Why Do Children Think Words Are Mutually Exclusive?
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: How do children learn what a word means when its uses are consistent with many possiblemeanings? One influential idea is that children rely on an inductive bias that ensures that novelwords get assigned distinct meanings from known words – Mutual Exclusivity. Here, we explorethe possibility that Mutual Exclusivity phenomena do not reflect a bias, but rather informationencoded in the message: learners might effectively be told when and when not to assume thatword meanings are mutually exclusive. In three experiments (N=106, ages 2;0−2;11 from acrossthe United States), we show that 2-year-olds only assume that novel words have distinctmeanings if the words were spoken with 'focus', an information-structural marker of contrast.Without focus, we found no Mutual Exclusivity; novel words were understood to label familiarobjects. These results provide a novel account of Mutual Exclusivity and demonstrate an early-emerging understanding of focus and information structure.
Source: Psychological Science
Authors: Gabor Brody, Roman Feiman, Athulya Aravind
Institutions: Brown University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $3,700
Funder: Jacobs Foundation
OpenAlex ID: W4404587189