Previous work indicates mutual exclusivity in word learning in monolingual, but not bilingual toddlers. We asked whether this difference indicates distinct conceptual biases, or instead reflects best-guess heuristic use in the absence of context. We altered word-learning contexts by manipulating whether a familiar- or unfamiliar-race speaker introduced a novel word for an object with a known category label painted in a new color. Both monolingual and bilingual infants showed mutual exclusivity for a familiar-race speaker, and relaxed mutual exclusivity and treated the novel word as a category label for an unfamiliar-race speaker. Thus, monolingual and bilingual infants have access to similar word-learning heuristics, and both use nonlinguistic social context to guide their use of the most appropriate heuristic.

中文翻译：

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将互斥性置于语境中：说话人种族影响单语和双语婴儿的单词学习假设

以前的工作表明，单语而非双语幼儿的单词学习是相互排斥的。我们询问这种差异是否表明存在明显的概念偏见，或者在没有上下文的情况下反映了最佳猜测启发式使用。我们通过操纵熟悉或不熟悉种族的说话者是否为具有以新颜色绘制的已知类别标签的对象引入新词来改变单词学习上下文。单语和双语婴儿都表现出对熟悉种族的说话者的相互排他性，并放松了互斥性并将新词视为不熟悉种族的说话者的类别标签。因此，单语和双语婴儿可以使用类似的单词学习启发式方法，并且都使用非语言的社会背景来指导他们使用最合适的启发式方法。