Premium
Children and adults represent proper names as referring to unique individuals
Author(s) -
Sorrentino Cristina M.
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
developmental science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.801
H-Index - 127
eISSN - 1467-7687
pISSN - 1363-755X
DOI - 10.1111/1467-7687.00181
Subject(s) - psychology , proper noun , artifact (error) , word (group theory) , cognitive psychology , linguistics , communication , developmental psychology , neuroscience , philosophy
Adults represent proper names (e.g. ‘Katharine Hepburn’) as referring to unique individuals (i.e. Katharine Hepburn), and studies of children’s proper name learning have been taken to show that children represent proper names in like manner. However, almost all of these studies leave open the possibility that children represent proper names as referring to restricted kinds of highly similar animals. We provide direct evidence against this possibility: both adults and 3‐year‐old children presented with a novel word for a toy animal (e.g. ‘daxy’) assumed that the animal continued to be referred to with the word, despite a change in the animal’s appearance and location, and despite the introduction at the old location of an animal identical in appearance to the original animal at the time the word was introduced. Participants presented with a simple artifact (e.g. a bottle) did not interpret the word as a proper name, consistent with previous work.