TY - JOUR
T1 - Word learning is 'smart'
T2 - Evidence that conceptual information affects preschoolers' extension of novel words
AU - Booth, Amy E.
AU - Waxman, Sandra R.
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by NIH grant #HD-08595-02 to the first author and NIH grant #HD-28730 to the second author. We are grateful to the children and caretakers who participated in these studies. We are also indebted to Yi Ting Huang for her assistance with data collection.
PY - 2002
Y1 - 2002
N2 - Two experiments document that conceptual knowledge influences 3-year-olds' extension of novel words. In Experiment 1, when objects were described as having conceptual properties typical of artifacts, children extended novel labels for these objects on the basis of shape alone. When the very same objects were described as having conceptual properties typical of animate kinds, children extended novel labels for these objects on the basis of both shape and texture. Moreover, providing a salient perceptual cue (Experiment 2) did not interfere with children's reliance on conceptual information in extending novel words: when an object with eyes was labeled with a novel word in the context of a story describing the object as an artifact, children extended the label on the basis of shape alone (i.e. as though the object were an artifact). These results, which challenge directly the position that 'dumb attentional mechanisms' can account for word learning, stand as evidence for the central role of conceptual information in mapping words to meaning.
AB - Two experiments document that conceptual knowledge influences 3-year-olds' extension of novel words. In Experiment 1, when objects were described as having conceptual properties typical of artifacts, children extended novel labels for these objects on the basis of shape alone. When the very same objects were described as having conceptual properties typical of animate kinds, children extended novel labels for these objects on the basis of both shape and texture. Moreover, providing a salient perceptual cue (Experiment 2) did not interfere with children's reliance on conceptual information in extending novel words: when an object with eyes was labeled with a novel word in the context of a story describing the object as an artifact, children extended the label on the basis of shape alone (i.e. as though the object were an artifact). These results, which challenge directly the position that 'dumb attentional mechanisms' can account for word learning, stand as evidence for the central role of conceptual information in mapping words to meaning.
KW - Concept development
KW - Language acquisition
KW - Word learning
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U2 - 10.1016/S0010-0277(02)00015-X
DO - 10.1016/S0010-0277(02)00015-X
M3 - Article
C2 - 12062150
AN - SCOPUS:0036230612
SN - 0010-0277
VL - 84
SP - B11-B22
JO - Cognition
JF - Cognition
IS - 1
ER -