Mutual exclusivity (psychology)

Mutual exclusivity, in developmental psychology, is the assumption that only one label can be applied to each object in early word learning.^[1] Mutual exclusivity is a constraint that is often discussed by domain-specific accounts of language as limiting infants' hypotheses about the possible meanings of words.^[1][2]

Mutual exclusivity might influence an infant's word learning in four different ways. First, mutual exclusivity might influence the infant's decision about the reference of a new word. For example, if a child is faced with a familiar object for which they already have a label, and an unfamiliar object, which they have not yet labelled, they are likely to map a novel word onto the unfamiliar object. This is called the disambiguation effect.^[3] Next, the bias might cause an infant to change the extension of a familiar word. In this case, a child might remove 'wolf' from their extension of 'dog' upon hearing an animal labelled a 'wolf.' This can be called the correction effect.^[3] As well, the bias might compel an infant to reject a new word, for instance, rejecting 'wolf' in favour of 'dog.' This is the rejection effect.^[3] Lastly, mutual exclusivity might influence word generalization. In this case, if a child knows an object to have a particular name, the child should not generalize other names to it. This is known as the restriction effect.^[3]

There are conflicting positions in the literature regarding the mutual exclusivity bias. Some theorists believe that children possess this bias from the start of word learning, others argue that they never have the bias, and yet others believe that the bias is acquired throughout early childhood.^[3]

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