Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Toddlers better retain novel object-label mappings for items from taxonomic categories they have more knowledge in. Separately, words for concepts with more perceptual features are learned earlier than words for concepts with fewer perceptual features. Because these factors have only been examined separately, it is unclear whether effects of taxonomic density stem from differences in structured taxonomic knowledge or simply reflect lower-level differences in perceptual similarity among concepts. In the current study, we asked how taxonomic knowledge and perceptual information jointly contribute to word learning in a group of 24-month-olds with a wide range of vocabulary skill. We found that taxonomic knowledge facilitated word learning. We also found that the availability of perceptual cues to meaning was used as an additional support for word learning by children with smaller expressive vocabularies. Together these findings suggest that taxonomic knowledge is a better predictor of word learn-ing compared to lower-level perceptual features at 24 months old. However, perceptual cues to meaning may provide additional support for vocabulary growth for learners with smaller vocabularies and/or late-talkers.