The effect of speaker reliability on adult cross-situational word learning

Word learning is guided by the statistical co-occurrence between spoken words and potential referents, through which learners gradually map labels to objects across situations. Given that word does not occur in a vacuum, rather communicative context, it relevant evaluate role speakers play. Because we do information provided every person equally, reasonable think someone who makes lexical errors reliable speaker from whom learn new words. The current study focuses on reliability adult cross-situational (CSWL). In two experiments investigated extent to  which  adults  attend  the  reliability  of  speaker  and  how  this  affects  word  learning  in  CSWL task. We varied consistency with mapped novel familiar objects. hypothesized (1) speakers’ would be judged differently depending their past object-labeling accuracy, (2) more difficult when  presented  by  an  unreliable  speaker.  Experiment  1  shows  that  was  assessed  as  less  reliable,  compared  reliable  speaker,  but  effect  disappeared  2,  participants  were  taught  new  words  two  speakers,  a  one.  Furthermore,  we  found  no  evidence  support  hypothesis  being  exposed  impairs  CSWL  adults.  We  discuss  relevance  these  findings importance of further research CSWL.