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The influence of object pre-exposure on two-year-olds' disambiguation of novel labels

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 February 2005

SUSAN A. GRAHAM ,
JUANITA N. TURNER  and
ANNETTE M. E. HENDERSON
SUSAN A. GRAHAM
Affiliation:
University of Calgary
JUANITA N. TURNER
Affiliation:
University of Calgary
ANNETTE M. E. HENDERSON
Affiliation:
University of Calgary
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Abstract

We investigated whether manipulating the perceived novelty of nameless objects would influence two-year-olds' tendency to map novel words to these objects. In Experiment 1, children who had been pre-exposed to target nameless objects were more likely to map novel words onto those objects than children who were not pre-exposed to the objects or children who were pre-exposed to non-target members of the nameless object categories. In Experiment 2, children who were pre-exposed to a nameless object were more likely to assign the novel label to that object than to either a familiar object or an unfamiliar object that had not been pre-exposed. The results of these studies suggest that reducing the novelty of nameless objects increases two-year-olds' tendency to map a novel word to a nameless object.

Type
Note
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , February 2005 , pp. 207 - 222
Copyright
© 2005 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

This research was supported by an operating grant awarded to the first author from SSHRC of Canada. We thank the parents, children, and adults who participated in the studies and the staff at the following pre-schools for their kind assistance: Arbour Lake Childsplace Learning Centre, Calgary Jewish Centre, Charleswood Day Nursery, Family ‘N’ Friends Childcare, Panda Child Development Centre (Ranchlands), Ranchlands Playcare, Silver Springs Teddy Playschool, South Family YMCA Daycare, and University Child Care Centre. We thank Jennifer Storms for her assistance with this research and D. Geoffrey Hall and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on a previous version. Data from these experiments were presented at the International Conference on Infant Studies, Toronto, Canada, April, 2002.