Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

We investigated two possible mechanisms that may mediate the rapid acquisition of novel words and their corre-sponding referents (i.e., fast mapping, FM). In the standard paradigm that examines FM, a novel label is presented alongside anovel object and a familiar object, and subjects are asked to identify the item that corresponds to the novel label. Acquisitionof name-object pairing is subsequently assessed. One possible mechanism underlying FM is disjunctive syllogism: the activerejection of the familiar item, which allows for the novel object-to-label mapping (e.g., “I know this is a cricket, so “torato”can’t be referring to that; it must refer to the unfamiliar item.”). Another possible mechanism involves activation of a relevantsemantic network (e.g., insect) into which the novel concept can be incorporated. We found that semantic network activationalone is sufficient, and that active rejection is not necessary, for the rapid acquisition of novel object-name associations.