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The sources of young children's name innovations for novel artifacts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2003

DEBORAH G. KEMLER NELSON ,
LINDSAY HERRON  and
MORGHAN B. HOLT
DEBORAH G. KEMLER NELSON
Affiliation:
Swarthmore College
LINDSAY HERRON
Affiliation:
Swarthmore College
MORGHAN B. HOLT
Affiliation:
Swarthmore College
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Abstract

Two studies investigated whether four-year-old children (12 in Experiment 1 with a mean age of 4;8 and 36 in Experiment 2 with a mean age of 4;7) invent names for new artifacts based on the objects' functions as opposed to their perceptual properties. Children informed about the intended functions of novel objects provided more name innovations that were clearly function-based than perception-based. This tendency was observed when children were shown the objects' functions, even if they were also given verbal descriptions of the objects' perceptual properties and parts. Only when ignorant of the objects' intended functions did children tend to use perceptual features to create substantial numbers of names. Accordingly, results from this name-innovation methodology converge with findings from some recent studies of lexical categorization suggesting that functional information is critical to how preschoolers extend artifact names. Children appear to appreciate an intimate relation between the functions of artifacts and how they are named.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 30 , Issue 4 , November 2003 , pp. 823 - 843
Copyright
© 2003 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

This research was supported by a sabbatical fellowship from Swarthmore College to the first author and Joel Dean Summer Research Assistantships to the other authors. Appreciation is expressed to the staff, parents, and children of the preschools that participated in the studies, to Don Reynolds for his craftmanship in creating some of the test objects, and to Louisa Chan Egan for helping with the reliability checks on the coding system.