Priorities in Children's Expectations about Object Label Reference: Form over Color

Dare A. Baldwin

131 citations0/0 files storedChild Development

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Categorization, perception, and language Language Development and Disorders Child and Animal Learning Development

Abstract

Young children show considerable interest in color similarity; thus we might expect them to use color as a basis for generalizing object labels. However, natural language observations suggest they do not: children tend to overextend labels based on form similarity and rarely, if ever, overextend labels to objects that share only color. Perhaps, then, children give form priority over color in their expectations about object-label reference. This hypothesis was investigated in 2 studies. In a first study, 40 2- and 3-year-olds sorted 10 sets of 3 pictures that contrasted form with color. Children participated in 1 of 2 conditions: half of the children were shown a target object and asked to "find another one" from among the two choice objects, while the other children heard a novel label for the target (e.g., "See this zom?") and were asked to extend the label (e.g., "Can you find another zom?"). 3-year-olds sorted almost exclusively on the basis of form in both conditions, while 2-year-olds performed differently in the 2 conditions: they frequently chose the color match when labels were absent, but selected by form rather than color when asked to extend a novel label. A second study replicated these findings with novel objects that were real rather than pictured. This study also suggested that 3-year-olds grant color some role in their decisions about object-label reference as long as form differences are reduced to a tolerable level. In sum, young children expect form to be more important than color for guiding object-label reference, even though they may find color interesting when not asked to extend labels. This expectation helps explain the speed and relative ease with which children acquire object labels.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 131 citations exist upstream.

References

1976Basic objects in natural categories 1988The importance of shape in early lexical learning 1986Categories and induction in young children 1984Objects, parts, and categories.1974Concept, word, and sentence: Interrelations in acquisition and development.1984Children's sensitivity to constraints on word meaning: Taxonomic versus thematic relations 1988Preschooler's ability to decide whether a photographed unfamiliar object can move itself.1988Constraints on word learning?

Cited by

1992Clarifying the role of shape in children's taxonomic assumption 1993Assumptions about Word Meaning: Individuation and Basic-Level Kinds 2005What Does It Look Like and What Can It Do? Category Structure Influences How Infants Categorize 1999Preschoolers' and Adults' Reliance on Object Shape and Object Function for Lexical Extension 1991Acquiring Proper Nouns for Familiar and Unfamiliar Animate Objects: Two-Year-Olds' Word-Learning Biases 1996

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.