title: Young children's referent selection is guided by novelty for both words and actions.
abstract: Young children are biased to select novel, name-unknown objects as referents of novel labels and to similarly favor novel, action-unknown objects as referents of novel actions. What process underlies these common behaviors? In the case of word learning, children may be driven by a novelty bias favoring novel objects as referents. Our study investigated this bias further by investigating whether novelty also affects children's selection of novel objects when a new action is given. In a pre-exposure session, 40 3- and 4-year-olds were shown eight novel objects for 1 min. In subsequent referent selection trials, children were shown two pre-exposed objects and one super-novel object and either heard a novel name or saw a novel action. The super-novel object was selected significantly more than the pre-exposed objects on both word and action trials. Our data add to the growing literature suggesting that an endogenous attentional bias to novelty plays a role in children's referent selection and demonstrates further parallels between word and action learning.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Hull, Hull HU6 7RX, UK.
authors.forename: Erin L
authors.initials: EL
authors.lastname: Dysart
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Hull, Hull HU6 7RX, UK.
authors.forename: Emily
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Mather
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Hull, Hull HU6 7RX, UK. Electronic address: k.riggs@hull.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Kevin J
authors.initials: KJ
authors.lastname: Riggs
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D002755:Choice Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male
keywords: Action–object mapping; Domain-general cognition; Novelty; Referent selection; Word learning; Word–object mapping