Decrease in the Understanding of the Word "Big" in Preschool Children

MARATSOS, MICHAEL P. Decrease in the Understanding of the Word "Big" in Preschool Children. CILD DEVELOPMENT, 1973, 44, 747-752. Children 3-5 years old were shown pairs of stimuli in which the larger stimulus was either shorter than the smaller stimulus or of equal height and asked to judge which stimulus was the "big 1." 3-year-old children answered with above-chance accuracy; most children over 4-5 seemed to define the word "big" as meaning tallness, though further experimentation showed that they did not have conceptual problems with bigness per se. The outcome was discussed in relation to recent findings in conceptual and semantic development.