Testing the Use of Whole-part Juxtaposition and Mutual Exclusivity in Preschool Children with Familiar and Non-familiar Objects

Young children’s rapid acquisition of words and language suggests that they use word learning rules and tools to aid in their fast learning. Recent studies about word learning have proposed that specific principles or tools may be utilized in children’s language learning including the mutual exclusivity principle and the whole-part juxtaposition principle. The theory of mutual exclusivity is the tendency for children to assume that an object can only have one label. For example, a child’s tendency to think that an object such as a soda can is only a can and cannot have any other label. When the tab on the can is pointed to, the child will assume it is a part of the can because the can already has a separate label. This assumption may help children assign meanings to novel words by considering only those meanings and referents for which they do not already have a label. However, the mutual exclusivity assumption serves as just an assumption because it may not always be followed. Some objects do have more than one label. In addition, whole-part juxtaposing enables children to address novel part terms with familiar object labels. For example, if a researcher points to a bird and says ‘that is a bird’ (familiar object), the research can then say ‘a bird with a beak ’ (unfamiliar object) and th