AUTHOR=Bredemann Catherine A. , Vlach Haley A. 

TITLE=Where’s the Advantage? Mutual Exclusivity Promotes Children’s Initial Mapping, but Not Long-Term Memory, for Words Compared to Other Strategies

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=Volume 12 - 2021

YEAR=2021

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.686554

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2021.686554

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=Children frequently apply a novel label to a novel object, a behavior known as the mutual exclusivity bias (MEB). This study examined how MEB affects children’s retention for word mappings. In Experiment 1, preschoolers (N = 39; Mage = 46.62 months) and adults (N = 24; Mage = 21.63 years) completed an immediate word mapping task and a delayed retention test. Both samples used MEB during referent selection, but neither group displayed higher retention for words mapped via MEB at test. Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1 with preschoolers (N = 85; Mage = 47.78 months) and provided evidence against the possibility that interference from multiple words contributed to children’s failure to retain word mappings when using MEB. Experiment 3 presented children (N = 30; Mage = 51.13 months) with an abbreviated version of the task, providing evidence against the alternative hypothesis that cognitive load during learning caused the forgetting observed in Experiments 1 and 2. Taken together, these experiments suggest that MEB supports initial word mapping but may not provide an advantage for long-term retention.