Understanding spatial relations: Flexible infants, lexical adults

Concepts of containment, support, and degree of fit were investigated using nonverbal, preferential-looking tasks with 9- to 14-month-old infants and adults who were fluent in either English or Korean. Two contrasts were tested: tight containment vs. loose support (grammaticized as ‘in’ and ‘on’ in...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cognitive psychology 2003-05, Vol.46 (3), p.229-259
Main Authors: McDonough, Laraine, Choi, Soonja, Mandler, Jean M
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Adults
Aural Learning
Biological and medical sciences
Categorization
Child Development
Child Language
Cognition
Cognition & reasoning
Concept acquisition
Concept Formation
Cross-Cultural Comparison
Developmental psychology
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Infant
Infants
Korean
Language
Language Acquisition
Language and cognition
Models, Psychological
Newborn. Infant
Oral English
Orientation
Psychology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Semantics
Spatial Ability
Speech Communication
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Summary:Concepts of containment, support, and degree of fit were investigated using nonverbal, preferential-looking tasks with 9- to 14-month-old infants and adults who were fluent in either English or Korean. Two contrasts were tested: tight containment vs. loose support (grammaticized as ‘in’ and ‘on’ in English by spatial prepositions and ‘kkita’ and ‘nohta’ in Korean by spatial verbs) and tight containment vs. loose containment (both grammaticized as ‘in’ in English but separately as ‘kkita’ and ‘nehta’ in Korean). Infants categorized both contrasts, suggesting conceptual readiness for learning such spatial semantics in either language. English-speaking adults categorized tight containment vs. loose support, but not tight vs. loose containment. However, Korean-speaking adults were successful at this latter contrast, which is lexicalized in their language. The adult data suggest that some spatial relations that are salient during the preverbal stage become less salient if language does not systematically encode them.
ISSN:0010-0285
1095-5623
DOI:10.1016/S0010-0285(02)00514-5