Toddlers Link Social and Speech Variation during Word Learning

Within a language, there is considerable variation in the pronunciations of words owing to social factors like age, gender, nationality, and race. In the present study, we investigate whether toddlers link social and linguistic variation during word learning. In Experiment 1, 24- to 26-month-old toddlers were exposed to two talkers whose front vowels differed systematically. One talker trained them on a word-referent mapping. At test, toddlers saw the trained object and a novel object; they heard a single novel label from both talkers. Toddlers responded differently to the label as a function of talker. The following experiments demonstrate that toddlers generalize specific pronunciations across speakers of the same race (Experiment 2), but not across speakers who are simply an unfamiliar race (Experiment 3). They also generalize pronunciations based on previous affiliative behavior (Experiment 4). When affiliative behavior and race are pitted against each other, toddlers' linguistic interpretations are more influenced by affiliative behavior (Experiment 5). These experiments suggest that toddlers attend to and link social and speech variation in their environment.