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Focusing on the relation: fewer exemplars facilitate children's initial verb learning and extension
Author(s) -
Maguire Mandy J.,
HirshPasek Kathy,
Golinkoff Roberta Michnick,
Brandone Amanda C.
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.1467-7687.2008.00707.x
Subject(s) - verb , psychology , repetition (rhetorical device) , relation (database) , object (grammar) , action (physics) , abstraction , cognitive psychology , linguistics , computer science , epistemology , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics , database
One of the most prominent theories for why children struggle to learn verbs is that verb learning requires the abstraction of relations between an object and its action (Gentner, 2003). Two hypotheses suggest how children extract relations to extend a novel verb: (1) seeing many different exemplars allows children to detect the invariant relation between actions in different contexts ( Gentner, 2003 ), and (2) repetition of fewer exemplars allows children to move beyond the entities involved to extract the relation ( Kersten & Smith, 2002 ). We tested ‐ and 3‐year‐olds’ ability to extend a novel verb after viewing the repetition of one novel actor compared to four different actors performing a novel action. Both ages were better at learning and extending a novel verb to a novel actor when shown only one actor rather than four different actors. These results indicate that during initial verb learning less information is more effective.