Rigid thinking about deformables: do children sometimes overgeneralize the shape bias?

Full Abstract

Young children learning English are biased to attend to the shape of solid rigid objects when learning novel names. This study seeks further understanding of the processes that support this behavior by examining a previous finding that three-year-old children are also biased to generalize novel names for objects made from deformable materials by shape, even after the materials are made salient. In two experiments, we examined the noun generalizations of 72 two-, three- and four-year-old children with rigid and deformable stimuli. Data reveal that three-year-old, but not two- or four-year-old, children generalize names for deformable things by shape, and that this behavior is not due to the syntactic context of the task. We suggest this behavior is an overgeneralization of three-year-old children's knowledge of how rigid things are named and discuss the implications of this finding for a developmental account of the origins of the shape bias.

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Author information

Author/s: Samuelson, Larissa K (LK); Horst, Jessica S (JS); Schutte, Anne R (AR); Dobbertin, Brandi N (BN);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology and Iowa Center for Developmental and Learning Sciences, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA. larissa-samuelson(-atsign-)uiowa.edu

Grants: 5 R01 HD045713 (Agency:United States NICHD)

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

Journal: Journal of child language (J Child Lang), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2008-Aug; vol 35 (issue 3) : pp 559-89

Dates: Created 2008/06/30; Completed 2008/09/03;

PMID: 18588715, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

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