Propose but verify: fast mapping meets cross-situational word learning.

We report three eyetracking experiments that examine the learning procedure used by adults as they pair novel words and visually presented referents over a sequence of referentially ambiguous trials. Successful learning under such conditions has been argued to be the product of a learning procedure in which participants provisionally pair each novel word with several possible referents and use a statistical-associative learning mechanism to gradually converge on a single mapping across learning instances [e.g.

How words can and cannot be learned by observation.

Three experiments explored how words are learned from hearing them across contexts. Adults watched 40-s videotaped vignettes of parents uttering target words (in sentences) to their infants. Videos were muted except for a beep or nonsense word inserted where each "mystery word" was uttered.