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Children's Social Information Seeking is Sensitive to Referential Ambiguity
Emily Hembacher1, Benjamin deMayo1, Michael C Frank1
1Stanford University.
Child Development
|August 9, 2020
Summary
Children actively seek social information when language is ambiguous, looking to experimenters for clues. This social information seeking behavior supports early language acquisition and learning.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Linguistics
- Cognitive Science
Background:
- Children's language acquisition relies on understanding word meanings.
- Referential ambiguity, where a word could refer to multiple objects, poses a challenge for learning.
- Spontaneous information seeking plays a role in resolving such ambiguities.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how children (ages 2-5) seek social information when faced with referential ambiguity.
- To examine the impact of object familiarity and gaze cues on children's information-seeking behaviors.
- To determine if social information seeking is an active learning strategy in early childhood language development.
Main Methods:
- Conducted two experiments with 160 children aged 2-5 years.
- Manipulated referential ambiguity by varying the number and familiarity of objects.
- Assessed children's gaze patterns towards the experimenter's face in response to ambiguous labels.
Main Results:
- Children frequently looked to the experimenter's face when encountering referential ambiguity.
- This social information seeking behavior was consistent across both experiments.
- Older children (3-4 year olds) showed sensitivity to the degree of referential evidence provided.
Conclusions:
- Children actively seek social cues to resolve linguistic uncertainty.
- Social information seeking is a crucial, active learning mechanism in early language acquisition.
- Findings highlight the importance of social interaction in a child's journey to understanding language.
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