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The blowfish effect: children and adults use atypical exemplars to infer more narrow categories during word learning.

The blowfish effect: children and adults use atypical exemplars to infer more narrow categories during word learning.

Authors :
Emberson LL
Loncar N
Mazzei C
Treves I
Goldberg AE
Source :
Journal of child language [J Child Lang] 2019 Sep; Vol. 46 (5), pp. 938-954.
Publication Year :
2019

Abstract

Learners preferentially interpret novel nouns at the basic level ('dog') rather than at a more narrow level ('Labrador'). This 'basic-level bias' is mitigated by statistics: children and adults are more likely to interpret a novel noun at a more narrow label if they witness 'a suspicious coincidence' - the word applied to three exemplars of the same narrow category. Independent work has found that exemplar typicality influences learners' inferences and category learning. We bring these lines of work together to investigate whether the content (typicality) of a single exemplar affects the level of interpretation of words and whether an atypicality effect interacts with input statistics. Results demonstrate that both four- to five-year-olds and adults tend to assign a narrower interpretation to a word if it is exemplified by an atypical category member. This atypicality effect is roughly as strong as, and independent of, the suspicious coincidence effect, which is replicated.

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
1469-7602
Volume :
46
Issue :
5
Database :
MEDLINE
Journal :
Journal of child language
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
31309913
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000919000266