LING 355 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Steven Pinker, Mutual Exclusivity, Dan Slobin
Document Summary
Test items: 4 different words were tested: daddy, mummy, a word for fruit, a word for an animal. Photographs involving the child"s father, other men, the child"s mother, other women, various animals, various fruit. Child was shown the photos and asked to name what was in the picture. This was to see whether the children are in fact overextending in production: comprehension. Child was asked to show the x (e. g. show the daddy; show the man). Each of the 4 words was tested 16 times. Each time, the child was shown a picture appropriate for the word as well as another picture, indicating the overextended use. The children showed far less tendency to overextend in comprehension than in production. For example, if they were using the word daddy" to name men in general, when asked to pick daddy" from a pair of pictures involving the father and another man, they would pick only the father"s picture.
