Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T20:28:43.358Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Children's use of information in word learning*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Terry Kit-Fong Au
Terry Kit-Fong Au*
Affiliation:
Brown University
*
Department of Psychology, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Whenever children hear a novel word, the context supplies information about its meaning. One way children may cope with so much information is to use whatever seems to make sense, given their prior knowledge and beliefs, while ignoring or quickly forgetting the rest. This work examined if and how children's beliefs about word meanings may affect their use of contrastive linguistic information in the input in word learning. In Study 1, some 3- and 4-year-olds were introduced to a novel material or shape name and heard it contrasted with familiar words. Others merely heard the novel word used for referring to an object. These children were then tested to determine what they had learned about their new word meaning. In Study 2, another group of 3-and 4-year-olds were asked to name the materials and shapes used for introducing these novel terms. Children made use of linguistic contrast only in some situations. They benefited more when the novel term did not overlap much in denotation with any terms commonly known by 3-and 4-year-olds. These results suggest that children can use information in the input very efficiently in learning a term for an as-yet-unnamed category, but not in learning a term similar in denotation to a word they already know. Thus, the results are consistent with the claim that children believe every word has a unique denotation.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , June 1990 , pp. 393 - 416
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I am grateful to Eve Clark, Herbert Clark, John Flavell, Ellen Markman, Gregory Murphy, Karen Ravn, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on the manuscript. I thank the children, teachers, and parents of Abracadabra Child Care Center, Buttons & Bows Montessori Preschool, College Terrace Preschool, Darby's Day Care, Grace Lutheran Preschool, Palo Alto Montessori School, Sun Flower Nursery School, and Western Montessori Day School for their cooperation. This work was supported in part by an IBM fellowship and BRS Grant 5-27350 from Brown University.

References

REFERENCES

Andrick, G. R. & Tager-Flusberg, H. (1986). The acquisition of colour terms. Journal of Child Language 13. 119–34.Google Scholar
Au, T. K. (1985). Children's word-learning strategies. Papers and Reports on Child Language Development 24. 22–9.Google Scholar
Au, T. K. & Markman, E. M. (1987). Acquiring word meanings via linguistic contrast. Cognitive Development 2, 217–36.Google Scholar
Baillargeon, R. (1986). Representing the existence and the location of hidden objects: object permanence in 6- and 8-month-old infants. Cognition 23. 21–41.Google Scholar
Baillargeon, R., Spelke, E. S. & Wasserman, S. (1985). Object permanence in five-month-old infants. Cognition 20. 191–208.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Baldwin, D. A. (1989). Priorities in children's expectations about object label reference: Form over color. Child Development, 60, 1291–1306.Google Scholar
Barrett, M. D. (1978). Lexical development and overextension in child language. Journal of Child Language 5. 205–19.Google Scholar
Bates, E. (1976). Language and context: the acquisition of pragmatics. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Bates, E., Camaioni, L. & Volterra, V. (1975). The acquisition of performatives prior to speech. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly 21. 205–26.Google Scholar
Berlin, B. & Kay, P. (1969). Basic color terms: Their universality and evolution. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Bolinger, D. (1977). Meaning and form. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Bowerman, M. (1977). The acquisition of word meaning: an investigation of some current conflicts. In Johnson-Laird, P. N. & Wason, P. C. (eds), Thinking: readings in cognitive science. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Bruner, J. S. (1975). The ontogenesis of speech acts. Journal of Child Language 2. 1–19.Google Scholar
Carey, S. (1978). The child as word learner. In Halle, M., Bresnan, J. & Miller, G. A. (eds), Linguistic theory and psychological reality. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press.Google Scholar
Carey, S. & Bartlett, E. (1978). Acquiring a single new word. Papers and Reports on Child Language Development 15. 17–29.Google Scholar
Clark, E. V. (1973). What's in a word? On the child's acquisition of semantics in his first language. In Moore, T. E. (ed.), Cognitive Development and the Acquisition of Language. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Clark, E. V. (1983). Meanings and concepts. In Mussen, P. H. (ed.), Handbook of Child Psychology Vol. 3. Flavell, J. H. & Markman, E. M. (eds), Cognitive Development. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Clark, E. V. (1987). The principle of contrast: a constraint on language acquisition. In MacWhinney, B. (ed.), Mechanisms of language acquisition. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Clark, E. V. (1988). On the logic of contrast. Journal of Child Language 15, 317–35.Google Scholar
Clark, E. V., Gelman, S. A. & Lane, N. (1985). Noun compounds and category structure in young children. Child Development 56, 84–94.Google Scholar
Clark, H. H., Schreuder, R. & Buttrick, S. (1983). Common ground and the understanding of demonstrative reference. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 22, 245–58.Google Scholar
Dockrell, J. (1981). The child's acquisition of unfamiliar words: an experimental study. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Stirling, Scotland.Google Scholar
Dockrell, J. & Campbell, R. (1986). Lexical acquisition strategies in the preschool child. In Kuczaj, S. & Barrett, M. (eds), The development of word meaning. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.Google Scholar
Francis, W. M. & Kučera, H. (1982). Frequency analysis of English usage: lexicon and grammar. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Gathercole, V. C. (1987). The contrastive hypothesis for the acquisition of word meaning: a reconsideration of the theory. Journal of Child Language 14, 493–531.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goldin-Meadow, S., Seligman, M. E. P. & Gelman, R. (1976). Language in the two-year-old. Cognition 4. 189–202.Google Scholar
Heibeck, T. H. & Markman, E. M. (1987). Word learning in children: an examination of fast mapping. Child Development 58, 1021–34.Google Scholar
Hutchinson, J. E. (1986). Children's sensitivity to the contrastive use of object category terms. Papers and Reports on Child Language Development 25. 49–56.Google Scholar
Inhelder, B. & Piaget, J. (1964). The early growth of logic in the child. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Leopold, W. F. (1949). Speech development of a bilingual child: a linguist's record. Vol. III. Grammar and general problems in the first two years. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Lyons, J. (1977). Semantics I. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Macnamara, J. (1982). Names for things: a study of human learning. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press.Google Scholar
Markman, E. M. (1984). The acquisition and hierarchical organization of categories by children. In Sophian, C. (ed.), Origins of cognitive skills. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Markman, E. M. & Hutchinson, J. E. (1984). Children's sensitivity to constraints on word meaning: taxonomic vs thematic relations. Cognitive Psychology 16. 1–27.Google Scholar
Markman, E. M. & Wachtel, G. F. (1988). Children's use of mutual exclusivity to constrain the meanings of words. Cognitive Psychology 20, 121–57.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Merriman, W. E. (1986). Some reasons for the occurrence and eventual correction of children's naming errors. Child Development 57. 942–52.Google Scholar
Merriman, W. E. (1987). Lexical contrast in toddlers: a re-analysis of the diary evidence. Paper presented at the 1987 Biennial Convention of the Society for Research in Child Development, Baltimore, Maryland.Google Scholar
Mervis, C. B. (1987). Child-base object categories and early lexical development. In Neisser, U. (ed.), Concepts and conceptual development: ecological and intellectual factors in categorization. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Miller, G. A. & Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1976). Language and Perception. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Nice, M. M. (1915). The development of a child's vocabulary in relation to environment. Pedagogical Seminary 22, 35–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olson, D. R. (1970). Language and thought: aspects of a cognitive theory of semantics. Psychological Review 77. 257–73.Google Scholar
Palmer, F. R. (1981). Semantics. Second edition. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Peirce, C. (1957). The logic of abduction. In Tomas, V. (ed.), Pierce's essays in the philosophy of science. New York: The Liberal Arts Press.Google Scholar
Piaget, J. (1952). The origins of intelligence in children. New York: International Universities Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piaget, J. (1954). The construction of reality in the child. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Quine, W. (1960). Word and object. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press.Google Scholar
Rinsland, H. (1954). A basic vocabulary of elementary school children. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Rosch, E. & Mervis, C. B. (1975). Family resemblance: studies in the internal structure of categories. Cognitive Psychology 7. 573–605.Google Scholar
Rosch, E., Mervis, C. B., Gray, W. D., Johnson, D. M. & Boyes-Braem, P. (1976). Basic objects in natural categories. Cognitive Psychology 8, 382–439.Google Scholar
Smith, L. B. (1984). Young children's understanding of attributes and dimensions: a comparison of conceptual and linguistic measures. Child Development 55. 363–80.Google Scholar
Soja, N., Carey, S. & Spelke, E. (1985). Constraints on word learning. Paper presented at the 1985 Biennial Convention of the Society for Research in Child Development, Toronto, Canada.Google Scholar
Spelke, E. S. (1985). Perception of unity, persistence, and identity: thoughts on infants' conceptions of objects. In Mehler, J. & Fox, R. (eds), Neonate cognition: beyond the blooming buzzing confusion. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Taylor, M. & Gelman, S. A. (1988). Adjectives and nouns: children's strategies for learning new words. Child Development 59. 411–9.Google Scholar
Taylor, M. & Gelman, S. A. (1989). Incorporating new words into the lexicon: Preliminary evidence for language hierarchies in two-year-old children. Child Development, 60, 625–636.Google Scholar
Tversky, B. & Hemenway, K. (1984). Objects, parts, and categories. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 113. 169–93.Google Scholar
Waxman, S. & Gelman, R. (1986). Preschoolers' use of superordinate relations in classification. Cognitive Development 1, 139–56.Google Scholar
Wepman, J. M. & Hass, W. (1969). A spoken word count. Chicago: Language Research Associates.Google Scholar
Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical investigations. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar