Language Experience Shapes the Development of the Mutual Exclusivity Bias

Infancy : the Official Journal of the International Society on Infant Studies
Carmel Houston-PriceEleonora Raviglione

Abstract

Halberda (2003) demonstrated that 17-month-old infants, but not 14- or 16-month-olds, use a strategy known as mutual exclusivity (ME) to identify the meanings of new words. When 17-month-olds were presented with a novel word in an intermodal preferential looking task, they preferentially fixated a novel object over an object for which they already had a name. We explored whether the development of this word-learning strategy is driven by children's experience of hearing only one name for each referent in their environment by comparing the behavior of infants from monolingual and bilingual homes. Monolingual infants aged 17-22 months showed clear evidence of using an ME strategy, in that they preferentially fixated the novel object when they were asked to "look at the dax." Bilingual infants of the same age and vocabulary size failed to show a similar pattern of behavior. We suggest that children who are raised with more than one language fail to develop an ME strategy in parallel with monolingual infants because development of the bias is a consequence of the monolingual child's everyday experiences with words.

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Citations

Jan 5, 2011·The British Journal of Developmental Psychology·Emily MatherCarmel Houston-Price
Apr 18, 2014·Nature Reviews. Neuroscience·Albert Costa, Núria Sebastián-Gallés
Sep 6, 2018·Topics in Cognitive Science·Kenny Smith
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Mar 27, 2018·Child Development·Amel Jardak, Krista Byers-Heinlein
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Mar 5, 2019·Journal of Child Language·Elizabeth Morin-Lessard, Krista Byers-Heinlein
Apr 21, 2019·The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology : QJEP·Naoko Witzel
Apr 12, 2016·Developmental Science·Padmapriya KandhadaiJanet F Werker
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Nov 20, 2016·Developmental Science·Krista Byers-Heinlein
Dec 12, 2020·Infancy : the Official Journal of the International Society on Infant Studies·Krista Byers-HeinleinLeher Singh
Feb 15, 2021·Journal of Experimental Child Psychology·Katharina M RepnikAntonella Sorace
Mar 8, 2016·Journal of Experimental Child Psychology·Sarah C CreelAngelica Nicolle Paullada
Mar 26, 2016·Cognition·Timothy J Poepsel, Daniel J Weiss
Jun 13, 2017·Journal of Experimental Child Psychology·Kyong-Sun Jin, Hyun-Joo Song
May 4, 2021·Cognition·Barbara PomiechowskaTeodora Gliga
Aug 31, 2021·Infancy : the Official Journal of the International Society on Infant Studies·Joscelin Rocha-HidalgoRachel F Barr

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