When Language Background Does Not Matter: Both Mono- and Bilingual Children Use Mutual Exclusivity and Pragmatic Context to Learn Novel Words

Abstract

Do mono- and bilingual children differ in the way they learn novel words in ambiguous settings? Listeners may resolve referential ambiguity by assuming that novel words refer to unknown, rather than known, objects–a response known as the mutual exclusivity effect. Past research suggested that mono- and bilinguals differ with regard to this disambiguation strategy, perhaps because, across languages, bilinguals’ experience contradicts one-to-one mappings of label and referent. Another line of research suggested a bilingual advantage in resolving referential ambiguity, based on bilinguals’ advanced pragmatic skills. Here, we examine both these claims in a preregistered study with comparable samples of mono- and bilingual 3-year-olds (n = 74) and adults (n = 86). We tested referent disambiguation and retention in two tasks: In the Mutual-Exclusivity task, a speaker used a novel label in the presence of a known and an unknown object. In the Pragmatic task, she used another novel label in the presence of two unknown objects and participants could infer from the pragmatic context that the speaker referred to the object that was new in their discourse. Mono- and bilinguals were equally successful in inferring the correct label-referent links in both tasks and retained them after a delay. These findings indicate that children with different language backgrounds can develop the same strategies and pragmatic skills to learn novel words. Children can use their lexical knowledge and socio-cognitive skills to infer the meanings of novel words, irrespective of whether they are acquiring one or more languages.