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Infants’ Use of Lexical‐Category‐to‐Meaning Links in Object Individuation
Author(s) -
Hall D. Geoffrey,
Corrigall Kathleen,
Rhemtulla Mijke,
Donegan Eleanor,
Xu Fei
Publication year - 2008
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.1467-8624.2008.01197.x
Subject(s) - object (grammar) , psychology , meaning (existential) , individuation , noun , linguistics , cognitive psychology , developmental psychology , communication , psychoanalysis , philosophy , psychotherapist
Infants watched an experimenter retrieve a stuffed animal from an opaque box and then return it. This happened twice, consistent with either 1 animal appearing on 2 occasions or 2 identical‐looking animals each appearing once. The experimenter labeled each object appearance with a different novel label. After infants retrieved 1 object from the box, their subsequent search behavior was recorded. Twenty‐month‐olds, but not 16‐month‐olds, searched significantly longer for a second object inside the box when the labels were both proper names than when they were 1 count noun followed by 1 proper name. The effect was not significant when proper names were replaced by adjectives. Twenty‐month‐olds’ understanding of meaning distinctions among several word categories guided their object individuation.