Upon hearing a novel label, listeners tend to assume that it refers to a novel, rather than a familiar object. While this disambiguation or mutual exclusivity (ME) effect has been robustly shown across development, it is unclear what it involves. Do listeners use their pragmatic and lexical knowledge to exclude the familiar object and thus select…

Autism spectrum disorder is a neurodevelopmental disorder that is characterized by impairments in social communication, restricted interests, and repetitive behaviors. Many studies have demonstrated atypical responses to audiovisual sensory inputs, particularly those containing sociolinguistic information. It is currently unclear whether these…

Previous studies using direct forms of vocabulary instruction have shown that newly learned words are integrated with existing lexical knowledge only "after" off-line consolidation (as measured by competition between new and existing words during spoken word recognition). However, the bulk of vocabulary acquisition during childhood…

Adult humans process communicative interactions by recognizing that information is being communicated through speech (linguistic ability) and simultaneously evaluating how to respond appropriately (social-pragmatic ability). These abilities may originate in infancy. Infants understand how speech communicates in social interactions, helping them…

When children hear a novel word in a context presenting a novel object and a familiar one, they usually assume that the novel word refers to the novel object. In a series of experiments, we tested whether this behavior would be found when 2-year-olds interpreted novel words that differed phonologically from familiar words in only 1 sound, either a…

Two studies used a comprehension task and an elicited production task to examine whether preschool children and adults appreciated the semantic properties of generic utterances. Findings indicated that in both tasks, 4-year-olds and adults treated generics ("bears live in caves") as distinct from both indefinites ("some") and universal quantifiers…

Examined in 2 studies 2- to 4-year-olds' learning of novel words and novel facts and extension of the words and facts to additional exemplars. Found that children extended the novel word to more category members than they extended the novel fact. By age 2, children observe extendibility of novel count nouns but are uncertain about extendibility of…

Examined 2-year-olds' comprehension and production of novel nouns, verbs, or actions at 3 intervals after training conducted in massed or distributed exposures. Found that for comprehension, children learned all item types in all training conditions at all retention intervals. Production was better for nonverbal actions than for either word type…

In two experiments, mothers told their infant and an adult a story that involved target words, and women taught an assembly procedure involving novel terminology to another adult. In speech to infants, mothers positioned focused words on pitch peaks, but in speech to adults, the emphasis was more variable. (BC)

Compared two forms of word identification training to promote transfer of learning by dyslexic children. One program taught phonological analysis and blending skills and provided direct instruction of letter-sound correspondences; the other taught the acquisition, use, and monitoring of four metacognitive decoding strategies. Both approaches were…