The role of speaker accuracy and mutual exclusivity in children’s novel word learning

Children draw on multiple sources of information during word learning, including speaker testimony and lexical expectations. Yet, little is known about how these cues jointly influence children's ability to learn new words. The present study examined the combined effect of speaker accuracy and mutual exclusivity (ME) on short-term retention of label-object associations in 4- to 7-year-old monolingual English speaking children. Children were presented novel and familiar object pairs, and were taught novel labels by either an accurate speaker (one who previously labeled familiar objects correctly) or an inaccurate speaker (one who previously labeled familiar objects incorrectly). Novel labels were introduced under two conditions: Align-with-ME (speakers labeled the novel object with novel names) and Conflict-with-ME (speakers labeled the familiar object with novel names, conflicting with ME). Results showed that children retained novel labels for novel objects from both accurate and inaccurate speakers when speaker testimony aligned with ME expectations. This suggests that children are open to learning novel words from speakers regardless of their prior accuracy and may also draw on other available cues, such as label-object co-occurrences, during learning. However, when speaker testimony violated ME expectations, children performed poorly, possibly due to difficulty disambiguating between speaker testimony and their existing lexical knowledge. Together, these findings suggest that children's short-term retention of label-object associations is supported when available cues align, irrespective of speaker accuracy status. These associations, however, become less robust when ME and speaker cues provide conflicting information.