Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T17:21:40.910Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Object and action picture naming in three- and five-year-old children*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 April 2008

JACKIE MASTERSON ,
JUDIT DRUKS  and
DONNA GALLIENNE
JACKIE MASTERSON*
Affiliation:
Institute of Education, University of London
JUDIT DRUKS
Affiliation:
University College London
DONNA GALLIENNE
Affiliation:
University of Essex
*
Address for correspondence: Jackie Masterson, Institute of Education, University of London, 25 Woburn Square, London, WC1H OAA, UK. e-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The objectives were to explore the often reported noun advantage in children's language acquisition using a picture naming paradigm and to explore the variables that affect picture naming performance. Participants in Experiment 1 were aged three and five years, and in Experiment 2, five years. The stimuli were action and object pictures. In Experiment 1, action pictures produced more errors than object pictures for the three-year-olds, but not the five-year-olds. A qualitative analysis of the errors revealed a somewhat different pattern of errors across age groups. In Experiment 2 there was no robust difference in accuracy for the actions and objects but naming times were longer for actions. Across both experiments, imageability was a robust predictor of object naming performance, while spoken frequency was the most important predictor of action naming. The results are discussed in terms of possible differences in the manner in which nouns and verbs are acquired.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , May 2008 , pp. 373 - 402
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

We are most grateful to the children and staff in participating schools and nurseries, and to two anonymous reviewers and the Associate Editor for their comments and suggestions.

References

Baayen, R. H., Piepenbrock, R. & van Rijn, H. (1993). The CELEX lexical database (CD-ROM). Philadelphia, PA: Linguistic Data Consortium, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Barry, C., Morrison, C. M. & Ellis, A. W. (1997). Naming the Snodgrass and Vanderwart pictures: effects of age-of-acquisition, frequency and name agreement. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 50A, 560–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bates, E., Andonova, E., D'Amico, S., Jacobsen, T., Kohnert, K., Lu, C.-C., Szekely, A., Wicha, N., Federmeier, K., Herron, D., Iyer, G., Pechmann, T., Devescovi, A., Orozco-Figueroa, A., Gutierrez, G., Hung, D., Hsu, J., Tzeng, O., Gerdjikova, G., Mehotcheva, T. & Pleh, C. (2000). Introducing the CRL international picture naming project (CRL-IPNP). Center for Research in Language Newsletter 12.Google Scholar
Bates, E., Burani, C., D'Amico, S. & Barca, L. (2001). Word reading and picture naming in Italian. Memory & Cognition 29, 986–99.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bates, E., Marchman, V., Thal, D., Fenson, L., Dale, P., Reznick, J. S., Reilly, J. & Hartung, J. (1994). Developmental and stylistic variation in the composition of early vocabulary. Journal of Child Language 21, 85–124.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bogka, N., Masterson, J., Druks, J., Fragioudaki, M., Chatziprokopiou, E. & Economou, K. (2003). Object and action picture naming in English and Greek. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology 15, 371–403.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Choi, S. (1998). Verbs in early lexical and syntactic development in Korean. Linguistics 36, 755–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conti-Ramsden, G. & Jones, M. (1997). Verb use in specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 40, 1298–1313.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cycowicz, Y. M., Friedman, D., Rothstein, M. & Snodgrass, J. G. (1997). Picture naming by young children: norms for name agreement, familiarity, and visual complexity. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 65, 171–237.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
D'Amico, S., Devescovi, A. & Bates, E. (2001). Picture naming and lexical access in Italian children and adults. Journal of Cognition and Development 2, 71–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davidoff, J. & Masterson, J. (1996). The development of picture naming: Differences between nouns and verbs. Journal of Neurolinguistics 9, 69–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DeBleser, R. & Kauschke, C. (2003). Acquisition and loss of nouns and verbs: parallel or divergent patterns. Journal of Neurolinguistics 16, 213–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dockrell, J. E., Messer, D. & George, R. (2001). Patterns of naming objects and actions in children with word finding difficulties. Language and Cognitive Processes 16, 261–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Druks, J. (2002). Verbs and nouns: A review of the literature. Journal of Neurolinguistics 15, 289–315.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Druks, J. & Masterson, J. (2000). An object and action naming battery. Hove: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Druks, J., Masterson, J., Kopelman, M., Clare, L., Rose, A. & Rai, G. (2006). Is action naming better preserved (than object naming) in Alzheimer's dementia, and why should we ask? Brain and Language 98, 332–40.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ellis, A. W. & Morrison, C. M. (1998). Real age-of-acquisition effects in lexical retrieval. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition 24, 515–23.Google ScholarPubMed
Engelkamp, J., Zimmer, H. D. & Mohr, G. (1990). Differential memory effects of concrete nouns and action verbs. Zeitschrift fur Psychologie 198, 189–216.Google Scholar
Fenson, L., Dale, P. S., Reznick, J. S., Bates, E., Thal, D. J. & Pethick, S. J. (1994). Variability in early communicative development. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development Serial no. 242, 59.Google ScholarPubMed
Funnell, E., Hughes, D. & Woodcock, J. (2005). Age of acquisition for naming and knowing: A new hypothesis. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 59, 268–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gentner, D. (1981). Some interesting differences between verbs and nouns. Cognition and Brain Theory 4, 161–78.Google Scholar
Gentner, D. (1982). Why nouns are learned before verbs: linguistic relativity versus natural partitioning. In Kuczaj, S. (ed.) Language development: language, thought and culture, Vol. 2, 301–334. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Gleitman, L. (1994). The structural sources of verb meanings. In Bloom, P. (ed.), Language Acquisition, 174–221. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Goldberg, A. E. (1998). The emergence of the semantics of argument structure constructions. In MacWhinney, B. (ed.) Emergence of language, 197–212. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Goldfield, B. A. (2000). Nouns before verbs in comprehension vs. production: the view from pragmatics. Journal of Child Language 27, 501–20.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gopnik, A., Choi, S. & Baumberger, T. (1996). Cross-linguistic differences in early semantic and cognitive development. Cognitive Development 11, 197–227.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huttenlocher, J., Haight, W., Bryk, A., Seltzer, M. & Lyons, T. (1991). Early vocabulary growth: Relation to language input and gender. Developmental Psychology 27, 236–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huttenlocher, J. & Lui, F. (1979). The semantic organization of some simple nouns and verbs. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 18, 141–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, M., McGregor, K. K. & Thompson, C. K. (2000). Early lexical development in English and Korean speaking children: language-general and language-specific patterns. Journal of Child Language 27, 225–54.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Maetzig, S., Druks, J., Masterson, J. & Vigliocco, G. (under review). Noun and verb differences in picture naming: past studies and new evidence. Cortex.Google Scholar
Masterson, J. & Druks, J. (1998). Description of a set of 164 nouns and 102 verbs matched for printed word frequency, familiarity and age-of-acquisition. Journal of Neurolinguistics 11, 331–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Masterson, J., Druks, J., Kopelman, M., Clare, L., Garley, C. & Hayes, M. (2007). Selective naming (and comprehension) deficits in Alzheimer's disease? Cortex 43, 921–34.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McKenna, P. & Parry, R. (1994). Category specificity in the naming of natural and man-made objects: normative data from adults and children. Neuropsychological Rehabilitation 4, 255–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morrison, C. M., Ellis, A. W. & Quinlan, P. T. (1992). Age of acquisition, not word frequency, affects object naming, not object recognition. Memory and Cognition 20, 705–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nation, K., Marshall, C. M. & Snowling, M. J. (2001). Phonological and semantic contributions to children's picture naming skill: evidence from children with developmental reading disorders. Language and Cognitive Processes 16, 241–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paivio, A., Yuille, J. C. & Madigan, S. A. (1968). Concreteness, imagery and meaningfulness values for 925 words. Journal of Experimental Psychology Monograph Supplement 76, 3, part 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sandhofer, C. M., Smith, L. B. & Luo, J. (2000). Counting nouns and verbs in the input: differential frequencies, different kinds of learning? Journal of Child Language 27, 561–85.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Snodgrass, J. G. & Vanderwart, M. (1980). A standardized set of 260 pictures: norms for name agreement, image agreement, familiarity, and visual complexity. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory 6, 174–215.Google ScholarPubMed
Snodgrass, J. G. & Yuditsky, T. (1996). Naming times for the Snodgrass and Vanderwart pictures. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, and Computers 28, 516–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Szekely, A., D'Amico, S., Devescovi, A., Federmeier, K., Herron, D., Iyer, G., Jacobsen, T. & Bates, E. (2003). Timed picture naming: extended norms and validation against previous studies. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers 35, 621–33.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tardif, T. (1996). Nouns are not always learned before verbs: evidence from Mandarin speakers' early vocabularies. Developmental Psychology 32, 492–504.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tardif, T., Gelman, S. A. & Xu, F. (1999). Putting the noun bias in context: a comparison of English and Mandarin. Child Development 70, 620–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomasello, M. (1992). First verbs: a case study of early grammatical development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Treiman, R., Mullenix, J., Bijeljac-Babic, R. & Richmond-Welty, E. D. (1995). The special role of rimes in the description, use, and acquisition of English orthography. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 124, 107–36.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed