Individual vocabulary differences and the development of the shape bias

Abstract

Researchers have proposed that learning names of individual words and categories leads an individual child to develop a general word learning bias. However, evidence to date comes from studies of group means rather than individuals. The current study tests the prediction that the statistics of an individual child’s vocabulary are closely related to that child’s development of word learning biases. We demonstrate that individual differences in vocabulary structure predict individual differences in novel noun generalization.


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