ERIC Number: EJ1312896
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2021
Pages: 17
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0009-3920
EISSN: N/A
Putting Mutual Exclusivity in Context: Speaker Race Influences Monolingual and Bilingual Infants' Word-Learning Assumptions
Weatherhead, Drew; Kandhadai, Padmapriya; Hall, D. Geoffrey; Werker, Janet F.
Child Development, v92 n5 p1735-1751 Sep-Oct 2021
Previous work indicates mutual exclusivity in word learning in monolingual, but not bilingual toddlers. We asked whether this difference indicates distinct conceptual biases, or instead reflects best-guess heuristic use in the absence of context. We altered word-learning contexts by manipulating whether a familiar- or unfamiliar-race speaker introduced a novel word for an object with a known category label painted in a new color. Both monolingual and bilingual infants showed mutual exclusivity for a familiar-race speaker, and relaxed mutual exclusivity and treated the novel word as a category label for an unfamiliar-race speaker. Thus, monolingual and bilingual infants have access to similar word-learning heuristics, and both use nonlinguistic social context to guide their use of the most appropriate heuristic.
Descriptors: Bilingualism, Infants, Vocabulary Development, Toddlers, Heuristics, Context Effect, Race, Familiarity, Color, Monolingualism, Language Acquisition, Social Environment
Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2191/en-us
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A