Three experiments examined whether the experience of individuating an object would affect the way that children of different ages would interpret its label. Participants were asked to remember a novel object and pick it out from sets containing either two similar objects (similar condition) or no similar objects (dissimilar condition). They were then taught a label for the object and tested for how broadly they generalized it. Because children in the similar condition had formed a more detailed representation of the object, they were expected to generalize its label less broadly. For artifacts, this effect was observed in 4- and 5-year-olds as well as first and second graders, but not in 3-year-olds or adults. For toy animals, no age group showed this effect, and the three oldest groups of children showed the opposite effect. Various explanations for why the consequences of individuating an object for the interpretation of its label depend on age of the learner and the object’s ontological kind are discussed.

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Previous research indicates that in college samples there is a positive correlation between psychosocial development and economic conservatism. We tested the generality of this relationship with a nationally representative sample of respondents from the United States. The result was instead consistent with an alternative hypothesis that psychosocial development is related to political extremism. To our knowledge, this is the first report of an association between psychosocial development and political orientation.

Two studies examined whether preschool children preferred to select a moving object over stationary objects when determining the referent of a novel word. In both studies three- and four-year-olds observed three novel objects, one moving object and two stationary objects. In Study 1, children (n=44) were asked to select the object that best matched a novel word. In Study 2, children (n=45) were asked to select the object that best matched a novel fact. Results across the two studies indicated that three- and four-year-olds showed a preference for selecting the moving object and that this preference was similar for both words and facts. These results suggest that preschool children are able to use movement to determine the referent of a novel word, especially when other cues are unavailable or unhelpful, but that movement may not be uniquely helpful for word learning.

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