The influence of object pre-exposure on two-year-olds' disambiguation of novel labels

Abstract
We investigated whether manipulating the perceived novelty of nameless objects would influence two-year-olds' tendency to map novel words to these objects. In Experiment 1, children who had been pre-exposed to target nameless objects were more likely to map novel words onto those objects than children who were not pre-exposed to the objects or children who were pre-exposed to non-target members of the nameless object categories. In Experiment 2, children who were pre-exposed to a nameless object were more likely to assign the novel label to that object than to either a familiar object or an unfamiliar object that had not been pre-exposed. The results of these studies suggest that reducing the novelty of nameless objects increases two-year-olds' tendency to map a novel word to a nameless object.
Description
Keywords
Citation
Graham, S. A., Turner, J. N., & Henderson, A. M. E. (2005). The influence of object pre-exposure on two-year-olds disambiguation of novel labels. "Journal of Child Language", 32(1), 207–222. doi: 10.1017/s030500090400666x