Slot-Filler and Taxonomic Organization: The Role of Contextual Experience and Maternal Education

Abstract

Previous studies on children's semantic development suggest a shift from slot-filler to taxonomic organization at around eight years of age. However, these studies typically did not include children of early elementary-school ages (six-or seven-year-old); hence the possibility remains that the shift could have emerged earlier in development. The goal of the present study was to examine the age at which the taxonomic advantage in semantic organization occurs in a cross-sectional sample of children covering a wider age range and elucidate the factors related to the use of different semantic organizational strategies. Forty-six Mandarin-English bilinguals belonging to three age groups (five-, six-, and seven-year-old) were administered category generation task in both slot-filler (e.g., "Name all the zoo animals you can think of.") and taxonomic conditions (e.g., "Name all the animals you can think of."). The taxonomic advantage emerged as early as six years of age. Knowledge of specific slot-filler categories (farm vs. zoo animals) showed different age-related changes. Age and maternal education more consistently predicted performance in taxonomic than slot-filler condition. The slot-filler to taxonomic shift in semantic organization is exhibited across populations of distinct language background in early school-age years. Experience with specific categories and parental input both play important roles in the development of semantic organization.

Typicality Effect and Category Structure in Spanish–English Bilingual Children and Adults

“…When the number of typical items was compared across the two conditions, there was no significant difference between older and younger children. These results agree with previous findings that bilingual children start shifting from slot-filler organization to more advanced taxonomic organization at around age 6-6.5 years (Peña et al, 2002;Sheng & Lam, 2015). Both the younger (ages 7.3-8.4 years) and older (ages 8.7-9.11 years) groups of children in the present study followed patterns similar to adults, producing a comparable number of items in both conditions.…”

“…In monolingual English-speaking children, it is noted that this shift generally occurs by about age 8 years (Nelson & Nelson, 1990). In bilingual children, this shift occurs earlier, at around age 6.5 years as evidenced in Spanish-English bilingual children (Peña, Bedore, & Zlatic-Giunta, 2002) and 6 years in Mandarin-English bilingual children (Sheng & Lam, 2015). In contrast to monolingual children, bilingual children add new words across both of their languages, and this increased number of words may drive them to adopt more efficient taxonomic-organization strategies at an early age.…”

Semantic Category Convergence in Spanish–English Bilingual Children With and Without Developmental Language Disorder

“…Based on the previous studies, we hypothesized that children with DLD may tend to diverge at later positions in the category fluency tasks that require greater semantic knowledge and more controlled processing (Crowe, 1998;Hurks et al, 2006;Raboutet et al, 2010). With respect to the slot-filler/taxonomic condition, we predicted greater convergence in the slot-filler condition, as it is an early developing categorization strategy (Nelson & Nelson, 1990;Peña et al, 2002;Sheng & Lam, 2015).…”

“…However, in conceptual scoring of the category items in their two languages, with translational equivalents counted only once, their performance tends to be comparable to that of monolinguals (Peña, Bedore, & Zlatic-Giunta, 2002). Bilingual children also appear to shift to adultlike taxonomic categorization strategies at earlier ages compared to monolingual children (Peña et al, 2002;Sheng & Lam, 2015). Thus, it is thought that the process of having to learn a greater number of words across their two languages may push children into using a more adultlike taxonomic strategy earlier.…”

Meditatio Septuaginta: Torah recitation as a spiritual discipline

“…Such frames are defined by recurrent events, routines or states of affairs. They are experientially based and context-restricted, but can be labelled by superordinate terms (Sheng & Lam 2015). For instance, 'eggs, cereal and milk' are foods one has for breakfast.…”