Douglas A. Behrend

Beyond Fast Mapping: Young Children's Extensions of Novel Words and Novel Facts

L. Markson and P. Bloom (1997) concluded that there was evidence against a dedicated system for word learning on the basis of their finding that children remembered a novel word and a novel fact equally well. However, a word-learning system involves more than recognition memory; it must also provide a means to guide the extension of words to additional exemplars, and words and facts may differ with regard to extendibility. Two studies are reported in which 2-4-year-old children learned novel words and novel facts for unfamiliar objects and then were asked to extend the words and facts to additional exemplars of the training objects. In both studies, children extended the novel word to significantly more category members than they extended the novel fact. The results show that by 2 years of age, children honor the necessary extendibility of novel count nouns but are uncertain about the extendibility of arbitrary facts.

Colour term knowledge in two-year-olds : evidence for early competence

It is commonly believed that colour terms are acquired unusually slowly. However, several recent studies suggest that preschoolers have more colour term knowledge than previously believed. In two studies, we investigated the colour term knowledge of 49 two-year-olds and the influence of schooling on their colour term acquisition. Both studies revealed considerable knowledge in such young children. A longitudinal comparison of children with and without school experience in Study 2 indicated that the higher performance of the school group could not be accounted for by differences predating that groups experience. In reviewing the evidence from the childrens performance, we conclude that contemporary childrens early and frequent experience with colour terms may account for this cohorts improved performance over previous generations of children.

Morphological cues to verb meaning: verb inflections and the initial mapping of verb meanings.

The present studies investigated childrens use of verb inflections to guide their initial mapping of verb meanings. Given that children initially apply the progressive -ing inflection to verbs denoting actions and the past -ed inflection to verbs denoting results of events, two studies were conducted to investigate whether children use these inflections during mapping of novel verb meanings. In both studies, subjects were taught novel verbs and were asked to extend those verbs to events in which the action or result differed from events used to teach the verbs. It was predicted that subjects would be less likely to extend verbs inflected with -ing to events with new actions and would be less likely to extend verbs inflected with -ed to events with new results. Eighteen three- and five-year-olds and 24 adults participated in Experiment 1 in a between-subjects design that produced weak effects for the youngest subjects tested. Experiment 2 tested 16 three-year-olds and 19 five-year-olds in a within-subjects design and produced the predicted effect for three-year-olds, but not for five-year-olds. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for early verb learning and regarding the use of the bootstrapping construct in language acquisition research.

Constraints and development: A reply to Nelson (1988)

This article is a response to Nelsons (1988) critique of constraints theories of word learning. It is argued that when constraints are conceptualized as factors that narrow the range of possible interpretations children can give to new words rather than the severely limiting factors Nelson portrays them to be, then many of Nelsons arguments against constraints theories lose much of their force. Data on early lexical development are reanalyzed, and are shown to be consistent with constraints positions. Developmental constraints theory is presented as an integrative account of previous constraints positions. It is argued that constraints theories can account for both the vast consistencies in lexical development across children and languages as well as the individual differences that have been documented in the literature. Constraints theories, while emphasizing the role of constrained systems within the child and the language, in no way exclude the important contributions of the social/communicative context in which word learning occurs.

Two-year-olds differentially disambiguate novel words and facts

When presented with a pair of objects, one familiar and one unfamiliar, and asked to select the referent of a novel word, children reliably demonstrate the disambiguation effect and select the unfamiliar object. The current study investigated two competing word learning accounts of this effect: a pragmatic account and a word learning principles account. Two-, three- and four-year-olds were presented with four disambiguation conditions, a word/word, a word/fact, a fact/word and a fact/fact condition. A pragmatic account predicted disambiguation in all four conditions while a word learning principles account predicted disambiguation in the word/word and fact/word conditions. Results indicated that children disambiguated in word/word and fact/word conditions and two-year-olds disambiguated at above chance levels in the word/word condition but at BELOW chance levels in the fact/fact condition. Because disambiguation varied both as a function of age and condition these findings are presented as challenges to a pragmatic account of the disambiguation effect.

Word learning in the absence of a speaker

Past studies show that a referential context is important for successful word learning. Still in question, however, is the success of word learning in the absence of a referential context. In this study 2-year-olds were presented with novel words in the absence of a speaker and therefore in the absence of a referential context. Findings revealed that word learning was successful across the experimental trials at rates greater than chance and at rates greater than in the control trial. Findings demonstrated that the absence of a speaker and the referential context provided by a speaker did not result in unsuccessful word learning. It is concluded that a referential context is not necessary for successful word learning.

Clarifying the role of joint attention in early word learning

Four studies examined whether two-year-olds could successfully learn a novel word in conditions in which joint attention was not present. Study 1 examined whether children could learn a novel word while the speaker, but not the child, attended to the target object. Study 2 examined whether children could learn a novel word while the child, but not the speaker, attended to the target object. Study 3 examined whether children could learn a novel word while the child and the speaker attended to two different target objects. Study 4 examined whether children could learn a novel word while neither the child nor the speaker attended to the target object. Findings showed that successful word learning occurred in each of the four studies. These results suggest that joint attention may play an important, though not a necessary, role in young children’s word learning.

Monolingual and bilingual children's social preferences for monolingual and bilingual speakers.

Past research has shown that young monolingual children exhibit language-based social biases: they prefer native language to foreign language speakers. The current research investigated how childrens language preferences are influenced by their own bilingualism and by a speakers bilingualism. Monolingual and bilingual 4- to 6-year-olds heard pairs of adults (a monolingual and a bilingual, or two monolinguals) and chose the person with whom they wanted to be friends. Whether they were from a largely monolingual or a largely bilingual community, monolingual children preferred monolingual to bilingual speakers, and native language to foreign language speakers. In contrast, bilingual children showed similar affiliation with monolingual and bilingual speakers, as well as for monolingual speakers using their dominant versus non-dominant language. Exploratory analyses showed that individual bilinguals displayed idiosyncratic patterns of preference. These results reveal that language-based preferences emerge from a complex interaction of factors, including preference for in-group members, avoidance of out-group members, and characteristics of the child as they relate to the status of the languages within the community. Moreover, these results have implications for bilingual childrens social acceptance by their peers.