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New Evidence on the Development of the Word Big
Author(s) -
Sena Rhonda,
Smith Linda B.
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.103
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1467-8624
pISSN - 0009-3920
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8624.1990.tb02840.x
Subject(s) - psychology , perception , meaning (existential) , big data , cognitive psychology , stimulus (psychology) , object (grammar) , developmental psychology , artificial intelligence , computer science , neuroscience , psychotherapist , operating system
Previous studies of children's understanding of big suggest a curvilinear trend. 3‐year‐olds, like adults, interpret big as referring to area, while 5‐year‐olds take big to mean tall. The results of 6 experiments indicate that the curvilinear trend is not obtained in all stimulus contexts. When objects vary extremely, younger and older children take big to mean tall. The object to which big is applied also influences whether height, length, or area is attended to. Moreover, in a production task, adults rarely used the work big to describe the stimuli with which children's understanding of big is typically tested. Taken together, the results suggest that the meaning and use of big is complex and that big may not at any age refer simply to the larger object. It is proposed that the meaning of big is a dynamic system driven by a multiple of perceptual, conceptual, and semantic influences.