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Knowledge embedded in process: the self‐organization of skilled noun learning
Author(s) -
Colunga Eliana,
Smith Linda B.
Publication year - 2008
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/j.1467-7687.2007.00665.x
Subject(s) - psychology , noun , process (computing) , cognitive psychology , linguistics , developmental psychology , computer science , philosophy , operating system
Young children's skilled generalization of newly learned nouns to new instances has become the battleground for two very different approaches to cognition. This debate is a proxy for a larger dispute in cognitive science and cognitive development: cognition as rule‐like amodal propositions, on the one hand, or as embodied, modal, and dynamic processes on the other. After a brief consideration of this theoretical backdrop, we turn to the specific task set before us: an overview of the Attentional Learning Account (ALA) of children's novel noun generalizations, the constrained set of experimental results to be explained, and our explanation of them. We conclude with a consideration of what all of this implies for a theory of cognitive development.