Three studies investigated how 3-year-old Japanese children interpret the meaning of a new word associated with a familiar artifact. Findings suggest that children flexibly recruit clues from multiple sources, including shape information and function familiarity, but the clues are weighed in hierarchical order so children can determine the single…

Examined how Japanese 2- and 4-year-olds assigned meaning to novel nouns associated with familiar and unfamiliar animals and inanimate objects. Found that in the absence of useful information from syntax, the 2-year-olds were able to fast map a noun to its meaning by elegantly coordinating word-learning biases and other available sources of…