The Mutual Exclusivity Bias in Children's Word Learning

Merriman, William E.; Bowman, Laura L.

doi:10.2307/1166130

Cited by 354 publications

(271 citation statements)

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“…Contrary to claims that the core of ME is a restriction or a representational deficit, children readily produce multiple words for unfamiliar items. Relinquishing ME does not, as Markman and Wachtel (1988) and Merriman and Bowman (1989) implied, depend on prior learning: Children accepted numerous novel pairs of words (e.g., dog-puppet and bookcar). Contrary to Markman's (1992) speculations, then, ME is not due to a general deficit in maintaining multiple representations.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They do not readily look at the same object or situation in different ways simultaneously. Sometimes young children process only one aspect of an event or situation (e.g., Piaget, 1941Piaget, /1965, sometimes they see only one aspect of an object (e.g., Elkind, 1978;Flavell, Flavell, Green, 1983;Flavell, Green, & Flavell, 1986;Inhelder & Piaget, 1964;Taylor & Hort, 1990;Winer, 1980;Zelazo & Frye, 1996), and sometimes they are predisposed to apply only one category label to an item (e.g., Liittschwager & Markman, 1994;Markman & Wachtel, 1988;Merriman & Bowman, 1989;). Children's performance in several paradigms (conservation, appearance reality, class inclusion, word learning, t Polynomy applies to count nouns as well as to other form classes (e.g., proper names, mass nouns, and noun phrases in general).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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On having complex representations of things: Preschoolers use multiple words for objects and people.

Deák

Maratsos²

1998

Developmental Psychology

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Applying several names to an entity (polynomy) reflects the ability to categorize entities in different ways. Two experiments demonstrate preschoolers' abilities to apply multiple labels to representational objects and to people. In Experiment 1, 3-and 4-year-olds labeled representational objects and verified labels for story characters. In both tasks children reliably produced or accepted several words per entity and accepted a high percentage of both class-inclusive and overlapping word pairs. These results were replicated in Experiment 2; 3-to 5-year-olds also completed appearance-reality and receptive vocabulary tests. The mean number of words produced in the labeling task was significantly related to receptive vocabulary, but not to appearance-reality performance. The results indicate that preschoolers represent an entity as belonging to multiple categories (e.g., dinosaur and crayon). Implications for cognitive and language development, particularly the appearance-reality distinctic/n and the mutual exclusivity bias, are discussed.The objects and organisms that inhabit our environment are complex and multifaceted, with many aspects and attributes. Any entity belongs to many different categories defined by particular aspects and attributes. Adults can conceptualize these categories and represent them by using a variety of words (i.e., category labels). For example, an organism may be labeled kitten, cat, feline, carnivore, mammal animal and pet. Some words highlight specific attributes; for example, kitten specifies an age-restricted category. Many words differ in inclusiveness; for example, cat is subordinate to animal. Such words form class-inclusion hierarchies. Other words form a cross-classification matrix in which the denoted categories overlap but are not inclusive (e.g., cat and pet). The ability to produce multiple words for an entity, denoting multiple categories with various semantic relations (i.e., inclusion; overlap), is referred to as polynomy, l

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On having complex representations of things: Preschoolers use multiple words for objects and people.

Deák

Maratsos²

1998

Developmental Psychology

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“…For example, recognizing that a word is novel should trigger an analysis of the most recent verbal contextual cues. Preschoolers do not always recognize that a word is unfamiliar (Merriman & Bowman, 1989), however. In this case they would not encode the novel word as a uniquely indeterminate problem.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Growth of Flexible Problem Solving: Preschool Children Use Changing Verbal Cues to Infer Multiple Word Meanings

Deák¹

2000

Journal of Cognition and Development

117

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Flexible induction is the adaptation of probabilistic inferences to changing problems. Young children's flexibility was tested in a word-learning task. Children 3 to 6 years old were told 3 novel words for each of several novel objects. Children generalized each word to other objects with the same body shape, the same material, or the same part as the first object. Each word was preceded by a different predicate (i.e., "looks like a …," "is made of …," or "has a …") that implies a different attribute (shape, material, or part, respectively). Three-year-olds showed limited use of predicates to infer word meanings, and they used predicates from previous trials to infer the meanings of later words. 4-to 6-year-olds used predicate cues more consistently and made inferences that were implied by the most recent predicate cue. Notably, 3-year-olds performed near ceiling in a control task that eliminated the need to use probabilistic inductive cues (Experiment 3). The results suggest that flexibility develops as a function of (a) sensitivity to between-problem variability and indeterminacy and (b) ability to decontextualize the most recent verbal cue to guide of inductive inferences.The epitome of human reasoning is the ability to solve variable, novel problems while ignoring irrelevant information. This is difficult for adults (Dominowski, JOURNAL OF COGNITION AND DEVELOPMENT, 1(2),

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“…The extensive literature on constraints or biases or tendencies in children's word learning can also be seen as having addressed the issue of how the learner figures out what the denoted entity is (e.g. Mervis & Pani 1980;Markman 1984Markman , 1989Markman & Hutchinson 1984;Mervis 1984;Baldwin & Markman 1989;Merriman & Bowman 1989;Au & Glusman 1990;Merriman & Schuster 1991;Mervis et al 1994;Hollich et al 2000a). Thus, one major focus of research on word learning can be seen as investigating creation of the semantic representation component of the overall word-learning task.…”

Section: Functional Aspects Of Word Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Word learning, phonological short-term memory, phonotactic probability and long-term memory: towards an integrated framework

Gupta

Tisdale

2009

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Word learning is studied in a multitude of ways, and it is often not clear what the relationship is between different phenomena. In this article, we begin by outlining a very simple functional framework that despite its simplicity can serve as a useful organizing scheme for thinking about various types of studies of word learning. We then review a number of themes that in recent years have emerged as important topics in the study of word learning, and relate them to the functional framework, noting nevertheless that these topics have tended to be somewhat separate areas of study. In the third part of the article, we describe a recent computational model and discuss how it offers a framework that can integrate and relate these various topics in word learning to each other. We conclude that issues that have typically been studied as separate topics can perhaps more fruitfully be thought of as closely integrated, with the present framework offering several suggestions about the nature of such integration.Keywords: word learning; integrative framework; phonological short-term memory; phonological learning; short-term and long-term memory interactions; computational modellingAlthough human children and adults learn new words effortlessly, understanding how they do so is a complex endeavour. Although it seems clear that word learning or vocabulary acquisition entails learning a word form, a meaning and the link between them (e.g. Saussure 1916; Desrochers & Begg 1987), this simple formulation encompasses a multitude of different abilities and subcomponents. As a result, the terms 'vocabulary acquisition' and 'word learning' have been used to mean a wide variety of different things, as revealed by consideration of the many different facets of what has been studied as word learning (for review, see Gupta 2005b). In this article, we begin by outlining a very simple functional framework that despite its simplicity can serve as a useful organizing scheme for thinking about various types of studies of word learning. In §2, we review a number of themes that in recent years have emerged as important topics in the study of word learning, and relate them to the functional framework, noting nevertheless that these topics have tended to be somewhat separate areas of study. In the third part of the article, we describe a recent computational model developed by Gupta & Tisdale (2009), and discuss how it offers a framework that can integrate and relate these various topics to each other. We conclude that issues that have typically been studied as separate topics can perhaps more fruitfully be thought of as closely integrated, with the present framework offering several suggestions about the nature of such integration. FUNCTIONAL ASPECTS OF WORD LEARNINGIn considering the functional aspects of word learning, it is useful to begin with some terminology. First of all, we will reserve the term vocabulary acquisition to refer to the overall phenomenon of acquiring a vocabulary of words over an extended period of time. We will reserve the...

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The Mutual Exclusivity Bias in Children's Word Learning

Cited by 354 publications

References 95 publications

On having complex representations of things: Preschoolers use multiple words for objects and people.

On having complex representations of things: Preschoolers use multiple words for objects and people.

The Growth of Flexible Problem Solving: Preschool Children Use Changing Verbal Cues to Infer Multiple Word Meanings

Word learning, phonological short-term memory, phonotactic probability and long-term memory: towards an integrated framework

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