Domain effects in lexical development: learning words for foods and toys

Lavin, Tracy; Hall, D. Geoffrey

doi:10.1016/s0885-2014(02)00070-9

Cited by 40 publications

(65 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Indeed, children under 2 y of age are the most likely age group to accidentally poison themselves (24). Additionally, although adults, older children, and even adult monkeys rely on different perceptual properties to make inferences about foods and about artifacts (e.g., using color when reasoning about foods, shape when reasoning about artifacts), human infants do not (5,(27)(28)(29)(30)(31)(32)(33)(34)(35). Because human infants have historically relied on caregivers to provide safe and nutritious diets, they may not need to have mechanisms in place for reasoning about food.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Early emerging system for reasoning about the social nature of food

Liberman

Woodward

Sullivan

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

167

137

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Selecting appropriate foods is a complex and evolutionarily ancient problem, yet past studies have revealed little evidence of adaptations present in infancy that support sophisticated reasoning about perceptual properties of food. We propose that humans have an earlyemerging system for reasoning about the social nature of food selection. Specifically, infants' reasoning about food choice is tied to their thinking about agents' intentions and social relationships. Whereas infants do not expect people to like the same objects, infants view food preferences as meaningfully shared across individuals. Infants' reasoning about food preferences is fundamentally social: They generalize food preferences across individuals who affiliate, or who speak a common language, but not across individuals who socially disengage or who speak different languages. Importantly, infants' reasoning about food preferences is flexibly calibrated to their own experiences: Tests of bilingual babies reveal that an infant's sociolinguistic background influences whether she will constrain her generalization of food preferences to people who speak the same language. Additionally, infants' systems for reasoning about food is differentially responsive to positive and negative information. Infants generalize information about food disgust across all people, regardless of those people's social identities. Thus, whereas food preferences are seen as embedded within social groups, disgust is interpreted as socially universal, which could help infants avoid potentially dangerous foods. These studies reveal an early-emerging system for thinking about food that incorporates social reasoning about agents and their relationships, and allows infants to make abstract, flexible, adaptive inferences to interpret others' food choices.food | social cognition | infancy | cognitive development | disgust

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mentioning

confidence: 99%

Early emerging system for reasoning about the social nature of food

Liberman

Woodward

Sullivan

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

167

137

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…For example, color might be relevant to labeling within the basic-level category of zebras, but it is less relevant to labeling horses, dogs, birds, and so forth. In a similar way, the superordinate category of foods is organized by color and material, meaning it encompasses numerous basic-level categories of color-similar objects and/or material-similar objects (Lavin & Hall, 2002;Macario, 1991;Santos, Hauser, & Spelke, 2002). Thus, children cannot effectively rely on any single strategy-a shape bias, color bias, or otherwise-to learn labels for objects from all basic or superordinate categories.…”

Section: The Diversity Of Object Categoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although young children often over-map and over-generalize object labels by shape (Clark, 1973;Graham & Poulin-Dubois, 1999;Jones et al, 1991;Jones & Smith, 1998;Samuelson et al, 2008), their mapping behavior becomes more nuanced over time (Booth & Waxman, 2002;Imai, Gentner, & Uchida, 1994;Jones & Smith, 1998;Jones et al, 1991;Keil, 1994;Lavin & Hall, 2002;Macario, 1991;Samuelson et al, 2008;Santos et al, 2002). For example, Lavin and Hall (2001) demonstrated differences in threeyear-old children's mapping and generalization of labels for toys and foods.…”

Section: The Diversity Of Object Categoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although children's mapping behavior is initially quite undifferentiated, it begins to vary between superordinate categories over time (Booth & Waxman, 2002;Clark, 1973;Graham & PoulinDubois, 1999;Imai, Gentner, & Uchida, 1994;Jones & Smith, 1998Jones et al, 1991;Keil, 1994;Lavin & Hall, 2002;Macario, 1991 Santos et al, 2002). This suggests that they develop multiple label-learning strategies, specific to each superordinate category (Jones & Smith, 1998Lavin & Hall, 2002). In the current studies, we sought to better understand how these category-specific label-learning strategies develop.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Children’s Label-Learning Experience within Superordinate Categories Facilitates their Generalization of Labels for Additional Category Members

Russell

2017

Psychology of Language and Communication

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In two studies, we tested the relationship between children's label-learning experience and label-learning ability within diverse superordinate categories with complex perceptual organization (animals, clothing, foods). Using both quasi-experimental and experimental designs, we examined 18-and 24-month-old children's ability to generalize labels for novel members of superordinate categories as a product of their previous experience in learning labels for members of those categories. As predicted, children properly generalized more labels for members of the categories within which they had more label-learning experience than for members of the categories within which they had less label-learning experience. Results are consistent with the idea that children develop category-specific label-learning biases through their experience in learning labels for category members; they carry implications for multiple accounts of vocabulary acquisition and identify directions for future research.

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“…Using these methods, researchers of cognitive development have learned a lot about early cognitive competencies (e.g., Keil, 1989;Spelke, 1990;Mandler, 1992; Gelman, Coley, & Gottfried, 1994;Kemler Nelson, Frankenfield, Morris, & Blair, 2000;Bloom, 2000; Booth, Huang, & Waxman, 2005;Lavin & Hall, 2001). Nonetheless, this approach may be fundamentally flawed, both theoretically and empirically (see, Thelen & Smith, 1994;Smith, 2005).…”

Section: Flexibility and Variabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Flexibility and variability: Essential to human cognition and the study of human cognition

Colunga

Smith

2008

New Ideas in Psychology

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Traditional theories of cognition concentrate on the problem of stability, how it is that people perform the same cognitive act over and over despite different task pressures and varying circumstances. We suggest a different approach that focuses on the flexible and the inventive. From a dynamic systems perspective, intelligence is the adaptive flexibility that integrates the stability of past experience with the idiosyncrasies of the moment. In this paper we demonstrate the value of this perspective in the context of children's novel noun generalizations. We describe D-ALA, a dynamic systems model that embodies the principles of the account and use this model to explain the findings of three different experiments that show how young children flexibly and smartly adapt to novel circumstances in the task of learning new words. Flexibility and Variability 3Flexibility and variability: Essential to human cognition and the study of human cognition Traditional theories of cognition concentrate on the problem of stability, how it is that people perform the same cognitive act over and over despite varying tasks and the vagaries of the moment. How is it, these theories ask, that we understand people, frogs, and trees to all be living things? How is it that we understand the frog in the pond, the frog in the jar, and the frog in the comic strip to all be the same kind of thing -a frog?Traditional theory explains these stabilities by positing stable knowledge structures; one constant internal representation is activated each time we understand some thing to be a living thing, another that is activated each time we understand something to be a frog. (Keil, 1994) This focus on stability as the principle phenomenon to be explained has led to a set of well-accepted practices in the study of cognitive development. These are:1. Concentrate on findings that are generalizable across tasks because it is the pattern of performance that transcends specific tasks that is most likely to be the result of, and thus informative about, the underlying representational constants.2. Seek tasks that minimize variability. By reducing variability, we can "see through" performance to the knowledge representations underneath.3. Emphasize optimal performance and the best conditions.Performance that comes closest to our theoretical definitions of the underlying knowledge (or to adult standards) present the clearest view These "good research practices" direct us to the stable, the general, the optimal. Using these methods, researchers of cognitive development have learned a lot about early cognitive competencies (e.g., Keil, 1989;Spelke, 1990;Mandler, 1992; Gelman, Coley, & Gottfried, 1994;Kemler Nelson, Frankenfield, Morris, & Blair, 2000;Bloom, 2000; Booth, Huang, & Waxman, 2005;Lavin & Hall, 2001). Nonetheless, this approach may be fundamentally flawed, both theoretically and empirically (see, Thelen & Smith, 1994;Smith, 2005). The theoretical failure lies in the concentration on the stable and the generalizable at the expense of the flex...

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Domain effects in lexical development: learning words for foods and toys

Cited by 40 publications

References 24 publications

Early emerging system for reasoning about the social nature of food

Early emerging system for reasoning about the social nature of food

Children’s Label-Learning Experience within Superordinate Categories Facilitates their Generalization of Labels for Additional Category Members

Flexibility and variability: Essential to human cognition and the study of human cognition

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