Meints, Kerstin, Plunkett, Kim and Harris, Paul L. (1999) When does an ostrich become a bird? The role of typicality in early word comprehension. Developmental Psychology, 35 (4). pp. 1072-1078. ISSN 0012-1649
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Item Type: | Article |
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Item Status: | Live Archive |
Abstract
Which objects and animals are are children willing to accept as referents for words they know? To answer this question, the authors assessed early word comprehension using the preferential looking task. Children were shown 2 stimuli side by side (a target and a distractory) and heard the target stimulus named. The target stimulus was either a typical or an atypical exemplar of the named category. It was predicted that children first connect typical examples with the target name and broaden the extension of the name as they get older to include less typical examples. Experiment 1 shows that when targets are named, 12-month-olds display an increase in target looking for typical but not atypical targets whereas 24-month-olds display an increase for both. Experiment 2 shows that 18-month-old display a pattern similar to that of 24-month-olds. Implications for the early development of word comprehension are discussed.
Keywords: | Development psychology, early development, early word comprehension |
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Subjects: | C Biological Sciences > C800 Psychology C Biological Sciences > C820 Developmental Psychology |
Divisions: | College of Social Science > School of Psychology |
ID Code: | 2443 |
Deposited On: | 15 May 2010 19:29 |
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