Premium
A CROSS‐CULTURAL STUDY OF SYMBOLIC MEANING–DEVELOPMENTAL ASPECTS 1
Author(s) -
Guiora Alexander Z.,
Sagi Abraham
Publication year - 1978
Publication title -
language learning
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.882
H-Index - 103
eISSN - 1467-9922
pISSN - 0023-8333
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-1770.1978.tb00141.x
Subject(s) - psychology , meaning (existential) , salient , test (biology) , linguistics , cognition , developmental psychology , psycholinguistics , cognitive psychology , paleontology , philosophy , artificial intelligence , neuroscience , computer science , psychotherapist , biology
Twenty three Israeli kindergarteners and sixteen Israeli college students were tested on a variant of the Semantic Differential Test developed by Guiora (1976) to test the hypothesis that young Israeli children, like adults, are not influenced by the prevalence of grammatical gender in the language but ascribe sexual meanings to the test words based on their assumed connotative values. The results bore out the original hypothesis, suggesting that whatever the cognitive processes are that underlie the development of the capacity to resolve seemingly conflicting information in favor of the more salient feature, e.g. meaning, they seem to be in place by the time the child reaches five years of age.