Turning novel words into known words: why ostensive naming facilitates children's word learning via fast mapping

<p>Abstract copyright data collection owner.</p>The ability understand others and to be understood is a complex challenge for children. This research examines the mechanisms that support successful word learning in young children. Children are very good at forming a rough idea of what a new word means. For example, if shown a book and a novel electronic gadget and asked for the 'iPod' young children use process-of-elimination to link 'iPod' to the gadget. However, this is just the beginning. To really learn words children must form strong memories of the words and their meanings. Recently, we demonstrated that children only learn from process-of-elimination if ostensive naming is used. Ostensive naming involves naming something by making it very obvious what the word refers to, usually by holding up and pointing to the target object. This research builds on this finding and explores which aspects of ostensive naming make it so helpful. Experiment 1 explores highlighting the target object and decreasing children's attention to all other objects. Experiment 2 explores the distances between the objects when they are being named. Overall this research will increase our understanding of mechanisms that support early word learning, when children are already speaking but still have a lot to learn