In two experiments, 1.5-year-olds were taught novel words whose sound patterns were phonologically similar to familiar words (novel neighbors) or were not (novel nonneighbors). Learning was tested using a picture-fixation task. In both experiments, children learned the novel nonneighbors but not the novel neighbors. In addition, exposure to the novel neighbors impaired recognition performance on familiar neighbors. Finally, children did not spontaneously use phonological differences to infer that a novel word referred to a novel object. Thus, lexical competition--inhibitory interaction among words in speech comprehension--can prevent children from using their full phonological sensitivity in judging words as novel. These results suggest that word learning in young children, as in adults, relies not only on the discrimination and identification of phonetic categories, but also on evaluating the likelihood that an utterance conveys a new word.

中文翻译：

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幼儿词汇学习中的词汇竞赛

在两个实验中，1.5 岁的孩子学习新词，其发音模式与熟悉的词（新邻居）或不相似（新的非邻居）在音韵上相似。使用图片固定任务测试学习。在这两个实验中，孩子们学习了新的非邻居，但没有学习新的邻居。此外，接触新邻居会削弱对熟悉邻居的识别性能。最后，孩子们不会自发地使用语音差异来推断一个新词指的是一个新对象。因此，词汇竞争——在语音理解中抑制单词之间的相互作用——可以防止儿童在判断单词新颖时充分利用他们的语音敏感性。这些结果表明，与成人一样，幼儿的单词学习