Situation bounded conceptual organization in children: from action to spatial relations

Abstract

This study performed on children aged 5, 8, and 10 years, deals with conceptual knowledge organization using a word association task. The results show that, at all these ages, the production of thematic relations outnumbers that of taxonomic relations; no thematic-to-taxonomic shift occurs. While children aged 5 years produce more action, temporal, and event relations, older children produce more spatial and property relations. An increased capacity for abstraction allows children aged 8 and 10 years to capture the properties of objects and the spatial layout where objects can be located independently from the specific actions occasionally taking place there. With age, even if events and actions lose their primacy, the perceptual and contextual dimensions of objects play a role in shaping children's knowledge. The results suggest the opportunity to rethink the relevance of the cognitive economy principle in children's conceptual organization.

Object manipulability affects children's and adults' conceptual processing

“…Thematic relations (e.g., spoon-yoghurt) are based on contextual and functional relations between objects that can be easily detected from interactions with objects in daily action schemas (Borghi & Caramelli, 2003;Mandler, 2000;Nelson, 1983). Therefore, thematic relations appear to be more rapidly identified for objects that particularly induce action and use experience-namely, manipulable objects.…”

“…Previous studies in children have already shown that perceptual similarity and contextual/functional relations underlie conceptual development (Bonthoux & Kalé nine, 2007;Borghi & Caramelli, 2003;Kemler Nelson, Frank enfield, Morris, & Blair, 2000;Nelson, 1983;Quinn & Eimas, 2000;Sloutsky et al, 2007). The present study further demonstrates that, for children from age 5, perceptual and contextual/functional information is accessible differently for manipulable and nonmanipulable object concepts.…”

Thematic relatedness production norms for 100 object concepts

“…The general consensus is that taxonomic and thematic relations rely on two functionally distinct, but complementary, modes of conceptual organization in semantic memory. The dissociation of taxonomic versus thematic processing has been documented in behavioral (Borghi & Caramelli, 2003;Lin & Murphy, 2001;Masuda & Nisbett, 2001;Mirman & Graziano, 2012), neuroimaging (Kalénine, Mirman, & Buxbaum, 2012;Sachs, Weis, Krings, Huber, & Kircher, 2008;Schwartz et al, 2011), and patient (Davidoff & Roberson, 2004) studies. Furthermore, thematic processing has been shown to be as crucial in language comprehension, analogy making, similarity judgment, and memory processes as is taxonomic knowledge (for a review, see Estes et al, 2011).…”

“…The proposed classification is not exhaustive and does not include all possible types of thematic relations identified in prior research (Borghi & Caramelli, 2003;Estes, Golonka, & Jones, 2011). Furthermore, currently there is not general agreement about a comprehensive typology of thematic relations (for a discussion, see McRae, Khalkhali, & Hare, 2012).…”

Assessment of Thematic Relations in 2-4 Years Normally Developing Children

“…Studies have shown that thematic relations govern young children's memory than taxonomic categories [2,13,[24][25][26]. Other studies have reported that, children are able to flexibly use both thematic and taxonomic relations with no pervasive preference for either mode of response [27,28].…”