{"pk":28634,"title":"Sampling to learn words:Adults and children sample words that reduce referential ambiguity","subtitle":null,"abstract":"How do learners gather new information during wordlearning? We present evidence that adult learners will chooseto receive additional training on object-label associations thatreduce ambiguity about reference during cross-situationalword learning. This ambiguity-reduction strategy is related toimproved test performance. We find mixed evidence thatchildren (4-8 years of age) show a similar preference to seekinformation about words experienced in ambiguous wordlearning situations. In an initial experiment, children did notpreferentially select object-label associations that remainedambiguous during cross-situational word learning. However,this may be explained by some children having relatively highcertainty about object-label associations for which they didnot see evidence disconfirming their initial hypothesis. In asecond experiment that increased the relative ambiguity oftwo sets of novel object-label associations, we found evidencethat children preferentially make selections that reduceambiguity about novel word meanings.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"cross-situational word learning; mutualexclusivity; active learning; self-directed learning; sampling"}],"section":"Papers with Oral Presentations","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6gc06634","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Martin","middle_name":"","last_name":"Zettersten","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Wisconsin-Madison","department":""},{"first_name":"Jenny","middle_name":"","last_name":"Saffran","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Wisconsin-Madison","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2019-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/28634/galley/18505/download/"}]}