Journal
COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
Volume 61, Issue 3, Pages 273-301Publisher
ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1016/j.cogpsych.2010.06.001
Keywords
Generics; Essentialism; Children; Language; Categorization; Kinds
Categories
Funding
- NSF [BCS-0817128]
- NICHD [R01 HD36043]
- Direct For Social, Behav & Economic Scie
- Division Of Behavioral and Cognitive Sci [0817128] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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We hypothesized that generic noun phrases (Bears climb trees) would provide important input to children's developing concepts. In three experiments, four-year-olds and adults learned a series of facts about a novel animal category, in one of three wording conditions: generic (e.g., Zarpies hate ice cream), specific-label (e.g., This zarpie hates ice cream), or no-label (e.g., This hates ice cream). Participants completed a battery of tasks assessing the extent to which they linked the category to the properties expressed, and the extent to which they treated the category as constituting an essentialized kind. As predicted, for adults, generics training resulted in tighter category-property links and more category essentialism than both the specific-label and no-label training. Children also showed effects of generic wording, though the effects were weaker and required more extensive input. We discuss the implications for language-thought relations, and for the acquisition of essentialized categories. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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