Cross-situational learning of phonologically overlapping words across degrees of ambiguity

Cross-situational word learning (XSWL) tasks present multiple words and candidate referents within a learning trial such that word–referent pairings can be inferred only across trials. Adults encode fine phonological detail when two words and candidate referents are presented in each learning trial (2 x 2 scenario; Escudero, Mulak, & Vlach,). To test the relationship between XSWL task difficulty and phonological encoding, we examined XSWL of words differing by one vowel or consonant across degrees of within-learning trial ambiguity (1 x 1 to 4 x 4). Word identification was assessed alongside three distractors. Adults finely encoded words via XSWL: Learning occurred in all conditions, though accuracy decreased across the 1 x 1 to 3 x 3 conditions. Accuracy was highest for the 1 x 1 condition, suggesting fast-mapping is a stronger learning strategy here. Accuracy was higher for consonant than vowel set targets, and having more distractors from the same set mitigated identification of vowel set targets only, suggesting possible stronger encoding of consonants than vowels.