Learning Name–Object Relations After a Single Exclusion Trial in 18- to 48-Month-Old Children

Abstract

Responding by exclusion is a well-documented phenomenon, but data on the maintenance of word–object relations acquired using this procedure are highly variable. The present study included a sample of 80 children, ages 18 to 48 months, to determine whether age is a critical variable in learning name–object relations after a single exclusion trial. The sample was divided into 4 groups according to age. After establishing a baseline of auditory-visual discrimination (familiar names and objects) in matching-to-sample tasks, 3 test blocks were conducted. Each block had 8 baseline trials and 2 probe trials: an exclusion probe (i.e., an unknown name was dictated, and the comparisons were 2 familiar toys, an unknown toy, and a blank comparison) and a learning probe that verified whether the relationship established between the unknown stimuli on the exclusion probe was maintained in a further test trial. The majority of the children chose unknown objects in the exclusion probes. Analyses of the proportion of correct responses in the learning probes revealed a significant difference in performance between the groups of younger (18–30 months) and older children (31–48 months), indicating an improvement in learning the name–object relations after a single exclusion trial in the groups of older children.