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Using Motor Dynamics to Explore Real-time Competition in Cross-situational Word Learning: Evidence From Two Novel Paradigms

Children and adults can use cross-situational information to identify words’ referents. What do learners retain about the potential referents that occur with a word: do they encode multiple referents or a single guess? We tested this question using novel mouse tracking and finger tracking paradigms. Adults were exposed to novel words in a series of ambiguous training trials and then tested on the words’ referents. In some test trials, participants saw the target and three referents that had never occurred with the word; other test trials included a high-probability competitor that had repeatedly occurred with the word. Participants’ mouse movements were slower, less accurate, and took a more complex path to the selected referent when the competitor was present, indicating that participants were aware that both the target and competitor had previously occurred with the word. This suggests that learners can accrue information about multiple potential referents for a word, and that mouse tracking provides a promising way of assessing this knowledge. However, this knowledge was not evident in participants’ finger movements, suggesting that the dynamics of finger movements might not capture real-time competition between referents.