One cow does not an animal make: young children can extend novel words at the superordinate level.

Six match-to-sample picture/object selection experiments were designed to explore children's knowledge about superordinate words (e.g., "food") and how they acquire this knowledge. Three factors were found to influence the learning and extension of superordinate words in 3- to 5-year-old children (N = 230): The number of standards (one versus two), the type of standards presented (from different basic-level categories versus from the same basic-level category), and the nature of the object representations used (pictures versus objects). A different pattern of superordinate word acquisition was found between 3-year-olds and 4- and 5-year-olds. Although 4- and 5-year-olds could learn and extend novel words to superordinate categories in the presence of two picture exemplars from different categories or a single three-dimensional (3-D) exemplar, 3-year-olds could do so only in the presence of two 3-D exemplars. These findings indicate that young children's acquisition of superordinate words is influenced by multiple factors and that there is a developmental progression from multiple exemplars to single exemplars in superordinate word learning.

[1]  E. Clark,et al.  Pragmatic directions and children's word learning , 1998, Journal of Child Language.

[2]  P. Blewitt,et al.  Understanding Categorical Hierarchies: The Earliest Levels of Skill , 1994 .

[3]  E. Markman,et al.  Children's use of mutual exclusivity to constrain the meanings of words , 1988, Cognitive Psychology.

[4]  Katherine Nelson,et al.  Taxonomic Knowledge: What Kind and When? , 1992 .

[5]  E. Markman,et al.  Children's sensitivity to constraints on word meaning: Taxonomic versus thematic relations , 1984, Cognitive Psychology.

[6]  G. Murphy,et al.  Categorizing objects in isolation and in scenes: what a superordinate is good for. , 1989, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[7]  Laura L. Namy,et al.  Challenging the notion of a thematic preference in young children. , 1997 .

[8]  Edward E. Smith,et al.  Categories and concepts , 1984 .

[9]  J. M. Anglin,et al.  Word, object, and conceptual development , 1977 .

[10]  E. Clark.  Conceptual perspective and lexical choice in acquisition , 1997, Cognition.

[11]  Sandra R. Waxman,et al.  Words as Invitations to Form Categories: Evidence from 12- to 13-Month-Old Infants , 1995, Cognitive Psychology.

[12]  Rebecca J. Brand,et al.  Breaking the language barrier: an emergentist coalition model for the origins of word learning. , 2000, Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development.

[13]  M. Tomasello,et al.  Variability in early communicative development. , 1994, Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development.

[14]  Jodie M. Plumert,et al.  Evidence for Task-Dependent Categorization in Infancy , 1996 .

[15]  Roberta Michnick Golinkoff,et al.  Young Children Extend Novel Words at the Basic Level: Evidence for the Principle of Categorical Scope. , 1995 .

[16]  K. Nelson,et al.  Context effects on lexical specificity in maternal and child discourse , 1986, Journal of Child Language.

[17]  S. Gelman,et al.  Children's inductive inferences within superordinate categories: the role of language and category structure. , 1988, Child development.

[18]  S. Waxman,et al.  Nouns mark category relations: toddlers' and preschoolers' word-learning biases. , 1990, Child development.

[19]  Elizabeth F. Shipley,et al.  Mothers' use of superordinate category terms , 1983, Journal of Child Language.

[20]  John A. Sloboda,et al.  Cognition and social worlds , 1989 .

[21]  Linda B. Smith,et al.  The importance of shape in early lexical learning , 1988 .

[22]  Maureen A. Callanan,et al.  Development of Object Categories and Inclusion Relations: Preschoolers' Hypotheses about Word Meanings. , 1989 .

[23]  Kevin F. Miller,et al.  Reasoning and problem solving. , 1998 .

[24]  Linda B. Smith,et al.  Young children's discovery of spatial classification , 1997 .

[25]  Wayne D. Gray,et al.  Basic objects in natural categories , 1976, Cognitive Psychology.

[26]  Barbara Landau,et al.  Count nouns, adjectives, and perceptual properties in children's novel word interpretations. , 1992 .

[27]  Ellen M. Markman,et al.  Categorization and Naming in Children: Problems of Induction , 1989 .

[28]  H. Beilin,et al.  Children's iconic realism: object versus property realism. , 1991, Advances in child development and behavior.

[29]  J. Macnamara.  Names for Things: A Study in Human Learning , 1984 .

[30]  C. Mervis,et al.  Early object labels: the case for a developmental lexical principles framework , 1994, Journal of Child Language.

[31]  Edward J. Wisniewski,et al.  Superordinate and basic category names in discourse: A textual analysis , 1989 .

[32]  Linda B. Smith,et al.  The place of perception in children's concepts ☆ , 1993 .

[33]  Mutsumi Imai,et al.  Children's Theories of Word Meaning: The Role of Shape Similarity in Early Acquisition , 1994 .

[34]  C. Mervis,et al.  Order of acquisition of subordinate-, basic-, and superordinate-level categories. , 1982 .

[35]  D. Gentner,et al.  Similarity and the development of rules , 1998, Cognition.

[36]  J. Mandler,et al.  Taxonomies and triads: Conceptual organization in one- to two-year-olds , 1989, Cognitive Psychology.

[37]  F. Keil.  Explanation, association, and the acquisition of word meaning , 1994 .

[38]  Ellen M. Markman,et al.  Why superordinate category terms can be mass nouns , 1985, Cognition.

[39]  R. Cocking,et al.  A comparative study of the use of pictures and objects in assessing children's receptive and productive language. , 1981 .

[40]  D. K. Nelson,et al.  Principle-Based Inferences in Young Children's Categorization: Revisiting the Impact of Function on the Naming of Artifacts. , 1995 .