{"pk":27024,"title":"The Learning of Subordinate Word Meanings","subtitle":null,"abstract":"In three experiments, adults attempted to learn words with subordinate-level meanings (dalmatian) by sampling thereferent world cross-situationally. Xu & Tenenbaum, 2007 predicted that encountering three uses of a word, each referringto a dalmatian would evoke “suspicious coincidence” inferencing, leading to the subordinate meaning (dalmatian). Exp. 1found little evidence for this; cross-situational exposure led to a basic-level bias. This bias was unchanged even when thesample was increased to five subordinate exemplars (Exp. 2). Exp. 3 encouraged semantic contrast by simultaneously teachingeach subject a word for the subordinate-level and the basic-level category within the same semantic domain (dap=dalmatian;blit=dog). Participants now showed non-basic level learning, but more in line with mutual exclusivity: they may think “dap”means dalmatian but “blit” means all-dogs-except-dalmatians. We conclude that the basic-level interpretation is powerful andcannot be removed by the mere observation of exemplar items over multiple word instances.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[],"section":"Talks: Papers","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3931253t","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Hao","middle_name":"","last_name":"Wang","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Pennsylvania","department":""},{"first_name":"Lila","middle_name":"","last_name":"Gleitman","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Pennsylvania","department":""},{"first_name":"John","middle_name":"","last_name":"Trueswell","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Pennsylvania","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2017-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/27024/galley/16660/download/"}]}