The icing on the cake. Or is it frosting? The influence of group membership on children's lexical choices

Using language to construct/negotiate identity and signal affiliation with others is a highly complex skill, and little is known about how this ability develops. Children clearly mirror lexical patterns in their local environment (e.g., Canadian children using zed instead of zee), but do children flexibly adapt their lexical choices on the fly in response to the word choices of different peer groups? To address this question, we examined the effect of group membership on 7- to 9-year-old children’s labeling of objects in a trivia-type game, exploring whether children were more likely to use a particular label if members of their “team” also used that label. In a pre-registered, online study, children (N = 72) were assigned to a team (red or green) and were asked during experimental trials to answer questions—which had multiple possible answers (e.g., blackboard or chalkboard)— after hearing two teammates and two opponents (all pre-recorded) respond to the same question. Results showed that children were significantly more likely to produce labels less commonly used by the community (i.e., dispreferred labels) when their teammates had produced dispreferred labels. Crucially, this effect was tied to group membership, and could not be explained by children simply mirroring the labels used by all children in the game. We discuss the implications of this study for understanding how children use language to construct their identities and position themselves in relation to others.