Rowe Lindsey, Jacobson Rebecca, Saylor Megan M
Vanderbilt University.
J Child Lang. 2015 Nov;42(6):1219-36. doi: 10.1017/S0305000914000774. Epub 2015 Jan 29.
Monolingual children sometimes resist learning second labels for familiar objects. One explanation is that they are guided by word learning constraints that lead to the assumption that objects have only one name. It is less clear whether bilingual children observe this constraint. In the current study, we test the hypothesis that bilingual children might be more willing to accept second labels for objects and ask how they are affected by different amounts of information relevant to the second label. Although monolingual and bilingual children benefited from increased levels of information, only bilingual children chose the referent at above chance levels when they were offered increased levels of information. They were also more likely than monolingual children to accept second labels. Differences emerged even when English language vocabulary size was controlled for in the analyses.
单语儿童有时会抗拒学习熟悉物体的第二个标签。一种解释是，他们受到词汇学习限制的引导，从而假定物体只有一个名称。双语儿童是否遵循这一限制则不太明确。在当前的研究中，我们检验了这样一个假设，即双语儿童可能更愿意接受物体的第二个标签，并探讨他们如何受到与第二个标签相关的不同信息量的影响。尽管单语和双语儿童都从增加的信息量中受益，但只有双语儿童在获得更多信息量时，选择参照物的概率高于随机水平。他们也比单语儿童更有可能接受第二个标签。即使在分析中控制了英语词汇量，差异仍然存在。
