2-095 - Word Learning in Monolingual and Bilingual Children: A Developmental Story of the Mutual Exclusivity Bias

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Word learning is an immensely complex task due to the infinitely many possible referents in the environment for a word (Quine, 1960). It has been proposed that one of the strategies that young children use to overcome this problem is mutual exclusivity (ME), which guides them to learn one-to-one word-referent mappings (Markman & Wachtel, 1998). However, bilingual children have to learn more than one word for most referents, and both monolingual and bilingual children have to learn synonyms. In these cases, young children must relax ME and accept that multiple words can refer to the same referent. Findings from previous research suggest that children’s expectation for how words map onto referents is influenced by the learning environment and children’s experience with languages (e.g., Byers-Heinlein, 2017). The three presentations in this symposium will look at the influence of socio-pragmatic information in the learning environment and vocabulary knowledge on monolingual and bilingual children’s use of ME. The first talk will focus on the influence of speaker race on the use of ME in 18-month-olds. The second talk will discuss two experiments, one looking at the emergence and development of ME in 18- and 24-month-olds, and the other investigating the influence of vocabulary knowledge on 30-month-olds’ use of ME. The third talk will focus on the influence of language learning context on preschoolers’ use of ME. Together, these presentations will shed light on the development of ME in both monolingual and bilingual children as they grow and become more proficient in their language(s).

Sub Unit

• Language, Communication

Chair

• Kin Chung Jacky Chan, Lancaster University

Discussant

• Krista Byers-Heinlein, Concordia University

Individual Presentations

• Speaker Race Influences Word-Learning Strategies in Monolingual and Bilingual Infants - Presenting Author: Drew Weatherhead, University of British Columbia; Non-Presenting Author: Priya Kandhadai, Douglas College; Non-Presenting Author: Geoff Hall, University of British Columbia; Non-Presenting Author: Janet F. Werker, University of British Columbia

• The Acquisition of Word Learning Strategies by Monolingual and Bilingual Toddlers - Presenting Author: Marina Kalashnikova, Basque Center for Cognition, Brain and Language

• Preschoolers’ Use of Mutual Exclusivity and Acceptance of Lexical Overlap in a Bilingual Context - Presenting Author: Kin Chung Jacky Chan, Lancaster University; Non-Presenting Author: Padraic Monaghan, Lancaster University