The authors conducted three experiments examining the effect of grouping on children’s generalization of animal labels. In Experiment 1 (N = 96), first graders (M age = 6 years, 10 months) who had seen a novel animal grouped with similar animals generalized its trained label more broadly than those who had seen it by itself or grouped with dissimilar animals. Generalization of artifact labels was unaffected by condition. In Experiment 2, 4-year-olds (N = 96) also showed this pattern, but 3-year-olds (N = 96) showed no effects. In Experiment 3 (N = 48), 4-year-olds again showed the effect for animal labels in a design that eliminated alternatives to a grouping explanation. At least by age 4, children tend to judge that members of a group of similar animals belong to the same category, and this judgment affects how they interpret a label that is introduced for a member of the group. Explanations for why children tend to make these judgments and the implications for accounts of children’s word learning are discussed.
BalabanM. T.WaxmanS. R. (1997). Do words facilitate object categorization in 9-month-old infants?Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 64, 3–26.
2.
BloomP. (2000). How children learn the meanings of words. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
3.
BoothA. E.WaxmanS. R. (2002). Word learning is ‘smart’: Evidence that conceptual information affects preschoolers’ extension of novel words. Cognition, 84, B11–B22.
4.
BoothA. E.WaxmanS. R.HuangY. T. (2005). Conceptual information permeates word learning in infancy. Developmental Psychology, 41, 491–505.
5.
BrandoneA. C.GelmanS. A. (2009). Differences in preschoolers’ and adults’ use of generics about novel animals and artifacts: A window onto a conceptual divide. Cognition, 110, 1–22.
6.
ColungaE.SmithL. B. (2008). Knowledge embedded in process: The self-organization of skilled noun learning. Developmental Science, 11, 195–203.
7.
DavidsonN. S.GelmanS. A. (1990). Inductions from novel categories: The role of language and conceptual structure. Cognitive Development, 5, 151–176.
8.
DiesendruckG.BloomP. (2003). How specific is the shape bias?Child Development, 74, 168–178.
9.
DiesendruckG.PeretzS. (2013). Domain differences in the weights of perceptual and conceptual information in children’s categorization. Developmental Psychology, 49, 2383–2395.
10.
FulkersonA. L.WaxmanS. R. (2007). Words (but not tones) facilitate object categorization: Evidence from 6-and 12-month-olds. Cognition, 105, 218–228.
11.
GelmanR. (1990). First principles organize attention to and learning about relevant data: Number and the animate-inanimate distinction as examples. Cognitive Science, 14, 79–106.
12.
GelmanS. A.BloomP. (2000). Young children are sensitive to how an object was created when deciding what to name it. Cognition, 76(2), 91–103.
13.
GelmanS. A.GoetzP. J.SarneckaB. W.FlukesJ. (2008). Generic language in parent–child conversations. Language Learning and Development, 4(1), 1–31.
14.
GelmanS. A.KremerK. E. (1991). Understanding natural cause: Children’s explanations of how objects and their properties originate. Child Development, 62, 396–414.
15.
GelmanS. A.RamanL. (2003). Preschool children use linguistic form class and pragmatic cues to interpret generics. Child Development, 74, 308–325.
16.
GelmanS. A.WellmanH. M. (1991). Insides and essences: Early understandings of the non-obvious. Cognition, 38, 213–244.
17.
Goldin-MeadowS.GelmanS. A.MylanderC. (2005). Expressing generic concepts with and without a language model. Cognition, 96, 109–126.
18.
GrahamS. A.WelderA. N.MerrifieldB. A.BermanJ. M. (2010). Preschoolers’ extension of novel words to animals and artifacts. Journal of Child Language, 37, 913–927.
19.
HartinT. L.MerrimanW. E. (2016). Children’s interpretation of a label for an individuated object: Dependence on age and ontological kind. First Language, 36, 428–447.
20.
HatanoG.InagakiK. (1994). Young children’s naive theory of biology. Cognition, 50, 171–188.
21.
HerrmannP.WaxmanS. R.MedinD. L. (2010). Anthropocentricism is not the first step in children’s reasoning about the natural world. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107, 9979–9984.
ImaiM.GentnerD.UchidaN. (1994). Children’s theories of word meaning: The role of shape similarity in early acquisition. Cognitive Development, 9, 45–75.
24.
JaswalV. K.MarkmanE. M. (2007). Looks aren’t everything: 24-month-olds’ willingness to accept unexpected labels. Journal of Cognition and Development, 8, 93–111.
25.
JonesS. S.SmithL. B. (2002). How children know the relevant properties for generalizing object names. Developmental Science, 5, 219–232.
26.
JonesS. S.SmithL. B.LandauB. (1991). Object properties and knowledge in early lexical learning. Child Development, 62, 499–516.
27.
KeilF. C. (1992). Concepts, kinds, and cognitive development. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
28.
Kemler NelsonD. G.EganL. C.HoltM. B. (2004). When children ask, ‘What is it?’ what do they want to know about artifacts?Psychological Science, 15, 384–389.
29.
Kemler NelsonD. G.FrankenfieldA.MorrisC.BlairE. (2000). Young children’s use of functional information to categorize artifacts: Three factors that matter. Cognition, 77, 133–168.
30.
Kemler NelsonD. G.RussellR.DukeN.JonesK. (2000). Two-year-olds will name artifacts by their functions. Child Development, 71, 1271–1288.
31.
LandauB.SmithL. B.JonesS. S. (1988). The importance of shape in early lexical learning. Cognitive Development, 3, 299–321.
32.
LandauB.SmithL. B.JonesS. S. (1992). Syntactic context and the shape bias in children’s and adults’ lexical learning. Journal of Memory and Language, 31, 807–825.
33.
MarkmanE. M.WachtelG. F. (1988). Children’s use of mutual exclusivity to constrain the meanings of words. Cognitive Psychology, 20, 121–157.
34.
MerrimanW. E. (1999a). Competition, attention, and young children’s lexical processing. In MacWhinneyB. (Ed.), The emergence of language. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
35.
MerrimanW. E. (1999b). CALLED: A model of early word learning. In VastaR. (Ed.), Annals of child development (Vol. 13). London, England: Jessica Kingsley.
36.
MerrimanW. E.BowmanL. (1989). The mutual exclusivity bias in children’s word learning. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 54, 1–132.
37.
MerrimanW. E.SchusterJ. M.HagerL. (1991). Are names ever mapped onto preexisting categories?Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 120, 288–300.
38.
MervisC. B. (1987). Child-basic object categories and early lexical development. In NeisserU. (Ed.), Concepts and conceptual development: Ecological and intellectual factors in categorization (pp. 201–233). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
39.
QuineW. V. O. (1960). Word and object. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
40.
RhodesM.GelmanS. A. (2009). Five-year-olds’ beliefs about the discreteness of category boundaries for animals and artifacts. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 16, 920–924.
41.
RigneyJ. C.CallananM. A. (2011). Patterns in parent-child conversations about animals at a marine science center. Cognitive Development, 26, 155–171.
42.
RosengrenK. S.GelmanS. A.KalishC. W.McCormickM. (1991). As time goes by: Children’s early understanding of growth in animals. Child Development, 62, 1302–1320.
43.
SiegelD. R.CallananM. A. (2007). Artifacts as conventional objects. Journal of Cognition and Development, 8, 183–203.
44.
SmithL. B.ColungaE.YoshidaH. (2010). Knowledge as process: Contextually cued attention and early word learning. Cognitive Science, 34, 1287–1314.
45.
SmithL. B.JonesS. S.LandauB. (1992). Count nouns, adjectives, and perceptual properties in children’s novel word interpretations. Developmental Psychology, 28, 273–286.
46.
TruxawD.KrasnowM. M.WoodsC.GermanT. P. (2006). Conditions under which function information attenuates name extension via shape. Psychological Science, 17, 367–371.
47.
XuF.TenenbaumJ. B. (2007). Word learning as Bayesian inference. Psychological Review, 114, 245–272.
48.
YoshidaH.SmithL. B. (2001). Early noun lexicons in English and Japanese. Cognition, 82, 63–74.
