Preschoolers are sensitive to the speaker's knowledge when learning proper names.

Full Abstract

Unobservable properties that are specific to individuals, such as their proper names, can only be known by people who are familiar with those individuals. Do young children utilize this "familiarity principle" when learning language? Experiment 1 tested whether forty-eight 2- to 4-year-old children were able to determine the referent of a proper name such as "Jessie" based on the knowledge that the speaker was familiar with one individual but unfamiliar with the other. Even 2-year-olds successfully identified Jessie as the individual with whom the speaker was familiar. Experiment 2 examined whether children appreciate this principle at a general level, as do adults, or whether this knowledge may be specific to certain word-learning situations. To test this, forty-eight 3- to 5-year-old children were given the converse of the task in Experiment 1--they were asked to determine the individual with whom the speaker was familiar based on the speaker's knowledge of an individual's proper name. Only 5-year-olds reliably succeeded at this task, suggesting that a general understanding of the familiarity principle is a relatively late developmental accomplishment.

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Author information

Author/s: Birch, Susan A J (SA); Bloom, Paul (P);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520-8205, USA. susan.birch(-atsign-)yale.edu

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Clinical Trial; Journal Article; Randomized Controlled Trial; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Journal: Child development (Child Dev), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: -2002 Mar-Apr; vol 73 (issue 2) : pp 434-44

Dates: Created 2002/04/12; Completed 2002/10/24; Revised 2006/11/15;

PMID: 11949901, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

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