Sarah C. Kucker

What's New? Children Prefer Novelty in Referent Selection.

Determining the referent of a novel name is a critical task for young language learners. The majority of studies on childrens referent selection focus on manipulating the sources of information (linguistic, contextual and pragmatic) that children can use to solve the referent mapping problem. Here, we take a step back and explore how childrens endogenous biases towards novelty and their own familiarity with novel objects influence their performance in such a task. We familiarized 2-year-old children with previously novel objects. Then, on novel name referent selection trials children were asked to select the referent from three novel objects: two previously seen and one completely novel object. Children demonstrated a clear bias to select the most novel object. A second experiment controls for pragmatic responding and replicates this finding. We conclude, therefore, that childrens referent selection is biased by previous exposure and childrens endogenous bias to novelty.

Moving Word Learning to a Novel Space: A Dynamic Systems View of Referent Selection and Retention

Theories of cognitive development must address both the issue of how children bring their knowledge to bear on behavior in-the-moment, and how knowledge changes over time. We argue that seeking answers to these questions requires an appreciation of the dynamic nature of the developing system in its full, reciprocal complexity. We illustrate this dynamic complexity with results from two lines of research on early word learning. The first demonstrates how the childs active engagement with objects and people supports referent selection via memories for what objects were previously seen in a cued location. The second set of results highlights changes in the role of novelty and attentional processes in referent selection and retention as childrens knowledge of words and objects grows. Together this work suggests that understanding systems for perception, action, attention, and memory, and their complex interaction, is critical to understand word learning. We review recent literature that highlights the complex interactions between these processes in cognitive development and point to critical issues for future work.

Too Much of a Good Thing: How Novelty Biases and Vocabulary Influence Known and Novel Referent Selection in 18‐Month‐Old Children and Associative Learning Models

Identifying the referent of novel words is a complex process that young children do with relative ease. When given multiple objects along with a novel word, children select the most novel item, sometimes retaining the word-referent link. Prior work is inconsistent, however, on the role of object novelty. Two experiments examine 18-month-old childrens performance on referent selection and retention with novel and known words. The results reveal a pervasive novelty bias on referent selection with both known and novel names and, across individual children, a negative correlation between attention to novelty and retention of new word-referent links. A computational model examines possible sources of the bias, suggesting novelty supports in-the-moment behavior but not retention. Together, results suggest that when lexical knowledge is weak, attention to novelty drives behavior, but alone does not sustain learning. Importantly, the results demonstrate that word learning may be driven, in part, by low-level perceptual processes.