Mutual exclusivity develops as a consequence of abstract rather than particular vocabulary knowledge

Mutual exclusivity (ME) refers to the assumption that there are one-to-one relations between linguistic forms and their meanings. It is used as a word-learning strategy whereby children tend to map novel labels to unfamiliar rather than familiar referents. Previous research has indicated a relation between ME and vocabulary development, which could either be due to children’s developing knowledge of the labels for familiar objects, or to enhanced general word-learning skills. In this study, ME was related to receptive vocabulary for 17- to 19-month-old children in a novel paradigm where children’s familiarity with the objects and labels was controlled. It was found that infants with larger receptive vocabularies employed ME to a greater extent than infants with a smaller vocabulary size. The results indicate that ME use is more reliable in infants with larger receptive vocabulary size, and, critically, that ME gradually consolidates as an abstract word-learning strategy as infants’ linguistic experience increases.