Children under 2 1/2 years old tend to interpret novel words in accordance with the Mutual Exclusivity Principle, but tend not to reinterpret familiar words this way. Because alternative principles have been proposed that only predict the novel word effects, and because tests of the familiar word effects may have been flawed, a new test was administered. In Experiment 1 (N = 32), 24- to 25-month-olds heard stories in which a novel noun was used for an atypical exemplar of a familiar noun. When asked to select exemplars of the familiar noun, they showed a small but reliable tendency to avoid the object from the story. In Experiment 2 (N = 16), the novel nouns in the stories were replaced by pronouns and proper names, and the children did not avoid the story object in the test of the familiar noun. Thus, the aversion to this object that was observed in Experiment 1 was not due to its greater exposure or its being referenced immediately before testing, but to toddlers' Mutual Exclusivity bias. Their bias is hypothesized to be a form of implicit probabilistic knowledge that derives from the competitive nature of category retrieval.

Children under 2 1/2 years old tend to interpret novel words in accordance with the Mutual Exclusivity Principle, but tend not to reinterpret familiar words this way. Because alternative principles have been proposed that only predict the novel word effects, and because tests of the familiar word effects may have been flawed, a new test was administered. In Experiment 1 (N = 32), 24- to 25-month-olds heard stories in which a novel noun was used for an atypical exemplar of a familiar noun. When asked to select exemplars of the familiar noun, they showed a small but reliable tendency to avoid the object from the story. In Experiment 2 (N = 16), the novel nouns in the stories were replaced by pronouns and proper names, and the children did not avoid the story object in the test of the familiar noun. Thus, the aversion to this object that was observed in Experiment 1 was not due to its greater exposure or its being referenced immediately before testing, but to toddlers' Mutual Exclusivity bias. Their bias is hypothesized to be a form of implicit probabilistic knowledge that derives from the competitive nature of category retrieval.

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This study examined whether a low-stakes write-to-learn (WTL) assignment improved exam performance. Students in one section of a child development course completed five assignments during a semester, whereby they identified 15 key concepts and related them to six themes (e.g., nature and nurture). Students in another section did not. Students who completed the WTL assignments performed significantly better in Exams 2 and 3 than students in the control condition. Within-group analyses indicated that only the students in the WTL condition improved exam performance and maintained that higher level of performance. Results suggest that WTL assignments that require students to review and apply course content produce modest benefits to learning and retention without unduly taxing instructors’ time.