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Learning and Processing Abstract Words and Concepts: Insights From Typical and Atypical Development
Author(s) -
Vigliocco Gabriella,
Ponari Marta,
Norbury Courtenay
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
topics in cognitive science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.191
H-Index - 56
eISSN - 1756-8765
pISSN - 1756-8757
DOI - 10.1111/tops.12347
Subject(s) - psychology , cognitive psychology , language development , semantics (computer science) , autism , exploit , autism spectrum disorder , linguistics , developmental psychology , cognitive science , computer science , philosophy , computer security , programming language
The paper describes two plausible hypotheses concerning the learning of abstract words and concepts. According to a first hypothesis, children would learn abstract words by extracting co‐occurrences among words in linguistic input, using, for example, mechanisms as described by models of Distributional Semantics . According to a second hypothesis, children would exploit the fact that abstract words tend to have more emotional associations than concrete words to infer that they refer to internal/mental states. Each hypothesis makes specific predictions with regards to when and which abstract words are more likely to be learned; also they make different predictions concerning the impact of developmental disorders. We start by providing a review of work characterizing how abstract words and concepts are learned in development, especially between the ages of 6 and 12. Second, we review some work from our group that tests the two hypotheses above. This work investigates typically developing ( TD ) children and children with atypical development (developmental language disorders [ DLD ] and autism spectrum disorder [ ASD ] with and without language deficits). We conclude that the use of strategies based on emotional information, or on co‐occurrences in language, may play a role at different developmental stages.