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Complementary error patterns in collective and individuating judgements: Their semantic basis in 6‐year‐olds
Author(s) -
Freeman N. H.,
Schreiner K.
Publication year - 1988
Publication title -
british journal of developmental psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.062
H-Index - 75
eISSN - 2044-835X
pISSN - 0261-510X
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-835x.1988.tb01106.x
Subject(s) - superordinate goals , psychology , quantifier (linguistics) , noun , task (project management) , class (philosophy) , linguistics , cognitive psychology , social psychology , artificial intelligence , computer science , management , economics , philosophy
Children are often asked questions starting ‘how many?’/‘which are more …?’/‘are all the …?’, failing to compute the right total when count nouns (e.g. ‘flowers’) are used but succeeding with collectives (like ‘bunch’). This has been used as evidence for the claim that collective terms encourage children to think in superordinate terms. However, this ignores the communicative influence of the quantifiers in the question. Whilst all is appropriate for collectives, it is the individuator every which is appropriate for count nouns. Our study was designed to probe the influence of quantifier type ( every or all ) against question type (about fixed or moveable items) in the cars‐in‐garages task. The different quantifiers evoked different patterns of error. Questions with all led children to be concerned with whether garages were filled up, whilst questions with every led to concern with finding as many cars or garages as possible. This sensitivity to the difference between collection‐appropriate and class‐appropriate language is discussed in terms of the functional basis of natural language quantification.