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Overextensions in early language comprehension: evidence from a signal detection approach*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Douglas A. Behrend
Douglas A. Behrend*
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota
*
Developmental Psychology, 3433 Mason Hall, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA.
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Abstract

Two studies of children's early language comprehension were performed using the signal detection paradigm introduced by Thomas et al. (1981). Experiment 1 replicated the original findings of Thomas et al., demonstrating that 13-month-olds understand a word that a parent reported they would understand and did not understand a word that a parent reported they would not. In Experiment 2, the procedure was modified to test for overextensions in early language comprehension. On half of the trials, children saw an array of objects including a referent for a ‘known word’. On the other half, the array included an object perceptually similar to the referent of the known word, but which itself was not an appropriate referent (e.g. an apple instead of an orange). Though the children demonstrated an understanding of the known word, they also overextended that word to the inappropriate referent. Mechanisms for such overextensions are discussed, as is the general relationship between comprehension and production.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , February 1988 , pp. 63 - 75
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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Footnotes

*

This research was carried out while the author was a predoctoral trainee at the Center for Research in Human Learning at the University of Minnesota. Portions of this work were presented at the Boston University Conference on Language and Language Development, 1984. The author would like to thank Pat Broen for her assistance in all phases of this research and Susan Gelman for comments on an earlier draft of this article.

References

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