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Preschoolers are sensitive to the speaker's knowledge when learning proper names
1Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520-8205, USA. susan.birch@yale.edu
Child Development
|April 13, 2002
Summary
Young children use the familiarity principle to learn names, understanding who a speaker knows based on proper names. This ability, crucial for language acquisition, develops significantly by age five.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Linguistics
- Cognitive Science
Background:
- Proper names refer to unique individuals, and knowledge of these names implies familiarity.
- The "familiarity principle" suggests that one can infer familiarity from name knowledge.
- It is unclear if young children understand this principle for language learning.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if young children utilize the familiarity principle in word learning.
- To determine the developmental trajectory of understanding the familiarity principle.
Main Methods:
- Experiment 1: 48 children (2-4 years) identified a referent of a proper name based on speaker familiarity.
- Experiment 2: 48 children (3-5 years) inferred speaker familiarity from a proper name, reversing the task.
Main Results:
- Two-year-olds successfully linked proper names to familiar individuals (Experiment 1).
- Only five-year-olds reliably inferred speaker familiarity from proper names (Experiment 2).
Conclusions:
- Children as young as two can use the familiarity principle in specific word-learning contexts.
- A generalized understanding of the familiarity principle is a late-developing cognitive skill, emerging around age five.
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