Week 7

Ellen recently learned the word “moon” after

her parents started reading Goodnight Moon

to her. One day, her parents asked Ellen to

point to “moon” in a picture book they were

looking at together. Ellen excitedly pointed to

these pictures:

• -- Based on this information, which early

word-learning (or word-use) error did Ellen

display?

• Overextension

• Underextension

• Neither. She was just inaccurate.

2-year-old Macy was excited to go to the aquarium for the first time. When she saw a new creature, she would jump up and down in excitement, and her mom would point and name the new creature.

In one tank, Macy saw both seahorses and seadragons for the first time. Her mom pointed at one creature and said “seahorse!” Macy assumed the creature that was swimming was a seahorse, not just its tube-like snout. Which lexical learning principle best explains this?

• Principle of Contrast

• Mutual Exclusivity Assumption

• Whole Object Assumption

A few minutes later, Macy’s mom pointed to an area where there was a seahorse and a seadragon together. Her mom pointed in their direction and said, “seadragon!”

Macy assumed that the word seadragon referred to the creature that was in fact a seadragon, not the seahorse. Which lexical learning principle best explains this?

• Principle of Contrast

• Mutual Exclusivity Assumption

• Whole Object Assumption

Can a child who is engaging in fast mapping use both the mutual exclusivity assumption and the whole object assumption at the same time to figure out a word label and map it to a referent?

• 
• 

Language comprehension is also known as

• Expressive Langauge

• Receptive Language

The majority of toddler's first words are

• Adjectives

• Nouns

• Verbs