School of Psychology, University of Sussex, United Kingdom.
Cognition. 2011 Feb;118(2):234-44. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2010.10.015. Epub 2010 Nov 18.
Determining the referent of a novel name is a critical task for young language learners. The majority of studies on children's referent selection focus on manipulating the sources of information (linguistic, contextual and pragmatic) that children can use to solve the referent mapping problem. Here, we take a step back and explore how children's endogenous biases towards novelty and their own familiarity with novel objects influence their performance in such a task. We familiarized 2-year-old children with previously novel objects. Then, on novel name referent selection trials children were asked to select the referent from three novel objects: two previously seen and one completely novel object. Children demonstrated a clear bias to select the most novel object. A second experiment controls for pragmatic responding and replicates this finding. We conclude, therefore, that children's referent selection is biased by previous exposure and children's endogenous bias to novelty.
确定一个新名词的所指是年轻语言学习者的一项关键任务。大多数关于儿童所指选择的研究都集中在操纵儿童可以用来解决所指映射问题的信息来源（语言的、语境的和语用的）上。在这里，我们退一步探讨儿童对新奇事物的内在偏见以及他们对新奇物体的熟悉程度如何影响他们在这种任务中的表现。我们让 2 岁的儿童熟悉以前的新奇物体。然后，在选择新名词所指的试验中，儿童被要求从三个新物体中选择所指：两个之前见过的和一个完全新的物体。儿童明显有选择最不熟悉物体的倾向。第二个实验控制了语用反应，并复制了这一发现。因此，我们得出结论，儿童的所指选择受到先前接触和儿童对新奇事物的内在偏见的影响。
