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Two-year-olds' sensitivity to speakers' intent: an alternative account of Samuelson and Smith
Gil Diesendruck1, Lori Markson, Nameera Akhtar
1Department of Psychology Bar-Ilan University, Israel. dieseng@mail.biu.ac.il
Developmental Science
|August 25, 2004
Summary
Children learn new words when context changes intentionally, not accidentally. This highlights the importance of communicative intent in early word learning.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Cognitive Science
- Linguistics
Background:
- Understanding how children learn words is crucial for developmental psychology.
- Two theories, mechanistic and social-pragmatic, explain word learning through contextual change.
- The social-pragmatic account emphasizes communicative intent.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the role of communicative intent in children's word learning.
- To compare the predictions of mechanistic and social-pragmatic accounts of word learning.
- To determine if contextual change alone is sufficient for word acquisition.
Main Methods:
- Seventy-two 2-year-olds participated in the study.
- Children were exposed to objects with contextual changes designed to be intentional or accidental.
- Word learning was assessed under different contextual conditions and speaker awareness.
Main Results:
- Children learned a new word when the contextual change was intentional.
- Word learning did not occur when the contextual change was accidental.
- Children failed to learn the word when a speaker unaware of the context introduced the object.
Conclusions:
- Findings support the social-pragmatic account of word learning.
- Communicative intent, not just contextual salience, is critical for children's word acquisition.
- Children's word learning is sensitive to the perceived relevance of contextual cues to speaker intentions.