Two-Year-Olds' Appreciation of the Shared Nature of Novel Object Labels

Two-year-olds' appreciation of the shared nature of object labels versus object preferences was examined in 2 studies. A total of 128 24- to 27-month-olds played a finding game with an experimenter during which they were taught a piece of information about a target object in a nonostensive learning context. In Experiment 1, children were presented with a cue signaling the referent of a novel label. In Experiment 2, children were presented with a cue signaling the experimenter's preference for a particular object. Results indicate children appreciate that knowledge of an object's label is shared between 2 different individuals, but object preferences are not.