Preschoolers use speakers’ preferences to learn words

In two studies, we investigated preschoolers’ ability to use others’ preferences to learn names for things. Two studies demonstrated that preschool children make smart use of others’ preferences. In the first study, preschool children only used information about others’ preferences when they were clearly linked to referential intentions. The second study established that children only used others’ preferences to learn words when the preference and intention information came from the same person. Both studies reveal impressive use of mental state information for word learning purposes.