Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T14:43:38.401Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Speaker reliability in preschoolers' inferences about the meanings of novel words*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 May 2011

DAVID M. SOBEL ,
JULIE SEDIVY ,
DAVID W. BUCHANAN  and
RACHEL HENNESSY
DAVID M. SOBEL*
Affiliation:
Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences, Brown University
JULIE SEDIVY
Affiliation:
Departments of Psychology and Linguistics, University of Calgary
DAVID W. BUCHANAN
Affiliation:
Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences, Brown University
RACHEL HENNESSY
Affiliation:
Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences, Brown University
*
Address for correspondence: D. Sobel, CLPS Department, Box 1821, Brown University, Providence, RI, 02912. tel: (401)-863-3038; fax: (401)-863-2255. e-mail: Dave_Sobel@brown.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Preschoolers participated in a modified version of the disambiguation task, designed to test whether the pragmatic environment generated by a reliable or unreliable speaker affected how children interpreted novel labels. Two objects were visible to children, while a third was only visible to the speaker (a fact known by the child). Manipulating whether a novel object was visible to both interlocutors or hidden from the child tested the child's understanding of pragmatic expectations of interlocutor competence. When interacting with a speaker with a history of accurately labeling familiar objects, children responded appropriately in both cases. Whn interacting with a speaker who previously generated inaccurate labels for familiar objects, children's behavior and eye-movements reflected their belief that the speaker was not a competent communicator. These data support the hypothesis that children consider the pragmatic environment constructed by an interlocutor when that speaker asks them to make a lexical inference.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 39 , Issue 1 , January 2012 , pp. 90 - 104
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

[*]

This research was supported by NSF (DLS-0518161 to DMS and BCS-0744898 to JS and DMS). We would like to thank all of the parents and children who participated in this research as well as Emily Blumenthal, Jon Cohen, Claire Cook, Karina Ikesoe, Rachel Shelley-Abrahamson, Kristen Swan, Cesalie Stepney, Lea Travers and Ana Van Gulick for help with data collection and participant recruitment. Gil Diesendruck and Vikram Jaswal provided helpful conversations towards the construction of this manuscript.

References

REFERENCES

Baldwin, D. A. & Moses, L. J. (1996). The ontogeny of social information gathering. Child Development 67, 1915–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bloom, P. (2000). How children learn the meaning of words. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, E. V. (1987). The principle of contrast: A constraint on language acquisition. In MacWhinney, B. (ed.), Mechanisms of language acquisition: The 20th Annual Carnegie Mellon Symposium on Cognition, 1–33. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc.Google Scholar
Clark, E. V. (1988). On the logic of contrast. Journal of Child Language 15, 317–35.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clément, F., Koenig, M. & Harris, P. (2004). The ontogenesis of trust. Mind & Language 19, 360–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corriveau, K. H. & Harris, P. L. (2009) Choosing your informant: Weighing familiarity and past accuracy. Developmental Science 12, 426–37.Google Scholar
Corriveau, K. H., Meints, K. & Harris, P. L. (2009). Early tracking of informant accuracy and inaccuracy. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 27, 331–34.Google Scholar
Corriveau, K. H., Pickard, K. & Harris, P. L. (2011). Preschoolers trust particular informants when learning new names and new morphological forms. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 29(1), 46–63.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Diesendruck, G., Carmel, N. & Markson, L. (2010). Children's sensitivity to the conventionality of sources. Child Development 81, 652–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Diesendruck, G. & Markson, L. (2001). Children's avoidance of lexical overlap: A pragmatic account. Developmental Psychology 37, 630–44.Google Scholar
Diesendruck, G. & Shemer, G. (2006). Young children's expectation of competence in word learning. Journal of Child Language 33, 321–28.Google Scholar
Gelman, S. A. (2009). Learning from others: Children's construction of concepts. Annual Review of Psychology 60, 115–40.Google Scholar
Golinkoff, R. M., Mervis, C. B. & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (1994). Early object labels: The case for a developmental lexical principles framework. Journal of Child Language 21, 125–56.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In Cole, P. & Morgan, J. L. (eds), Syntax and semantics III: Speech acts, 41–58. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Grodner, D. & Sedivy, J. (in press). The effects of speaker-specific information on pragmatic inferences. In Pearlmutter, N. & Gibson, E. (eds), The processing and acquisition of reference. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Harris, P. L. (2007). Trust. Developmental Science 10, 135–38.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jaswal, V. K. (2010). Explaining the disambiguation effect: Don't exclude mutual exclusivity. Journal of Child Language 37, 95–113.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jaswal, V. K., McKercher, D. A. & VanderBourght, M. (2008). Limitations on reliability: Regularity in the English plural and past tense. Child Development 79, 750–60.Google Scholar
Jaswal, V. K. & Neely, L. A. (2006). Adults don't always know best: Preschoolers use past reliability over age when learning new words. Psychological Science 17, 757–58.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Koenig, M. A., Clément, F. & Harris, P. L. (2004). Trust in testimony: Children's use of true and false statements. Psychological Science 15, 694–98.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Koenig, M. A. & Harris, P. L. (2005). Preschoolers mistrust ignorant and inaccurate speakers. Child Development 76, 1261–77.Google Scholar
Koenig, M. A. & Woodward, A. L. (2010). 24-month-olds' sensitivity to the prior accuracy of the source: Possible mechanisms. Developmental Psychology 46, 815–26.Google Scholar
Markman, E. M. (1989). Categorization and naming in children. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Markman, E. M. & Wachtel, G. F. (1988). Children's use of mutual exclusivity to constrain the meaning of words. Cognitive Psychology 20, 121–57.Google Scholar
Markman, E. M., Wasow, J. L. & Hansen, M. B. (2003). Use of the mutual exclusivity assumption by young word learners. Cognitive Psychology 47, 241–75.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Merriman, W. E. & Bowman, L. L. (1989). The mutual exclusivity bias in children's word learning. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 54.Google Scholar
Merriman, W. E., Marazita, J. & Jarvis, L. H. (1995). Children's disposition to map new words onto new references. In Tomasello, M. & Merriman, W. E. (eds), Beyond names for things: Young children's acquisition of verbs, 147–83. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Sabbagh, M. A. & Baldwin, D. A. (2001). Learning words from knowledgeable versus ignorant speakers: Links between preschoolers' theory of mind and semantic development. Child Development 72, 1054–70.Google Scholar
Sabbagh, M. A. & Shafman, D. (2009). How children block learning from ignorant speakers. Cognition 112, 415–22.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sabbagh, M. A., Wdowiak, S. & Ottaway, J. M. (2003). Do word learners ignore ignorant speakers? Journal of Child Language 30, 905–924.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Simeone, D. M. & Sobel, D. M. (2010). Children's understanding of reliability across linguistic domains. Poster presented at the 2010 Boston University Child Language Development Conference, Boston, MA, November 2010.Google Scholar
Tomasello, M. (1999). The cultural origins of human cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
VanderBorght, M. & Jaswal, V. K. (2009). Who knows best? Preschoolers sometimes prefer child informants over adult informants. Infant and Child Development 18, 61–71.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed