The Development of Natural Language Concepts

Saltz, Eli; Soller, Elaine; Sigel, Irving E.

doi:10.2307/1127507

Cited by 69 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…Finally, all basic level labels were rated by a group of adults as highly typical members of their superordinate categories. Several studies indicate that children sometimes reject atypical exemplars as category members (e.g., Anglin, 1977;Rosch, 1973;Saltz, Soller, & Sigel, 1972), suggesting that children's categories are often more narrowly defined than those of adults. Therefore, only typical category members were used as stimuli, so that children's rejections of items as category members could not be attributed simply to overly restrictive inclusion criteria.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding Categorical Hierarchies: The Earliest Levels of Skill

Blewitt

1994

Child Development

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2 categorization skills necessary for understanding hierarchies are the ability to form categories at different levels of generality and the ability to include the same objects into multiple categories. 2-year-olds appear to have the first skill, but some theoretical and empirical work suggests that the second may be a later acquisition. Yet, in 3 studies, 2-and 3-year-olds applied familiar basic level and superordinate labels to the same objects, even when reminded of basic labels before being tested with superordinates. They did not reserve superordinates for objects with unfamiliar basic level names (Study 2), and they were willing to apply superordinates to objects presented singly rather than in groups (Study 3). Thus, contrary to the implications of some previous work, 2-and 3-year-olds appear to have both of the categorization skills necessary for forming categorical hierarchies.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding Categorical Hierarchies: The Earliest Levels of Skill

Blewitt

1994

Child Development

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“…S was given several instances of the three concepts one by one and required to respond with"Yes"or"No" ccording to whether the instance belonged to a given concept or not. This test was constructed after the ones used by Neimark (1974) and Saltz , Soller, and Siegel (1972). Following the abstraction test, S was given the identification test with the instruction, "Now I will show you many pictures one by one.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Children's Sorting Behavior as a Function of Conceptual Ability and Frequency of Instances

Sugimura

1976

Jpn. Psychol. Res

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In order to assess S's concept utilization in learning the sorting tasks, preschool children were given either a conceptual sorting task (CST) or a half conceptual sorting task (HST). The results revealed that CST was learned faster than HST by the Ss with high conceptual ability (Exp. I) and in the sorting tasks with high frequency instances (Exp. II), and that both sortings were learned almost at the same rate by the Ss with low ability and in the sorting tasks with low frequency. The superiority of CST over HST is attributable to S's concept utilization in learning the sorting tasks. Whether preschool children can learn in a mediational manner or not depends on S's ability and the nature of the learning task. Kendler, Kendler, and Sanders (1967) assessed the utilization of verbal mediation by the use of a procedure similar to reversal and nonreversal shifts in discrimination learning. College students were required to associate Response A with the instances of one conceptual category (e.g., vegetable) and Response B with those of another (e.g., clothing). On the shift learning, either all instance and response associations were reversed (full reversal shift) or only half of them were reversed (half reversal shift). Kendler, et al. assumed that if Ss use conceptual terms as verbal mediators, full reversal shift would be learned faster than half reversal shift, and that if Ss can not use them, reverse would be true. The result were in line with their assumption. Kendler, Kendler, and Marken (1969) studied these two types of shifts with 4-, 5-, 7-, and 18-year-old subjects.The results were that the youngest Ss learned both shifts almost at the same rate and that full reversal shift was learned increasingly faster than half reversal shift with ages from 5 to 18. They argued that the availability of verbal mediation increased with age, and this was consistent with the verbal mediation theory.Although the procedure used in the above studies appears to be appropriate to assess the utilization of verbal mediation in that they employed verbal materials, there might still remain some apprehensions about their methodology. (a) Training Ss to respond in a conceptual manner may have differential effects on younger and older Ss. It is rather convincing that the training may strengthen conceptual responses in older Ss, but whether this is also true in younger Ss is questionable. (b) What was learned in original learning may not necessarily transfer to shift learning, especially in younger Ss. If this is the case, it is not reasonable to infer the possibility of concept utilization from Ss' performances in shift learning.In order to eliminate these factors, Sugimura (1974) employed the following procedure which involved no shift learning.

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“…A variety of explanations have been advanced to answer the question of why young children initially rely on perceptual cues to classify objects but then shift to using more underlying or functional features as they grow older. Of these, the earliest explanation of why children rely on perceptual cues centered on the idea that young children are "stimulus bound" or "perceptually bound" (Bruner et al, 1966;Piaget, 1970;Olver & Hornsby, 1966;Saltz et al, 1972). According to this view, young children are locked in a concrete immediate environment, unable to think at a more abstract level.…”

Section: Classical Viewsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Of particular interest to marketing, the findings point to a change in the bases children use to form categories between preschool and mid-elementary school (Denney, 1974;Markman, 1980;Markman & Callahan, 1983). During this period, children begin to define categories on the basis of underlying or functional attributes of objects rather than perceptually-salient attributes (Melkman & Deutsch, 1977;Melkman, Tversky, & Baratz, 1981;Olver & Hornsby, 1966; Saltz, Soller, & Sigel, 1972;Tversky, 1985). Children learn to group objects according to attributes that suggest taxonomic relationships (e.g., belts and socks can be worn as items of clothing), attributes that indicate the relationship of categories to one another (e.g., fruit juices and soft drinks vary on the attribute of naturalness), and attributes inherent to the core concept of categories (e.g., taste, more than color, is central to the category of soft drinks).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Children's use of perceptual cues in product categorization

John

Sujan

1990

Psychology and Marketing

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This study examines how young children use perceptual cues in categorizing products. Specifically, we examine the notion that young children use perceptual cues in a more informed fashion than is generally assumed by traditional viewpoints on cognitive development. Data from the three age groups—four‐ and five‐year‐olds, six‐ and seven‐year‐olds, and adults—confirm that even young children can use perceptual cues in a manner that is diagnostic of product category membership and that this ability increases with age.

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The Development of Natural Language Concepts

Cited by 69 publications

References 6 publications

Understanding Categorical Hierarchies: The Earliest Levels of Skill

Understanding Categorical Hierarchies: The Earliest Levels of Skill

Children's Sorting Behavior as a Function of Conceptual Ability and Frequency of Instances

Children's use of perceptual cues in product categorization

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