On the child's acquisition of antonyms in two semantic fields

It was hypothesized that children set up semantic fields automatically as they learn something of the meaning of related words. Thirty children between 4;0 and 5;5 played a word game in which they had to respond to the experimenter's word with its opposite. The pairs used were dimensional and spatio-temporal terms. The results showed (a) a distinct order of acquisition among the pairs based on their relative complexity of meaning, and (b) substitutions, as opposites, of semantically simpler, better-known words for lesser-known words. Both results were compatible with the hypothesis, and they also ruled out some other possible explanations.