It was suggested that children's referent selection may not lay memory traces sufficiently strong to lead to retention of new word-object mappings. If this was the case we expect incorrect selections to be easily rectified through feedback. Previous work suggested this to be the case in toddlers at typical likelihood (TL) but not in those at elevated likelihood (EL) for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (Bedford et al., 2013). Yet group differences in lexical knowledge may have confounded these findings. Here, TL (N = 29) and EL toddlers (N = 75) chose one of two unfamiliar objects as a referent for a new word. Both groups retained the word-referent mapping above chance when their choices were immediately reinforced but were at chance after corrective feedback. The same pattern of results was obtained when children observed another experimenter make the initial referent choice. Thus, children's referent choices lay memory traces that compete with subsequent correction; these strong word-object associations are not a result of children actively choosing potential referents for new words.

有人认为，儿童的指称选择可能不会留下足够强的记忆痕迹，导致保留新的词-对象映射。如果是这种情况，我们希望通过反馈可以轻松纠正错误的选择。之前的研究表明，对于自闭症谱系障碍 (ASD) 的典型可能性 (TL) 幼儿来说，情况是这样，但高可能性 (EL) 幼儿中则不然 (Bedford et al., 2013)。然而词汇知识的群体差异可能会混淆这些发现。在这里，TL（N = 29）和 EL 幼儿（N = 75）选择两个不熟悉的物体之一作为新单词的指代。当他们的选择立即得到强化时，两组都保留了高于偶然性的词指涉映射，但在纠正反馈后却处于偶然性。当孩子们观察另一位实验者做出最初的参考选择时，得到了相同的结果模式。因此，儿童的参照选择留下了记忆痕迹，与随后的纠正相竞争。这些强烈的词与物的关联并不是儿童积极选择新词的潜在指称的结果。