research

1. Word learning and reasoning about speaker knowledge

When someone uses a new word that we don’t know, we assume that the speaker knows what the word means, and that we can learn the word from the speaker. But what if the speaker is mistaken or ignorant about the words’ meaning? By noticing cues that show the speaker’s epistemological state, we can avoid learning the wrong meaning, or even narrow down the correct meaning for such words. I’m particularly interested in how preschool children who are developing their Theory of Mind abilities integrate reasoning about speaker knowledge to learn new words. This line of research dovetails into my larger interest in language as a convention between speakers and listeners, and what this means for language evolution and acquisition.

Papers & Conference Proceedings:

Le, K. N., & Barner, D. (under review). The role of epistemic reasoning in mutual exclusivity inferences. Preprint on PsyArxiv

2. Hierarchical nouns and pragmatic inferences

Many objects can be referred to by nouns that are hierarchically-related. For example, the referent of this emoji 🐩 is a dog, a poodle, and an animal. Basic level terms like ‘dog’ are theorized to be privileged in naming and acquisition, because they provide a balance between informativeness and discriminability. My research focuses on the inferences adults and children make when, instead of basic level terms, subordinate terms (like ‘poodle’) and superordinate terms (like ‘animal’) are used. One line of research looks at how children and adults incorporate speaker knowledge to interpret hierarchical nouns. Another line of research looks at how context affects how people quantify mass and count superordinate nouns (‘furniture’ / ‘tools’).

Papers & Conference Proceedings:

Le, K. N., Bale, A. C., & Barner, D. (under review). Object-mass nouns specify individuation lexically: Evidence from English and French. Preprint on PsyArxiv

Le, K. N., Bale, A. C., & Barner, D. (2025). Who Has More Furniture? Context Effects on the Quantification of Mass vs. Count Superordinate Nouns. In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (Vol. 47). paper

3. Children’s exact number acquisition

While children as young as 2 years old are able to recite the count list, there is a protracted developmental trajectory for children to learn many properties of number. For example, only as they get older do children understand that ‘five’ refers to exactly five items, that sets of five items are equinumerous, and that equinumerous sets can be formed by placing items in 1-to-1 relationship to each other. My research focuses on children’s acquisition of exact number and equal numerosity, and predictors of individual variability in these abilities.

Papers & Conference Proceedings:

Le, K. N., Schneider, R. M., & Barner, D. (2025). The Development of Cardinal Extension: From Counting to Exact Equality. Developmental Psychology, 61(6), 1180–1195. DOI

Le, K. N., Kwon, C., Wu, M., & Barner, D. (2024). ‘Five’ is the number of bunnies and hats: Children’s understanding of cardinal extension and exact number. In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (Vol. 46). paper