Monolingual children sometimes resist learning second labels for familiar objects. One explanation is that they are guided by word learning constraints that lead to the assumption that objects have only one name. It is less clear whether bilingual children observe this constraint. In the current study, we test the hypothesis that bilingual children might be more willing to accept second labels for objects and ask how they are affected by different amounts of information relevant to the second label. Although monolingual and bilingual children benefited from increased levels of information, only bilingual children chose the referent at above chance levels when they were offered increased levels of information. They were also more likely than monolingual children to accept second labels. Differences emerged even when English language vocabulary size was controlled for in the analyses.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.