Childrens' Understanding of Constraints upon Adjective Order

Abstract

Children's choice of attribute-order in verbal descriptions of objects and in response to different orders of modifiers was studied. Two types of tasks were examined: production and comprehension. Children were asked to label eight blocks which differed in one value of one attribute and to discriminate the one block of a set of four described to them in one of the six possible orders of color, size, and material. Latency scores were recorded by the child's pushing a switch in front of the block he would choose. The two production tasks were designated as the verbal description of the objects before (P₁) and after (P₂) the comprehension task. Comprehension (C) was determined by latency of response to the oral instructions in the visual discimination task. Eighteen children, ages 4 through 7, participated, each serving as his own control and performing the three tasks. The results showed sex differences in the comprehension task: the boys responded faster to the second most common order in English (color, size, material) while the girls responded faster to the most common order (size, color, material).

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