Accuracy trumps accent in children's endorsement of object labels.

Abstract

Past research provides evidence that children use at least 2 potentially competing strategies when choosing informants: they attend to informants' past accuracy and to their social identity (e.g., their status as native- vs. foreign-accented speakers). We explore how children reconcile these 2 strategies when they are put in conflict and whether children's response changes across development. In Experiment 1 (N = 61), 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children watched a native- and a foreign-accented English speaker label novel objects with novel names. All 3 age groups preferred the names provided by the native speaker. Next, 1 of the 2 speakers named familiar objects accurately, whereas the other speaker named them inaccurately. In a subsequent series of test trials, again with novel objects, 4- and 5-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, were likely to endorse the names provided by the accurate speaker, regardless of her accent. In Experiment 2 (N = 72) 4-year-olds first watched a native- and a foreign-accented speaker name familiar objects, but the relative accuracy of the 2 speakers varied across conditions (100% vs. 0% correct; 75% vs. 25% correct). Subsequently, the 2 speakers provided novel names for novel objects. In each condition, 4-year-olds endorsed the names provided by the more accurate speaker, regardless of her accent. We propose that during the preschool years, children increasingly rely on past reliability when selecting informants.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 171 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.