Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

When does overheard speech support early word-learning? The present study provides preliminary evidence that children's closest social partners (here, mothers) structure attention to overheard speech. In a Tseltal Mayan community where overhearing is central to socialization, 75 mother-child dyads participated in overhearing-sessions exposing them to two novel words. In each session, one child's mother was directly addressed ("Mother-Addressed" condition), while the second mother merely observed ("Mother-Unaddressed" condition). Immediately after, both children completed two gaze-based tests of word recognition and learning. Results show that, compared to Mother-Unaddressed children, Mother-Addressed children exhibited (i) greater one-shot recognition of the novel word whose referent was visible during the overhearing-session; and (ii) a word-learning advantage on cross-situational familiarization trials. Insofar as who is being spoken to matters, the present study finds that not all overheard input is created equal: rather, results provide preliminary evidence that observational word-learning is socially-structured.