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Infants Use Category Label Knowledge to Interpret Absent Reference
Author(s) -
Osina Maria A.,
Saylor Megan M.,
Ganea Patricia A.
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
infancy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.361
H-Index - 69
eISSN - 1532-7078
pISSN - 1525-0008
DOI - 10.1111/infa.12241
Subject(s) - referent , psychology , object (grammar) , developmental psychology , categorization , cognitive psychology , linguistics , philosophy
This research investigated infants’ (16 and 20 months) use of category information in responding to references to absent objects. Infants were asked to find an object in the box (e.g., “Find an apple!”). When allowed to search, they found either an object from the mentioned category (a plastic apple) or a different object. Infants in both age groups searched again in the box trying to find another object more often on nonreferent than on referent trials (Experiment 1). However, when nonreferents were categorically related to referents, only older infants detected a mismatch and searched again (Experiment 2). These findings suggest that infants use category knowledge when processing references to absent objects.