Conflicting Nature of Social-Pragmatic Cues with Mutual Exclusivity Regarding Three-Year-Olds’ Label-Referent Mappings

The present research aims at finding to what extent social-pragmatic cues that conflict with mutual exclusivity lead preschoolers to exclude a novel object as a referent for a novel word. Sixty early and late 3-year-old preschoolers randomly participated in one of the three conditions. In the first condition, preschoolers’ tendency to select an unfamiliar object for an unfamiliar word is investigated in the absence of social-pragmatic cues that contradict mutual exclusivity. The second condition is aimed to investigate if partial social-pragmatic cues, such as pointing towards a familiar object, interfere with mutual exclusivity. In the third condition, pointing towards a familiar object is accompanied by gazing alternately between the familiar object and preschoolers to investigate whether preschoolers abandon or still honor mutual exclusivity. The results indicate that in the absence of any social-pragmatic cues, preschoolers use a familiar object as a cue leading them to match a novel object with a novel word. Partial cues such as pointing towards familiar objects do not make any significant difference in preschoolers’ familiar/unfamiliar object selection for an unfamiliar word. If both of the social-pragmatic cues are available, preschoolers suspend mutual exclusivity in indirect word learning situations.