The Principle of Mutual Exclusivity in Word Learning: To Honor or Not to Honor?

1990 ◽  
Vol 61 (5) ◽  
pp. 1474 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terry Kit-fong Au ◽  
Mariana Glusman
Keyword(s):  
Word Learning ◽  
Mutual Exclusivity

Word learning in a special population: do individuals with Williams syndrome obey lexical constraints?

1997 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 737-765 ◽  
Author(s):  
TASSOS STEVENS ◽  
ANNETTE KARMILOFF-SMITH
Keyword(s):  
Williams Syndrome ◽  
Word Learning ◽  
Neurodevelopmental Disorder ◽  
Fast Mapping ◽  
Mutual Exclusivity ◽  
Vocabulary Size ◽  
Normal Children ◽  
New Words ◽  
Adolescents And Adults ◽  
Lexical Constraints

Williams syndrome (WS), a rare neurodevelopmental disorder, is of special interest to developmental psycholinguists because of its uneven linguistico-cognitive profile of abilities and deficits. One proficiency manifest in WS adolescents and adults is an unusually large vocabulary despite serious deficits in other domains. In this paper, rather than focus on vocabulary size, we explore the processes underlying vocabulary acquisition, i.e. how new words are learned. A WS group was compared to groups of normal MA-matched controls in the range 3–9 years in four different experiments testing for constraints on word learning. We show that in construing the meaning of new words, normal children at all ages display fast mapping and abide by the constraints tested: mutual exclusivity, whole object and taxonomic. By contrast, while the WS group showed fast mapping and the mutual exclusivity constraint, they did not abide by the whole object or taxonomic constraints. This suggests that measuring only the size of WS vocabulary can distort conclusions about the normalcy of WS language. Our study shows that despite equivalent behaviour (i.e. vocabulary test age), the processes underlying how vocabulary is acquired in WS follow a somewhat different path from that of normal children and that the atypically developing brain is not necessarily a window on normal development.

Using Speakers' Referential Intentions to Model Early Cross-Situational Word Learning

2009 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 578-585 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael C. Frank ◽  
Noah D. Goodman ◽  
Joshua B. Tenenbaum
Keyword(s):  
Computational Model ◽  
Word Learning ◽  
Word Meaning ◽  
Mutual Exclusivity ◽  
Object Individuation ◽  
Word Meanings ◽  
Inference Problems ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
Situational Learning

Word learning is a “chicken and egg” problem. If a child could understand speakers' utterances, it would be easy to learn the meanings of individual words, and once a child knows what many words mean, it is easy to infer speakers' intended meanings. To the beginning learner, however, both individual word meanings and speakers' intentions are unknown. We describe a computational model of word learning that solves these two inference problems in parallel, rather than relying exclusively on either the inferred meanings of utterances or cross-situational word-meaning associations. We tested our model using annotated corpus data and found that it inferred pairings between words and object concepts with higher precision than comparison models. Moreover, as the result of making probabilistic inferences about speakers' intentions, our model explains a variety of behavioral phenomena described in the word-learning literature. These phenomena include mutual exclusivity, one-trial learning, cross-situational learning, the role of words in object individuation, and the use of inferred intentions to disambiguate reference.

The mutual exclusivity bias in children's word learning

1991 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda L Woodward ◽  
Ellen M Markman
Keyword(s):  
Word Learning ◽  
Mutual Exclusivity

Mutual exclusivity and phonological novelty constrain word learning at 16 months

2010 ◽  
Vol 38 (5) ◽  
pp. 933-950 ◽  
Author(s):  
EMILY MATHER ◽  
KIM PLUNKETT
Keyword(s):  
Word Learning ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Mutual Exclusivity ◽  
Novel Object ◽  
Preferential Looking ◽  
Novel Objects

ABSTRACTStudies report that infants as young as 1 ; 3 to 1 ; 5 will seek out a novel object in response to hearing a novel label (e.g. Halberda, 2003; Markman, Wasow & Hansen, 2003). This behaviour is commonly known as the ‘mutual exclusivity’ response (Markman, 1989; 1990). However, evidence for mutual exclusivity does not imply that the infant has associated a novel label with a novel object. We used an intermodal preferential looking task to investigate whether infants aged 1 ; 4 could use mutual exclusivity to guide their association of novel labels with novel objects. The results show that infants can successfully map a novel label onto a novel object, provided that the novel label has no familiar phonological neighbours. Therefore, as early as 1 ; 4, infants can use mutual exclusivity to form novel word–object associations, although this process is constrained by the phonological novelty of a label.

scholarly journals Linguistic Conventionality and the Role of Epistemic Reasoning in Children’s Mutual Exclusivity Inferences

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mahesh Srinivasan ◽  
Ruthe Foushee ◽  
Andrew Bartnof ◽  
David Barner
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Word Learning ◽  
Relevant Alternative ◽  
Mutual Exclusivity ◽  
Epistemic Reasoning ◽  
Epistemic States ◽  
Children's Beliefs

To interpret an interlocutor’s use of a novel word (e.g., “give me the papaya”), children typically exclude referents that they already have labels for (like an “apple”), and expect the word to refer to something they do not have a label for (like the papaya). The goal of the present studies was to test whether such mutual exclusivity inferences require children to reason about the words their interlocutors know and could have chosen to say: e.g., If she had wanted the “apple” she would have asked for it (since she knows the word “apple”), so she must want the papaya. Across four studies, we document that both children and adults will make mutual exclusivity inferences even when they believe that their interlocutor does not share their knowledge of relevant, alternative words, suggesting that such inferences do not require reasoning about an interlocutor’s epistemic states. Instead, our findings suggest that children’s own knowledge of an object’s label, together with their belief that this is the conventional label for the object in their language, and that this convention applies to their interlocutor, is sufficient to support their mutual exclusivity inferences. Additionally, and contrary to the claims of previous studies that have used mutual exclusivity as a proxy for children’s beliefs that others share their knowledge, we found that children — especially those with stronger theory of mind ability — are quite conservative about attributing their knowledge of object labels to others. Together, our findings hold implications for theories of word learning, and for how children learn about the scope of shared conventional knowledge.

scholarly journals Bilingual’s Advantages of not Using Mutual Exclusivity

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuai Zheng
Keyword(s):  
Word Learning ◽  
Learning Process ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Mutual Exclusivity

It is a known fact that monolingual children will take advantage of the principle of mutual exclusivity (ME) in the process of early word learning, i.e., the names of two different objects are mutually exclusive (one label for one referent). With the help of ME, they can expand their vocabulary effectively with a rapid speed. However, for bilingual children, it seems this principle is not that friendly to them, since they are exposed to two languages at the same time, so there could be at least two labels for the same referent. Hence bilingual children may be confused and encounter difficulties in learning words, which will slower their word learning process. This paper tries to, based on earlier research, probe into the question that how bilingual children acquire words without the help of ME, and explore whether there are advantages of not using ME in word learning for bilingual children.

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