TY - JOUR
T1 - Specifying the scope of 13-month-olds' expectations for novel words
AU - Waxman, Sandra R.
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by National Institutes of Health Grant HD28730 and by the Wender-Lewis Research and Teaching Professorship (Northwestern University). I am grateful to D. Markow, A. Branning, L. Namy, and A. Booth for data collection and analysis, and to the resources provided by L'Institut des Sciences Cognitives (CNRS, France). I am indebted to S. Gelman, G. Hall, D. Medin and T. Nazir for their insights and discussion.
PY - 1999/4/1
Y1 - 1999/4/1
N2 - Recent research has documented that for infants as young as 12-13 months of age, novel words (both count nouns and adjectives) highlight commonalities among objects and, in this way, foster the formation of object categories. The current experiment was designed to capture more precisely the scope of this phenomenon. We asked whether novel words (count nouns; adjectives) are linked specifically to category-based commonalities from the start, or whether they also direct infants' attention to a wider range of commonalities, including property-based commonalities among objects (e.g. color, texture). The results indicate that by 12-13 months, (1) infants have begun to distinguish between novel words presented as count nouns versus, adjectives in fluent, infant-directed speech, and (2) infants expectations for novel words accord with this emerging sensitivity.
AB - Recent research has documented that for infants as young as 12-13 months of age, novel words (both count nouns and adjectives) highlight commonalities among objects and, in this way, foster the formation of object categories. The current experiment was designed to capture more precisely the scope of this phenomenon. We asked whether novel words (count nouns; adjectives) are linked specifically to category-based commonalities from the start, or whether they also direct infants' attention to a wider range of commonalities, including property-based commonalities among objects (e.g. color, texture). The results indicate that by 12-13 months, (1) infants have begun to distinguish between novel words presented as count nouns versus, adjectives in fluent, infant-directed speech, and (2) infants expectations for novel words accord with this emerging sensitivity.
KW - Adjectives
KW - Category-based commonalities
KW - Nouns
KW - Novel words
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U2 - 10.1016/S0010-0277(99)00017-7
DO - 10.1016/S0010-0277(99)00017-7
M3 - Article
C2 - 10384739
AN - SCOPUS:0033121152
VL - 70
SP - B35-B50
JO - Cognition
JF - Cognition
SN - 0010-0277
IS - 3
ER -