School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH8 9AD, UK.
School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH8 9AD, UK.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2021 Jun;206:105072. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2020.105072. Epub 2021 Feb 11.
The disambiguation effect, also referred to as process of elimination, occurs during word learning, whereby novel words are mapped onto new referents, precluding the application of a novel label to a familiar object. Prior studies showed that the emergence and use of disambiguation can be affected by children's vocabulary growth and linguistic experience, such as growing up with more than one language. To test this, we investigated (a) whether monolingual and multilingual children disambiguated a novel word-object mapping, (b) whether they retained a trained, previously seen word-object mapping, (c) whether they retained the novel fast-mapped word-object mapping, and (d) whether and how age, English vocabulary size, and language background modulated disambiguation and retention. Lastly, we tested (e) whether children who disambiguated also retained better. Eye-tracking data from 18- to 30-month-old monolingual children (n = 43) and multilingual children (n = 40) were collected. A looking-while-listening paradigm with two objects included two familiar items, one novel item, and one trained item. Mixed-effect models reported that vocabulary size predicted the outcome of mapping and retention better than age. Monolingual children's accuracy on disambiguation trials was high from the start, whereas multilingual children started to disambiguate later as their vocabulary grew. Only monolingual children performed above chance level on retaining the novel label. Lastly, the use of disambiguation improved retention for monolingual children but not for multilingual children. This research corroborates that disambiguation should be regarded as a mechanism facilitating default fast mapping rather than fully fledged learning. Vocabulary growth leading to an increase in disambiguation supports the notion that the disambiguation effect stems from prior episodes of learning.
去歧义效应，也称为排除过程，发生在词汇学习过程中，即通过将新词映射到新的指称对象上来排除将新词应用于熟悉对象的可能性。先前的研究表明，去歧义的出现和使用可能会受到儿童词汇量增长和语言经验的影响，例如成长过程中使用多种语言。为了验证这一点，我们调查了：（a）单语和双语儿童是否会去歧义新的词-物映射；（b）他们是否保留了已训练过的、以前见过的词-物映射；（c）他们是否保留了新的快速映射的词-物映射；（d）年龄、英语词汇量和语言背景是否以及如何调节去歧义与保留；最后，我们还测试了：（e）是否去歧义的儿童保留得更好。通过眼动追踪技术，对 18 至 30 个月大的单语儿童（n=43）和双语儿童（n=40）进行了数据收集。在一个包含两个物体的听看任务中，有两个熟悉的物体，一个新的物体，以及一个已训练过的物体。混合效应模型报告说，词汇量比年龄更能预测映射和保留的结果。单语儿童在去歧义试验中的准确性从一开始就很高，而双语儿童的词汇量增长后才开始去歧义。只有单语儿童在保留新标签方面的表现好于随机水平。最后，去歧义的使用提高了单语儿童的保留能力，但对双语儿童没有影响。这项研究证实，去歧义应该被视为促进默认快速映射的机制，而不是完全成熟的学习机制。词汇量的增长导致去歧义的增加支持了这样一种观点，即去歧义效应源于先前的学习经历。
