Repeat After Me: The Effects of Exclusion on Children’s Language Behavior

Abstract

Childhood is a unique period of development, characterized by rapid changes in language behavior, especially once children begin attending school and interacting with peers. Some of these changes may be driven by socio-affiliative motivations, including instances of anticipated or felt ostracism. Across two experiments, we examined whether ostracism would affect children’s 1) lexical alignment rates and 2) learning of novel words. In Experiment 1, we did not find significant effects of ostracism on alignment but observed some differences as a function of language background. In Experiment 2, analyses on the preliminary sample also revealed no significant difference as a function of ostracism. This line of work has the potential to provide insight into factors motivating children’s linguistic behaviors in different social contexts.