Pragmatics Aid Referent Disambiguation and Word Learning in Young Children and Adults

Autor/inn/en	Bleijlevens, Natalie; Contier, Friederike; Behne, Tanya
Titel	Pragmatics Aid Referent Disambiguation and Word Learning in Young Children and Adults
Quelle	In: Developmental Science, 26 (2023) 4, (17 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	1363-755X
DOI	10.1111/desc.13363
Schlagwörter	Pragmatics; Thinking Skills; Vocabulary Development; Ambiguity (Semantics); Naming; Novelty (Stimulus Dimension); Preschool Children; Retention (Psychology); Task Analysis; Language Processing; Behavior Patterns; Language Acquisition; Social Cognition; Interpersonal Communication + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Pragmalinguistik; Denkfähigkeit; Wortschatzarbeit; Pre-school age; Preschool age; Child; Children; Pre-school education; Preschool education; Vorschulalter; Kind; Kinder; Vorschulkind; Vorschulkinder; Vorschulerziehung; Vorschule; Merkfähigkeit; Aufgabenanalyse; Sprachverarbeitung; Sprachaneignung; Spracherwerb; Soziale Kognition; Interpersonale Kommunikation
Abstract	How do children succeed in learning a word? Research has shown robustly that, in ambiguous labeling situations, young children assume novel labels to refer to unfamiliar rather than familiar objects. However, ongoing debates center on the underlying mechanism: Is this behavior based on lexical constraints, guided by pragmatic reasoning, or simply driven by children's attraction to novelty? Additionally, recent research has questioned whether children's disambiguation leads to long-term learning or rather indicates an attentional shift in the moment of the conversation. Thus, we conducted a pre-registered online study with 2- and 3-year-olds and adults. Participants were presented with unknown objects as potential referents for a novel word. Across conditions, we manipulated whether the only difference between both objects was their relative novelty to the participant or whether, in addition, participants were provided with pragmatic information that indicated which object the speaker referred to. We tested participants' immediate referent selection and their retention after 5 min. Results revealed that when given common ground information both age groups inferred the correct referent with high success and enhanced behavioral certainty. Without this information, object novelty alone did not guide their selection. After 5 min, adults remembered their previous selections above chance in both conditions, while children only showed reliable learning in the pragmatic condition. The pattern of results indicates how pragmatics may aid referent disambiguation and learning in both adults and young children. From early ontogeny on, children's social-cognitive understanding may guide their communicative interactions and support their language acquisition. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2024/1/01