Consistent (but not variable) names as invitations to form object categories: new evidence from 12-month-old infants

Waxman, Sandra R.; Braun, Irena

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2004.09.003

Cited by 115 publications

(139 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…In contrast to previous studies of language and cognition where experimenters provide infants with labels (e.g., Balaban & Waxman, 1997;Fulkerson & Waxman, 2007;Waxman & Braun, 2005) or brief descriptions of the actions (e.g., Hayne & Herbert, 2004), we allowed for more naturalistic descriptions of the event. Mean imitation scores (+/-1SE) as a function of experimental group.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of demonstrator familiarity and language cues on infant imitation from television

Seehagen¹,

Herbert²

2010

Infant Behavior and Development

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An imitation procedure was used to investigate the impact of demonstrator familiarity and language cues on infant learning from television. Eighteen-month-old infants watched two pre-recorded videos showing an adult demonstrating a sequence of actions with two sets of stimuli. Infants' familiarity with the demonstrator and the language used during the demonstration varied as a function of experimental condition. Immediately after watching each video, infants' ability to reproduce the target actions was assessed. A highly familiar demonstrator did not enhance infants' performance. However, the addition of a narrative, developed from mothers' naturalistic description of the event, facilitated learning from an unfamiliar demonstrator. We propose that the differential effect of demonstrator familiarity and language cues may reflect the infants' ability to distinguish between important and less important aspects in a learning situation. AbstractAn imitation procedure was used to investigate the impact of demonstrator familiarity and lan-

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of demonstrator familiarity and language cues on infant imitation from television

Seehagen¹,

Herbert²

2010

Infant Behavior and Development

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“…For example, young children's greater plural productions for identical than similar items could reflect a general tendency of people to attend to (and thus talk about) the differences among otherwise similar things, a bias that has been documented in a variety of domains from perception, to similarity judgment, to learning adjectives (Garner & Sutliff, 1974; Tversky & Gati, 2004;Waxman & Braun (2005);Sandhofer & Smith, 2004 here, may not be strictly limited to their understanding of the plural. Nonetheless such a general tendency to focus on different individuals as distinct and not as members of the same class could be a limiting factor in children's quantification of sets more generally.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The English plural marks sets of multiple instances of like kinds, and thus similarity and number are relevant dimensions of meaning, so children seem to attending to the relevant information for the plural but may not have yet fully worked out when the use of the plural is appropriate. One open question is the locus of the observed limitations on plural productions: Are these limitations strictly about the plural, or are they about the contexts in which one chooses to talk about and quantify sets of individuals, or perhaps, do they reflect general conceptual growth in the coordination discrete individuals as both individuals and as members of sets?For example, young children's greater plural productions for identical than similar items could reflect a general tendency of people to attend to (and thus talk about) the differences among otherwise similar things, a bias that has been documented in a variety of domains from perception, to similarity judgment, to learning adjectives (Garner & Sutliff, 1974; Tversky & Gati, 2004;Waxman & Braun (2005);Sandhofer & Smith, 2004 here, may not be strictly limited to their understanding of the plural. Nonetheless such a general tendency to focus on different individuals as distinct and not as members of the same class could be a limiting factor in children's quantification of sets more generally.…”

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Meaning matters in children’s plural productions

Zapf

Smith

2008

Cognition

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The English plural is about the number of individuals in a set of like kinds. Two year old children use the plural but do not do so in all obligatory contexts. The present report asks whether the limitations on their production of the plural are related to aspects of meaning. In two Experiments plural productions were elicited from two-year old children for sets of size two and four and for instances of basic level categories that were either similar or identical. Children were much more likely to produce the plural of these well-known nouns when there were four rather than two and when the instances were identical rather than merely similar. The results provide new evidence on children's acquisition of the English plural, showing that children's early productions are not just limited by knowledge of the noun and its plural form but also is limited by properties of the labeled sets in ways that are relevant to the underlying meaning of the plural.Two-year-old children learning English spontaneously produce the plural forms of nouns, using them to label sets containing multiple instances of the same kind. However, they do not use the plural in all required contexts (Cazden, 1968; Mervis & Johnson, 1991;Brown, 1973;Berko, 1958). Past explanations of this limited productivity have focused on morphological rules, exceptions to those rules, and phonological constraints (Marcus et al., 1992;Marchman, Plunkett, & Goodman, 1997;Winitz, Sanders & Kort, 1981). The meaning of the plural, however, has not been studied in relation to its growing productivity. This report presents new evidence that meaning matters.Formally, the English plural partitions sets into those with precisely one individual versus those with more than one. Although this seems natural to mature English speakers, other meaning distinctions are possible. For example, the Russian plural distinguishes sets of one, sets with few members, and sets with many members. Many Indo-European languages have a separate plural form for sets of exactly size two. Sursurunga, an Austrongesian language, has five plural forms that are dependent on the number of instances in the referred to set. Other languages such as Japanese have no plural but quantify sets through the use of quantifiers that depend on the kind of thing in the set. These cross-linguistic differences mean that learners have to figure out the relevant meaning categories for their language. This paper examines two factors that might be relevant to young children's figuring out the meaning of the English plural: the similarity of the instances in the set and the number of things in a set.Address for correspondence: Jennifer A. Zapf, Indiana University, Department of Psychology, 1101 East Tenth Street, Bloomington, IN 47405, E-mail: jenzapf@indiana.edu. Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and ...

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“…This is an apt focus because at its core, learning a word involves establishing a relation between a linguistic unit (the word) and a conceptual unit (the concept to which the word refers). The key developmental question is when words begin to carry conceptual force, and how early in the process of word-learning they begin to influence infants' representations of individual objects and the relations among them (Balaban & Waxman, 1997;Fulkerson & Haaf, 2003;Namy, 2001;Namy & Waxman, 1998;Roberts & Jacob, 1991;Waxman & Braun, 2005;Waxman & Markow, 1995;Woodward & Hoyne, 1999;Xu, 1999Xu, , 2002.…”

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confidence: 99%

Words (but not Tones) facilitate object categorization: Evidence from 6- and 12-month-olds

2007

Self Cite

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Recent studies reveal that naming has powerful conceptual consequences within the first year of life. Naming distinct objects with the same word highlights commonalities among the objects and promotes object categorization. In the present experiment, we pursued the origin of this link by examining the influence of words and tones on object categorization in infants at 6 and 12 months. At both ages, infants hearing a novel word for a set of distinct objects successfully formed object categories; those hearing a sequence of tones for the same objects did not. These results support the view that infants are sensitive to powerful and increasingly nuanced links between linguistic and conceptual units very early in the process of lexical acquisition. KeywordsInfancy; Categorization; Object Naming Questions concerning the relation between linguistic and conceptual organization have long occupied a central position in the cognitive sciences. Recently, considerable attention has been devoted to discovering the origin of this relation in infants and toddlers. Research in this arena has focused primarily on early word-learning. This is an apt focus because at its core, learning a word involves establishing a relation between a linguistic unit (the word) and a conceptual unit (the concept to which the word refers). The key developmental question is when words begin to carry conceptual force, and how early in the process of word-learning they begin to influence infants' representations of individual objects and the relations among them (Balaban

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Consistent (but not variable) names as invitations to form object categories: new evidence from 12-month-old infants

Cited by 115 publications

References 19 publications

The role of demonstrator familiarity and language cues on infant imitation from television

The role of demonstrator familiarity and language cues on infant imitation from television

Meaning matters in children’s plural productions

Words (but not Tones) facilitate object categorization: Evidence from 6- and 12-month-olds

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