Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T17:16:02.509Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Preschoolers' extension of novel words to animals and artifacts*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 October 2009

SUSAN A. GRAHAM ,
ANDREA N. WELDER ,
BEVERLEY A. MERRIFIELD  and
JARED M. J. BERMAN
SUSAN A. GRAHAM*
Affiliation:
University of Calgary
ANDREA N. WELDER
Affiliation:
University of Calgary
BEVERLEY A. MERRIFIELD
Affiliation:
University of Calgary
JARED M. J. BERMAN
Affiliation:
University of Calgary
*
Address for correspondence: S. A. Graham, Department of Psychology, University of Calgary, 2500 University Dr. NW, Calgary, AB T2N 1N4Canada. fax: 403-282-8249. e-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We examined whether preschoolers' ontological knowledge would influence lexical extension. In Experiment 1, four-year-olds were presented with a novel label for either an object with eyes described as an animal, or the same object without eyes described as a tool. In the animal condition, children extended the label to similar-shaped objects, whereas in the tool condition, children extended the label to similar-function objects. In Experiment 2, when four-year-olds were presented with objects with eyes described as tools, they extended the label on the basis of shared function. These experiments suggest that preschoolers' conceptual knowledge guides their lexical extension.

Type
Brief Research Report
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 37 , Issue 4 , September 2010 , pp. 913 - 927
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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

[*]

This research was supported by funding from NSERC of Canada, the University of Calgary and the Canada Research Chairs program awarded to the first author. We thank the parents, children and adults who participated in the studies as well as the staff at participating preschools and daycares in the Calgary area. Jennifer Storms, Tamara Demke and Cari Kilbreath provided us with assistance with this research. We thank Amy Booth, Diane Poulin-Dubois, Geoffrey Hall and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments on a previous version of this manuscript. Some of these data were presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour and Cognitive Science, Ottawa, June, 1998 and at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Albuquerque, NM, April, 1999.

References

REFERENCES

Asher, Y. M. & Kemler Nelson, D. G. (2008). Was it designed to do that? Children's focus on intended function in their conceptualization of artifacts. Developmental Psychology 106, 474–83.Google Scholar
Barrett, S. E., Abdi, H., Murphy, G. L. & Gallagher, J. M. (1993). Theory-based correlations and their role in children's concepts. Child Development 64, 1595–616.Google Scholar
Bloom, P. (2000). How children learn the meanings of words. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Booth, A. E. & Waxman, S. R. (2002). Word learning is ‘smart’: Evidence that conceptual information affects preschoolers' extension of novel words. Cognition 84, B11–B22.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Booth, A. E. & Waxman, S. R. (2003). Bringing theories of word learning in line with the evidence. Cognition 87, 215–18.Google Scholar
Booth, A. E. & Waxman, S. R. (2008). Taking stock as theories of word learning take shape. Developmental Science 11, 185–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Booth, A. E., Waxman, S. R. & Huang, Y. T. (2005). Conceptual information permeates word learning in infancy. Developmental Psychology 41, 491–505.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Colunga, E. & Smith, L. B. (2008). Knowledge embedded in process: The self-organization of skilled noun learning. Developmental Science 11, 195–203.Google Scholar
Gelman, S. A. (2003). The essential child: Origins of essentialism in everyday thought. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gelman, S. A. & Wellman, H. M. (1991). Insides and essences: Early understandings of the non-obvious. Cognition 38, 213–44.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gentner, D. (1978). What looks like a jiggy but acts like a zimbo? A study of early word meaning using artificial objects. Papers and Reports on Child Language Development 15, 1–6.Google Scholar
Graham, S. A., Williams, L. D. & Huber, J. F. (1999). Preschoolers' and adults' reliance on object shape and object function for lexical extension. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 74, 128–51.Google Scholar
Jones, S. S. & Smith, L. B. (1998). How children name objects with shoes. Cognitive Development 13, 323–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, S. S. & Smith, L. B. (2002). How children know the relevant properties for generalizing object names. Developmental Science 5, 219–32.Google Scholar
Kemler Nelson, D. G. (1999). Attention to functional properties in toddlers' naming and problem-solving. Cognitive Development 14, 77–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kemler Nelson, D. G., Frankenfield, A., Morris, C. & Blair, E. (2000). Young children's use of functional information to categorize artifacts: Three factors that matter. Cognition 75, 1–36.Google Scholar
Landau, B., Smith, L. B. & Jones, S. S. (1988). The importance of shape in early lexical learning. Cognitive Development 3, 299–321.Google Scholar
Landau, B., Smith, L. B. & Jones, S. S. (1998). Object shape, object function, and object name. Journal of Memory and Language 38, 1–27.Google Scholar
Rakison, D. H. & Poulin-Dubois, D. (2001). Developmental origins of the animate–inanimate distinction. Psychological Bulletin 127, 209–228.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Samuelson, L. K. & Smith, L. B. (1999). Early noun vocabularies: Do ontology, category organization and syntax correspond? Cognition, 73, (1), 1–33.Google Scholar
Samuelson, L. K. & Smith, L. B. (2000). Children's attention to rigid and deformable shape in naming and nonnaming tasks. Child Development 71, 1555–70.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Smith, L. B., Jones, S. S. & Landau, B. (1996). Naming in young children: A dumb attentional mechanism? Cognition 60, 143–71.Google Scholar
Smith, L. B. & Samuelson, L. K. (2006). An attentional learning account of the shape bias: Reply to Cimpian and Markman (2005) and Booth, Waxman and Huang (2005). Developmental Psychology 42, 1339–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar