Focusing on the relation: fewer exemplars facilitate children's initial verb learning and extension

Abstract

One of the most prominent theories for why children struggle to learn verbs is that verb learning requires the abstraction of relations between an object and its action (Gentner, 2003). Two hypotheses suggest how children extract relations to extend a novel verb: (1) seeing many different exemplars allows children to detect the invariant relation between actions in different contexts (Gentner, 2003), and (2) repetition of fewer exemplars allows children to move beyond the entities involved to extract the relation (Kersten & Smith, 2002). We tested 2 1/2- and 3-year-olds' ability to extend a novel verb after viewing the repetition of one novel actor compared to four different actors performing a novel action. Both ages were better at learning and extending a novel verb to a novel actor when shown only one actor rather than four different actors. These results indicate that during initial verb learning less information is more effective.

How Does Meaning Specificity Affect Verb Learning and Extension?

“…Consistent with previous findings (e.g., Behrend 1990;Imai et al 2008;Maguire et al 2008), this study reveals that successful fast-mapping does not guarantee successful extension, as we found with narrow verbs. To adequately gauge verb knowledge, verb extensions must also be probed.…”

“…Additionally, the finding that meaning specificity facilitates verb fast-mapping may be related to the relative verb advantage in Chinese children's early vocabularies. Finally, this study also speaks to the controversy about whether a narrow versus a broad range of verb exemplars facilitates or hinders children's initial action category formation (e.g., Maguire et al 2008;Seston et al 2009). This study indicates that a narrow range of exemplars may help children form initial categories, which, however, may be too narrow to include novel exemplars with slightly different features.…”

Do Simple Objects Facilitate Infants' Formation of a Spatial Category?

“…Because each exemplar presented a distinct pair of objects, the increase in the exemplars in the six-exemplar condition might have presented too much object information for infants to attend to the spatial relation and form the spatial category. A similar finding was reported in a study examining toddlers' learning of a motion category (Maguire, Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff, 2008). Since perceptual complexity versus simplicity of objects is another way to manipulate the amount of object information, it is possible that 14-month-old infants will respond similarly to the simple versus complex objects in forming a spatial category of a support relation.…”

Early Verb Learning: How Do Children Learn How to Compare Events?

“…Many verb learning studies have used pointing to one of two videos as a measure, and thus this methodology is well tested (e.g., Maguire, Hirsh-Pasek, Golinkoff & Brandone, 2008). Thus, we start with report of our test trials.…”