Work

20-month-olds can use negative evidence while learning word meanings

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Decades of research in psychology have built models and theoretical assumptions about language development evaluating how children extract information from positive evidence to learn the meanings of novel words. In the present set of studies, we evaluated whether children can also consider negative evidence, information about what a word cannot refer to. Across two experiments (n = 73), we show that English-learning 20-month-olds can use negative evidence in the form of negative sentences (e.g., "This is not a danu") to constrain their interpretation of a novel word meaning ("danu"). These findings raise the possibility that learning word meanings through positive evidence alone, while possible, may not be the most accurate characterization of the word learning process and invite further developments of current word learning theories and models that incorporate negative evidence.

Source: Cognition

DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2025.106171

Authors: Alex de Carvalho, Isabelle Dautriche

Institutions: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Université Paris Cité, Laboratoire de Psychologie du Développement et de L’Education de l’enfant, Aix-Marseille Université, Centre de Recherche en Psychologie et Neurosciences

Language: English

Topic: Language Development and Disorders

Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Quality education

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,910