ABSTRACT Children tend to select a novel object rather than a familiar object when asked to identify the referent of a novel label. Current accounts of this so-called disambiguation effect do not address whether children have a general metacognitive representation of this way of determining the reference of novel labels. In two experiments (each N = 48), three- and four-year-olds received a prediction task that required such a representation. In the initial phase, children completed four disambiguation test trials that were presented as instances of the same “game.” In the next phase, they received four additional trials. These differed only in that before the label was presented, children were asked to predict which object “was going to be right.” On the first prediction trial, most four-year-olds predicted the novel object, whereas most three-year-olds did not. On subsequent trials, despite having received feedback regarding predictions, three-year-olds showed no tendency to begin to predict the novel object, whereas most four-year-olds continued to make this prediction. These findings add to the evidence that most children develop a general metacognitive representation of their tendency to map novel labels onto novel rather than familiar objects some time around their fourth birthday.

中文翻译：

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消歧预测效果

摘要 当被要求识别新标签的指称时，儿童倾向于选择一个新的对象而不是熟悉的对象。目前对这种所谓的消歧效应的描述并没有解决儿童是否对这种确定新标签参考的方式具有一般的元认知表征。在两个实验中（每个 N = 48），三岁和四岁的孩子接受了需要这种表示的预测任务。在初始阶段，儿童完成了四次作为同一个“游戏”实例的消歧测试试验。在下一阶段，他们又接受了四次试验。它们的不同之处仅在于在出现标签之前，孩子们被要求预测哪个物体“将是正确的”。在第一次预测试验中，大多数四岁的孩子都预测到了新物体，而大多数三岁的孩子没有。在随后的试验中，尽管收到了有关预测的反馈，但三岁儿童没有表现出开始预测新物体的趋势，而大多数四岁儿童继续做出这种预测。这些发现进一步证明，大多数儿童在四岁生日前后的某个时候会形成一种普遍的元认知表征，表明他们倾向于将小说标签映射到小说而不是熟悉的物体上。