The relation between attention, inhibition and word learning in young children

In their natural environments, children usually see several novel objects while they hear the labels for these objects, making it difficult for them to know exactly which objects these words refer to. This referential ambiguity problem can be alleviated through selective attention and inhibitory control because a child who focuses on plausible referents while inhibiting irrelevant ones during object labelling has a higher chance of identifying the intended referent. The present study examined this hypothesis by testing 3.5- to 4.5-year-old children. In particular, we examined the links between children’s word learning (a cross-situational learning task), selective attention (flanker task), inhibitory control (day-night Stroop task) while controlling for working memory (Corsi block task). We found that children learned the novel word-object associations and completed the cognitive control tasks successfully. However, we did not find any association between word learning and cognitive control or memory span. We argue that the lack of a significant association between cognitive control and word learning may be indicative of a more exploratory style of learning in young children.