Putting Mutual Exclusivity in Context: Speaker Race Influences Monolingual and Bilingual Infants' Word-Learning Assumptions.
Child Dev
; 92(5): 1735-1751, 2021 09.
Article
en En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-34213010
ABSTRACT
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.
Texto completo:
1
Colección:
01-internacional
Base de datos:
MEDLINE
Asunto principal:
Multilingüismo
Aspecto:
Determinantes_sociais_saude
Límite:
Humans
/
Infant
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Child Dev
Año:
2021
Tipo del documento:
Article