The development of fast‐mapping and novel word retention strategies in monolingual and bilingual infants

Abstract

The mutual exclusivity (ME) assumption is proposed to facilitate early word learning by guiding infants to map novel words to novel referents. This study assessed the emergence and use of ME to both disambiguate and retain the meanings of novel words across development in 18-month-old monolingual and bilingual children (Experiment 1; N = 58), and in a sub-group of these children again at 24 months of age (Experiment 2: N = 32). Both monolinguals and bilinguals employed ME to select the referent of a novel label to a similar extent at 18 and 24 months. At 18 months, there were also no differences in novel word retention between the two language-background groups. However, at 24 months, only monolinguals showed the ability to retain these label-object mappings. These findings indicate that the development of the ME assumption as a reliable word-learning strategy is shaped by children's individual language exposure and experience with language use.

Novel word learning deficits in infants at family risk for dyslexia

“…Test-baseline difference scores were used as indices of word learning whereby a larger positive score denoted an infant's greater tendency to look at the target after hearing its label (see Byers-Heinlein & Werker, 2013;Kalashnikova, Mattock, & Monaghan, 2016;Kalashnikova, Escudero, & Kidd, 2018 for use of difference scores in similar analyses). NAR infants were reported to produce an average of 55.63 (SD = 55.56, range 9-191) words and AR infants 54.10 words (SD = 60.63, range 4-189), and there was no statistical difference between the two groups' scores, t(19) = .061, p = .952, d = .028.…”

“…Correlational analyses were then conducted between the infants' vocabulary scores and their word-learning scores. Test-baseline difference scores were used as indices of word learning whereby a larger positive score denoted an infant's greater tendency to look at the target after hearing its label (see Byers-Heinlein & Werker, 2013;Kalashnikova, Mattock, & Monaghan, 2016;Kalashnikova, Escudero, & Kidd, 2018 for use of difference scores in similar analyses). This analysis revealed a significant correlation, r(21) = .466, p = .033, demonstrating that even though it was not the case that AR infants had smaller expressive vocabularies as a group, infants with larger vocabulary sizes were significantly more likely to look at the labelled target in the test phase of our word-learning task, indicative of greater learning.…”

Beyond the Bayley: Neurocognitive Assessments of Development During Infancy and Toddlerhood

“…In contrast, in reaching versions of the tasks eighteen-month-old toddlers do not perform well on reference selection or retention (Kucker, McMurry & Samuelson, 2018), 24-month-olds perform well on reference selection, but they do not retain the mappings (Samuelson & Horst, 2008), and by 30 months of age children are good at both (see Kucker, McMurray, & Samuelson, 2015a for a review and discussion). Both reference selection and retention, however, can be influenced by a number of external and organismic factors (see e.g., Axelsson & Horst, 2014;Kalashnikova, Escudero & Kidd, 2018;Kucker & Samuelson, 2012;Pomper & Saffran, 2018, Twomey, Ranson, & Horst, 2013. Still other research indicates that children as young as 13 months of age can map and, in some cases, retain novel word-object mappings when only one name and one object are presented at a time (Schafer & Plunkett, 1998;Woodward, Markman, & Fitzsimmons, 1994).…”

Acceptance of lexical overlap by monolingual and bilingual toddlers

“…Previous research indicates that early linguistic experience can impact the extent to which children employ ME as a default word-learning strategy in their second year of life (Byers-Heinlein & Werker, 2009;2013;Davidson et al, 1997;Kalashnikova et al, 2016bKalashnikova et al, , 2018Kandhadai et al, 2017). However, the aspects of early language experience that lead to successful acceptance of lexical overlap by both monolingual and bilingual children remain unclear.…”