The Principle of Mutual Exclusivity in Word Learning: To Honor or Not to Honor?

Au, Terry Kit-fong; Glusman, Mariana

doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.1990.tb02876.x

Cited by 89 publications

(64 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…When providing translations, parents often explicitly mark that they are providing a label in the other language, suggesting that they may be trying to help children organize their language knowledge. A potential consequence of this explicit talk may be that bilingual children develop language learning biases, such as mutual exclusivity, differently compared to monolingual children (Au & Glusman, 1990). …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bilingual parents' modeling of pragmatic language use in multiparty interactions

Tare

Gelman

2011

Applied Psycholinguistics

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Parental input represents an important source of language socialization. Particularly in bilingual contexts, parents may model pragmatic language use and metalinguistic strategies to highlight language differences. The present study examines multiparty interactions involving 28 bilingual English- and Marathi-speaking parent-child pairs in the presence of monolingual bystanders (children’s mean ages: 3;2 and 4;6). Their language use was analyzed during three sessions: parent and child alone, parent and child with the English speaker, and parent and child with the Marathi speaker. Parents demonstrated pragmatic differentiation by using relatively more of the bystander’s language; however, children did not show this sensitivity. Further, parents used a variety of strategies to discuss language differences, such as providing and requesting translations; children translated most often in response to explicit requests. The results indicate that parents model pragmatic language differentiation as well as metalinguistic talk that may contribute to children’s metalinguistic awareness.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bilingual parents' modeling of pragmatic language use in multiparty interactions

Tare

Gelman

2011

Applied Psycholinguistics

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“…We chose this contextual cue for two reasons. First, there is ample evidence that the phonological structure of words (including syllable length and phonotactics) aids in resolving ambiguities in word and sentence meanings (Au & Glusman, 1990; Durieux & Gillis, 2001; Kelly, 1996). Additionally, learners are successful at using phonological cues and word structure in statistical learning (Escudero et al, 2015; Lew-Williams & Saffran, 2012; Sahni, Seidenberg, & Saffran, 2010).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Competition between multiple words for a referent in cross-situational word learning

Benitez

Yurovsky

Smith

2016

Journal of Memory and Language

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Three experiments investigated competition between word-object pairings in a cross-situational word-learning paradigm. Adults were presented with One-Word pairings, where a single word labeled a single object, and Two-Word pairings, where two words labeled a single object. In addition to measuring learning of these two pairing types, we measured competition between words that refer to the same object. When the word-object co-occurrences were presented intermixed in training (Experiment 1), we found evidence for direct competition between words that label the same referent. Separating the two words for an object in time eliminated any evidence for this competition (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 demonstrated that adding a linguistic cue to the second label for a referent led to different competition effects between adults who self-reported different language learning histories, suggesting both distinctiveness and language learning history affect competition. Finally, in all experiments, competition effects were unrelated to participants’ explicit judgments of learning, suggesting that competition reflects the operating characteristics of implicit learning processes. Together, these results demonstrate that the role of competition between overlapping associations in statistical word-referent learning depends on time, the distinctiveness of word-object pairings, and language learning history.

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“…Children believe that labels for objects are mutually exclusive, that is, a given object can only have one name (Markman, 1989; Woodward, 2000 for discussion). Moreover, the tendency for this assumption to influence children’s naming behavior increases during the preschool years (Au & Glusman, 1990; Merriman & Bowman, 1989), and some have suggested that it is a heuristic that children learn to use as they get older (MacWhinney, 1991). Others have proposed that the constraint may be a default strategy that children use when other options are not available (Merriman & Bowman, 1989; Markman, 1992).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Some studies report less reliance of bilingual children on ME than matched monolinguals (Davidson, Jergovic, Imami, & Theodos, 1997; Davidson & Tell, 2005; Yow & Markman, 2007) and others find no difference (Au & Glusman, 1990; Frank & Poulin-Dubois, 2002; Merriman & Kutlesic, 1993). Although bilingual children are familiar with having two names for a particular object, it appears that the ME constraint does not apply if the words come from different languages, even for monolingual children (Au & Glusman, 1990). Thus, there may be no difference between monolingual and bilingual children in adopting this strategy for words in the same language.…”

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confidence: 99%

Word Mapping and Executive Functioning in Young Monolingual and Bilingual Children

Bialystok

Barac

Blaye³

et al. 2010

Journal of Cognition and Development

162

132

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The effect of bilingualism on the cognitive skills of young children was investigated by comparing performance of 162 children who belonged to one of two age groups (approximately 3-and 4½-year-olds) and one of three language groups on a series of tasks examining executive control and word mapping. The children were monolingual English speakers, monolingual French speakers, or bilinguals who spoke English and one of a large number of other languages. Monolinguals obtained higher scores than bilinguals on a receptive vocabulary test and were more likely to demonstrate the mutual exclusivity constraint, especially at the younger ages. However, bilinguals obtained higher scores than both groups of monolinguals on three tests of executive functioning: Luria's tapping task measuring response inhibition, the Opposite Worlds task requiring children to assign incongruent labels to a sequence of animal pictures, and reverse categorization in which children needed to reclassify a set of objects into incongruent categories after an initial classification. There were no differences between the groups in the ANT flanker task requiring executive control to ignore a misleading cue. This evidence for a bilingual advantage in aspects of executive functioning at an earlier age than previously reported is discussed in terms of the possibility that bilingual language production may not be the only source of these developmental effects.One of the most crucial cognitive developments in early childhood is the emergence of the executive function system (Diamond, 2002). These executive processes are the basis for all higher thought, including control of attention (needed for selection and inhibition of the variety of environmental cues), working memory (needed for planning and maintaining set), and switching (needed for multitasking). Research with preschool children has shown that bilingual children develop control over these executive processes earlier than monolingual children (Bialystok, 2001). Importantly, these bilingual advantages are found not only on verbal tasks where executive control to resolve conflict between form and meaning gives bilinguals an advantage on metalinguistic tasks (Bialystok, 1988;Cromdal, 1999;Galambos & Goldin-Meadow, 1990) but also on nonverbal tasks where no explicit linguistic processing is involved (reviewed below).Correspondence should be sent to Ellen Bialystok, Department of Psychology, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario, M5R 3A8, Canada. ellenb@yorku.ca. NIH Public AccessAuthor Manuscript J Cogn Dev. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2011 October 1. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author ManuscriptThe basis for the bilingual advantage is commonly assumed to be in the constant need for bilinguals to control attention to two language systems, a process that boosts those attentional processes for all tasks including nonverbal ones. But how much experience in attending to two languages is necessary for these generalized effects to appear? If these ad...

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The Principle of Mutual Exclusivity in Word Learning: To Honor or Not to Honor?

Cited by 89 publications

References 37 publications

Bilingual parents' modeling of pragmatic language use in multiparty interactions

Bilingual parents' modeling of pragmatic language use in multiparty interactions

Competition between multiple words for a referent in cross-situational word learning

Word Mapping and Executive Functioning in Young Monolingual and Bilingual Children

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