Young Children Extend Novel Words at the Basic Level: Evidence for the Principle of Categorical Scope

If young children approached the task of word learning with a specific hypothesis about the meaning of novel count nouns, they could make the problem of word learning more tractable. Six experiments were conducted to test children's hypotheses about how labels map to object categories. Findings...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Developmental psychology 1995-05, Vol.31 (3), p.494-507
Main Authors: Golinkoff, Roberta Michnick, Shuff-Bailey, Margaret, Olguin, Raquel, Ruan, Wenjun
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biological and medical sciences
Child
Child development
Child psychology
Cognition & reasoning
Developmental psychology
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Human
Hypotheses
Language
Learning
Learning Strategies
Nouns
Novel words
Preschool children
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Taxonomies
Verbal Learning
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Summary:If young children approached the task of word learning with a specific hypothesis about the meaning of novel count nouns, they could make the problem of word learning more tractable. Six experiments were conducted to test children's hypotheses about how labels map to object categories. Findings indicated that (a) 3- and 4-year-olds function with an antithematic bias; (b) children do not reliably extend novel nouns to superordinate exemplars when perceptual similarity is controlled until approximately age 7; and (c) children expect novel nouns to label taxonomic categories at the basic level, even in the presence of a perceptually compelling distractor. Results are interpreted as supporting the principle of categorical scope ( R. M. Golinkoff, C. B. Mervis, & K. Hirsh-Pasek, 1994 ).
ISSN:0012-1649
1939-0599
DOI:10.1037/0012-1649.31.3.494