrounding linguistic discourse. Across two experiments, we show that children as young as 2 can learn a new word from the linguistic discourse in which it appears. This suggests that children use the linguistic discourse in which a word appears to learn new words.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Skidmore College, USA.
authors.forename: Jessica
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Sullivan
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, USA.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Barner
mesh_terms: D002675:Child, Preschool; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007804:Language Development; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male; D013060:Speech; D014706:Verbal Learning; D014825:Vocabulary