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Is this still called a dog? 18‐month‐olds' generalization of familiar labels to unusual objects
Author(s) -
PoulinDubois Diane,
Sissons Mary E.
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
infant and child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.87
H-Index - 57
eISSN - 1522-7219
pISSN - 1522-7227
DOI - 10.1002/icd.256
Subject(s) - referent , psychology , generalization , object (grammar) , flexibility (engineering) , cognitive psychology , developmental psychology , linguistics , artificial intelligence , computer science , statistics , mathematics , mathematical analysis , philosophy
In two experiments the flexibility of 18‐month‐olds' extension of familiar object labels was investigated using the intermodal preferential looking paradigm. The first experiment tested whether infants consider intact and incomplete objects as equally acceptable referents for familiar labels. Infants looked equally long at the intact and incomplete objects whether or not a label was presented. In the second experiment, infants were requested to find the referent of a target word among an incomplete target and an intact distracter or an intact target and an incomplete distracter. The incomplete objects were missing a large or small part. Infants looked longer at the incomplete target, even when large or small parts were deleted. Taken together, these findings suggest that infants do not hold a strong shape bias when generalizing familiar words. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.