Browsing by Author "Dubois, Diane"

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    Infants' disambiguation of novel object words
    (First Language, 1998-06) Graham, Susan; Dubois, Diane; Baker, Rachel K.
    When preschool-aged children are presented with two objects, one familiar and one unfamiliar, and asked for the referent of a novel word, they will consistently map the novel word to the novel object, a tendency called the disambiguation effect. In this study, we examined the relation between vocabulary size and the disambiguation response tendency during late infancy. Sixteen- to 22-month-old infants were presented with a novel object along with two familiar objects and asked to choose the referents of familiar and novel words. The infants who consistently chose the novel object in the presence of a novel word had significantly higher productive vocabularies than those who did not. These two groups, however, did not differ in age or on familiar word trials. These results suggest that emergence of the disambiguation effect in late infancy is related to productive vocabulary size rather than age.
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    Infants' reliance on shape to generalize novel labels to animate and inanimate objects
    (Cambridge University Press : Journal of Child Language, 1999-07) Graham, Susan; Dubois, Diane
    Two experiments were conducted to examine infants' reliance on object shape versus colour for word generalization to animate and inanimate objects. A total of seventy-three infants aged 1;4 to 1;10 were taught labels for either novel vehicles or novel animals using a preferential looking procedure (Experiment 1) or an interactive procedure (Experiment 2). The results of both experiments indicated that infants limited their word generalization to those exemplars that shared shape similarity with the original referent for both animate and inanimate objects. These findings indicate that a strong reliance on shape is present earlier than previously shown. In Experiment 2, reliance on shape to generalize novel words did not vary as a function of vocabulary size. Thus reliance on shape versus colour for word generalization does not appear to increase in strength as a function of word learning during late infancy.