Argojournals: The Undergraduate Psychology Journal, Vol.1.1, Spring 2006
Effect of Word Type
Does Word Type Direct Children’s Attention to
Different Properties of Objects and Actions?
M. Elaine Heard
Trinity University
[email protected]
Upon hearing a word for the first time, children must decide what aspects of the scene are important to the meaning of a word, and use that
knowledge to extend the word to new examples. Two experiments examined how varying the use of nouns and verbs may guide children’s
attention to the perceptual and functional characteristics of objects. In both studies, novel objects and actions were introduced at the same time in
conjunction with one label whose category of speech varied by condition (Noun, Verb, No Word) and that could be interpreted as referring to
either the action or the object being presented. Children’s choice between a new item that was perceptually or functionally similar to the target in
a word extension task was used to measure their understanding that different types of words have different referents. Results from Experiment 1
(N = 60) suggested that while the task naturally drew children’s attention to function, children in the Noun condition extended the novel word to
similarly shaped objects. However, children in the Verb condition did not extend based on function. In Experiment 2, (N = 30) the targets and
the objects functionally similar to the targets were altered to increase their functional salience, such that they produced an interesting, concrete
change. This change altered children’s performance such that no significant difference in responding was found between the conditions.
Yesterday at snack time I told my two-year-old
nephew that we were eating an apple. I didn’t specify
that we were eating a Fuji, or that apples come in
different colors and sizes. I supposed that if he could
simply learn “apple”, we were doing fine for one day.
Today in the grocery store, he reached out and pulled a
Granny Smith from the bottom of the stack. As several
dozen apples came toppling to the floor, the rascal
smiled and murmured the word for yesterday’s snack,
“apple.” Though pleased that he had retained the
lesson, I couldn’t help thinking a lesson in rudimentary
physics would have been more worth my time.
The story highlights a couple of interesting points
about word-learning. First, children are amazingly
adept word-learners. Given limited exposure, children
are able to understand and remember words; so well,
that after slowly learning a few “first words” before 18
months go on to learn their next 30,000 words at a rate
of 10-20 new words per day (Jones & Smith, 1991).
More relevant to the current study, this anecdote
demonstrates the ability of children to appropriately
extend a single label to many new examples. Not only
was my nephew able to extend the label “apple” to
another specific apple that he had never seen before, he
also used the word “apple” in conjunction with a class
of apple that differed in obvious ways from the I one
initially labeled for him. I am confident that he also
could have identified McIntoshes, Golden Delicious,
and Braeburn as “apples” had we not fled from the
produce section as quickly as we did.
Essentially, my nephew’s ability to use the word
“apple” in a new way illustrates the general ability we
all share to categorize new objects we come in contact
with and then appropriately extend a label we already
know to these objects. Thus, categorization and naming
are linked; we use words to impose uniformity on
different, but related, patterns of information. One word
(such as apple) can refer to several similar objects, or to
an entire category of objects. Given the countless
members of any one category (picture hundreds of
apples rolling along the grocery floor), it is fortunate
that we can extend words to new examples even from a
young age. It would be an impossible chore for parents
to label each and every newly encountered object for
their children, and equally impossible for us to function
in this complicated world without the use of labels and
the categories they represent.
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Argojournals: The Undergraduate Psychology Journal, Vol.1.1, Spring 2006
Categories are inherently hierarchical, and basic
level categories organize information in the most
efficient manner, highlighting similarities between
objects within the same category while simultaneously
maximizing differences between objects inside and
outside of a category. Given the efficiency of the basiclevel grouping, and the relative ease with which objects
can be labeled (compared with actions or properties), it
should not surprise us to know that children’s early
vocabularies, especially in English, are dominated by
nouns, most of which refer to basic-level categories of
objects. Although we most often use categorization as a
way to organize and group objects, we must also
categorize events and extend new verbs on the basis of
some similarity. For example, a verb such as “ride”
refers to similar, but different, actions across varying
situations—in a car, on piggyback, on a horse.
Although it seems fairly obvious that the words we
use often refer to categories describing some type of
similarity between concepts, it is more difficult to make
generalizations about the types of similarities different
types of words highlight. Do we use certain categories
of speech to refer to objects with specific similarities?
Previous studies suggest that both young children and
adults extend new nouns to categories of objects that are
similarly shaped (e.g., Landau, Smith & Jones, 1988).
A more interesting question to us is whether children
make the same assumptions about extension for all
word types, or whether they realize that adjectives and
verbs should be extended in different ways (by property,
action/function).
Several studies have investigated early noun
learning, and the results from these studies, with few
exceptions, have indicated that children primarily use
shape when extending nouns. An early study conducted
by Landau et al. (1988) found that 2-year-olds, 3-yearolds, and adults all rely on shape as the natural criterion
for extending names, over other perceptual properties
such as size and texture. In this study, children and
adults were presented with novel objects that varied in
size, shape, and texture. A target object was labeled
with a novel noun, and then children were asked in a
forced-choice test to extend the label to an object that
matched the target. At test, children and adults accepted
same-shaped objects as new examples of the label, even
when these objects differed greatly on size and texture.
They did not readily extend the label to objects similar
to the target object in other ways. Numerous other
studies have bolstered evidence for this shape bias to
such an extent that its existence in noun learning has
Effect of Word Type
been generally accepted by most language researchers
(e.g., Baldwin, 1989; Smith, Jones, & Landau, 1992.)
In addition to investigating children’s choice in a
naming condition, Landau et al. (1988) also wondered
how children would categorize objects in the absence of
a label. As studies of early categorization might predict,
the children’s reliance on shape did not stem from a
general perceptual bias. Rather, children showed a
tendency to focus on shape exclusively in the naming
condition. In a classification condition in which
children were simply asked to identify objects that were
similar to the target object, they attended to size and
texture as much as they did to shape. The lack of a
general perceptual bias not only indicates that the
presence of a label directs children’s attention to
specific perceptual properties (or, that children learn to
attend to shape when hearing nouns by paying attention
to regularities in language), but also opens the
possibility that children hearing other types of words
(i.e. adjectives or verbs) may begin to form biases that
direct attention to other relevant information. A few
researchers have explored this possibility, studying how
different strategies may be used in the extension of
adjectives and verbs.
Mapping words to properties as opposed to objects
seems to be a more difficult task for the young child.
Nonetheless, by 21 months children understand that
adjectives refer to varying object-properties (Waxman
& Markow, 1998). Adjectives may be learned later, and
tend to be more difficult, because they initially depend
on children’s knowledge of basic-level categories. For
example, Waxman and Markow (1998) found that
infants could only extend a novel adjective to a test item
when the target and test objects were members of the
same basic-level object category.
Why would this be so? In order for children to
master the concept of adjectives and become efficient
communicators, they must also learn to extend
adjectives to objects outside the basic-level category
introduced in the initial learning environment. In a
subsequent study, Waxman and Klibanoff (2000)
explored what might be special about learning in most
basic-level categories, and in doing so offered an
explanation for how novel adjectives are eventually
extended appropriately to properties of objects from
diverse basic-level categories. They suggested that
when learning in a basic-level context, an opportunity
for simple comparison usually arises. Whereas children
assume nouns refer to entire objects, they can reliably
use one obvious property (shape) when extending
nouns. Adjectives, on the other hand, can refer to any
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number of properties, including but not limited to color,
texture, flatness, and transparency. Hence, in situations
in which objects vary in many ways (such as acrossbasic level categories), the child should have difficulty
identifying which property is being referenced.
Waxman
and
Klibanoff
(2000)
successfully
demonstrated that children can extend adjectives in any
situation, even across basic categories, as long as
objects vary primarily along a single dimension.
The research with respect to adjective learning
implies that additional, unimportant information
distracts children from information that is truly
significant to the meaning of a word and thereby
prevents them from extending words appropriately. The
difficulty children show in extending adjectives in the
presence of extraneous information predicts that verb
learning should also be difficult. With respect to
adjectives, researchers (and parents) can easily
manipulate the learning environment to minimize the
amount of irrelevant information. The context in which
actions occur is less easily controlled. Whereas nouns
refer to static objects, and adjectives apply to
unchanging properties, verbs refer to transient events.
Although children by the age of two seem to rely on
somewhat consistent strategies for nouns and adjectives,
the few verb extension studies suggest that young
children cannot successfully pick out the elements
within a scene relevant to the meaning of verbs.
In a series of experiments, Kersten and Smith
(2002) showed that 3 ½-4-year-old children attend as
strongly to the appearance of novel objects as to their
actions during verb-learning.
In two experiments,
Kersten and Smith (2002) exposed children and adults
to numerous learning events depicting a particularly
shaped object and its action. Though the learning
events differed in a number of superficial ways, each
time a participant heard either the noun or the verb, both
the shape of the object and its actions remained
constant. Thus, regardless of condition (noun/verb), the
label could be interpreted as referring to either the shape
of the agent or the action of the agent. At test, children
were shown a series of similar events and asked whether
the label could be extended to each event. Kersten and
Smith (2002) used four different types of test images to
assess children’s extension: an “object +match” event in
which the shape of the agent body and the path were
consistent with the accompanying label, a “no match”
event in which neither the word nor the action were
consistent with the accompanying label, an “object
match” event, and a “motion match” event.
Effect of Word Type
Congruent with previous studies examining nounextension, both children and adults were willing to
accept an event as an example of a noun as long as it
involved a similarly shaped object, and ignored the
motion of that object when making their decisions.
Unlike adults, however, children did not attend only to
the relevant information when learning verbs. Whereas
adults accepted any test event that matched on action,
regardless of the object involved, children were
reluctant to accept an event as an example of the verb if
either the object or its motion was changed. More
interestingly, children were as likely to extend the verb
label to an object match as they were to a motion match.
In a third study in which Kersten and Smith (2002)
included a familiar object condition, children were
better at focusing primarily on actions in the verb
condition. These experiments collectively suggest that
although children by the age of four can extend verbs to
actions, they can do so only in specific circumstances.
Just as the young child’s focus during verb learning
depends on the nature of the learning environment, it is
possible children may focus on object form less in some
circumstances than in others. Indeed, many researchers
have questioned the idea that children always focus on
object form when learning and extending nouns. One of
the greatest controversies concerns the relative
importance of perceptual information with respect to
function in situations where function is apparent or
important. The debate likely stems, in part, from
evidence citing the importance of functional
information in adult’s understanding of artifact
categories (Rosch, Mervis, Gray, & Boyes-Braem,
1976; Malt and Johnson, 1992). Evidence also exists
implying that functional information plays as least some
role in young children’s extension of nouns. For
example, in a study conducted by Kemler Nelson
(1995), one of two possible functions of a target object
was modeled for and practiced by 3-6 year old children.
Children were asked whether or not the target’s name
could be extended to a variety of test objects, some of
which had the same general shape as the target and
others that were shaped differently. In addition, half of
the test objects could be inferred to support the
demonstrated function, and the other half could be
inferred to support the alternate function of the target
object that had not been demonstrated. For all age
groups, children’s acceptance of novel objects as new
examples of the label depended on which function had
been demonstrated. Perceptual similarities alone could
not explain the pattern of results. .
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Other studies have indicated that even when young
children understand function, and recognize items that
share functional properties as “similar”, they still
primarily focus on shape in naming tasks (Merriman,
1993; Landau, Smith, & Jones, 1998). Landau, Smith,
and Jones (1998) found that young children generalize
names on the basis of shape even when functional
information is emphasized. In their study, 3-year-old,
5-year-old, and adults all heard a novel object labeled.
The experimenter explained and demonstrated the
function of the object to half of the participants, but
only named the object for the other half of participants.
All participants were asked to extend the label to new
objects, some of which could support the function of the
target object, and others that were shaped the same
could not support the target’s function. All age groups
generalized on the basis of name when no functional
information was given. However, when given functional
information, only adults extended on the basis of
function with novel objects. Even those children who
demonstrated an understanding of the function were not
affected by this knowledge when extending the label.
Although most of the available evidence suggests
that children focus on perceptual information even when
functional information is available when learning nouns,
neither of the test trials described above forced children
to choose between function and form in word extension.
Instead, children were asked about test objects
individually, and were able to extend the label to as
many objects, matching in form or function, that they
deemed appropriate. The present study pits form
directly against function in a forced-choice trial. In
addition, within one study, we examine how varying the
use of nouns and verbs may guide children’s attention to
the perceptual or functional characteristics of objects. A
No Word condition is included in the design to enhance
these comparisons and provide a baseline for
comparison between the noun and verb groups.
Experiment 1
The goal of Experiment 1 was to examine how
varying word type in a word extension task would direct
2-year-olds’ attention to the perceptual or functional
properties of objects. The chief purpose of the current
study was to investigate young children’s understanding
of verbs, because we were also interested in whether
children use different strategies for different word types
we included both Noun and No Word conditions to
allow us to more confidently interpret our findings. In
addition, several researchers have found evidence for a
“shape-bias” in noun learning, and to the extent that we
Effect of Word Type
replicate these findings we can confirm the validity of
our methods. Including a No Word condition provides
a baseline of how children respond without a given
label, and enhances the comparison between the noun
and verb groups.
Few researchers have explored verb learning, and
the research completed thus far has yielded complex
results.
While strategies for extending nouns to
similarly shaped objects and adjectives by property
appear to be relatively straightforward, children have
difficulty with verbs. Given the complexity of actions,
this difficulty is easy to understand. Some verbs refer to
a certain result (i.e. squish, exit), and others to a specific
manner of movement (i.e. press, run). Furthermore, the
agent often assumes special significance, such that the
meaning of a verb differs (at least superficially)
according to whom or what is performing the action (a
person skipping differs from a record skipping). These
examples demonstrate that the context is important to
the meaning of verbs, and offer some explanation for
why 3 and 4-year-olds pay attention to both the agent
and the action itself when learning new verbs (Kersten
& Smith, 2002). The present study aims to investigate
whether 2-1/2-year-olds will rely more on the function
of the object or its shape in a forced-choice test when
extending novel verbs. In addition, even if 2-1/2-yearolds are reluctant to adopt a specific strategy when
extending verbs, the present study allows us at least to
find out whether they are extending nouns and verbs
differently.
Previous research has indicated that showing
children several objects from a single category can
promote attention to “deeper” commonalities or
properties. For this reason, additional category objects
were included to promote a deeper appreciation of both
perceptual and functional object qualities and to allow
children to form 2 different categories based on
perceptual and functional similarities.
Our main goal was to determine whether children
understand that different types of words refer to
different aspects of a situation. To measure their
understanding, we introduced novel objects and actions
at the same time, used one label that could refer to
either the action or the object being presented, and
looked to see if changing the word-type of the label and
general sentence structure affected children’s attention
to the action or the object. We considered children’s
extension of the label to an object that was either
perceptually or functionally similar to the target as an
adequate measure of their understanding that different
word-types have different kinds of referents. We expect
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children in the Noun condition
perceptual match, children in the
extend to the functional match, and
Word condition to select between
functional matches at chance.
to extend to the
Verb condition to
children in the Nothe perceptual and
Method
Participants. Sixty 2-1/2-year-old children, 25
girls and 35 boys, with a mean age of 2;8 (range 2;42;10) were recruited from the greater San Antonio area
to participate. Most participants completed the study in
the Children’s Research Lab at Trinity University. Of
these children, all spoke English and had begun
producing utterances of two or more words at the time
of participation, as determined by the MacArthur
Communicative Development Inventory filled out by
the parent on the day of the study. The remaining
participants were recruited through several daycares
located near Trinity University. Of these participants,
parents signed consent forms to allow participation, but
were not asked to complete the MacArthur Inventory.
Parents and children received a small gift for
participating, and parents received a results letter in the
mail explaining the general goals and findings of the
study at its completion.
An additional 36 participants were recruited and
participated in the study but their data were excluded
from the analysis. Of these children, 13 were extremely
distracted or did not complete all four trials of the study,
3 failed to pass a preliminary practice trial, 1 spoke only
Spanish, and 17 were excluded due to experimenter
errors. Thirteen children were omitted from the Noun
condition, 9 from the Verb condition, and 14 from the
No Word Condition.
Stimuli. Four object sets designed for a previous
study examining related issues were adopted for use in
this study. In that earlier study, each set initially
contained three objects: a target object designed to
perform a specific action, a test object that shared the
same shape as the target (perceptual match), and a test
object designed to support the same action as the target
(functional match). For this study, we used the same
target and test objects but created an additional four
category objects for each set. Two of the new objects
for each set shared the target’s shape but did not support
its function, and two of the new objects supported the
target’s function but were shaped differently.
Design. Participants were randomly assigned to
one of three conditions (Noun, Verb, No Word).
Children were shown the same objects with the same
functions in all three conditions; only the script and
Effect of Word Type
word type of the label varied according to condition.
Each child chose between a perceptual and functional
match at test in four trials; choice at test (perceptual or
functional match) was the dependent variable. The
presentation of trials was random, whereas the
presentation of the perceptual or functional category
sets was counterbalanced within trials and across
subjects.
Procedure.
Orientation. Families were greeted in the Trinity
parking lot and escorted to the Children’s Research Lab.
One experimenter spent a few minutes in casual play
with the child while the other experimenter reviewed
the consent form with the parent. Both experimenters
played with the child for several minutes before
beginning the study to help the child acclimate both to
the experimenters and to the lab environment. The
parent was invited to remain in the room during the
study, but asked not to assist the child at test or repeat
any of the instructions given the child by the
experimenter during the procedure. As part of the
consent form, parents were asked to allow their children
to be videotaped for coding purposes. We also
informed parents that we sometimes wished to use
selected portions of the video outside of the lab, such as
in classes and at conferences. Parents’ consent to allow
outside viewing of their children’s video was optional;
this consent did not affect whether the child could
participate in the study.
Practice Trial. Before beginning any of the trials,
the experimenter demonstrated four familiar actions
with four familiar objects. During demonstration with
two of the four objects, the experimenter labeled the
objects herself. For example, while simulating flight
with a toy helicopter, the experimenter said, “Look, it’s
a helicopter.” During demonstration with the other two
objects, the experimenter labeled the objects’ actions.
For example, while playing with a motorcycle the
experimenter said “Vroom, vroom.” After having
demonstrated specific actions with each of the toys, the
experimenter laid the toys before the child and asked
both a noun question and a verb question. For example,
a noun question might be “Where’s the pig? Can you
hand it to me?” A verb question might be “Which one
was laughing? Can you hand it to me?” Following the
child’s first response, the experimenter asked the second
question. The order in which the questions were asked
(noun or verb first) was counterbalanced across
children. The purpose of the practice trial was to give
children experience in handing various objects to the
experimenter. We also used the trial to determine a
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child’s ability to follow directions in a simple task. The
data of children who answered both the noun question
and verb question incorrectly in the Warm-up was
excluded from the final analysis, (n = 3).
Familiarization.
The experimenter selected
randomly one of the boxes containing the object sets.
The experimenter first presented the target with a
specific action (e.g., squishing the ball) while producing
a noun (e.g., “Look. It’s a gep. See, it’s a gep.”), verb
(“Look. I’m gepping it. See, I’m gepping it.”), or
general language phrases (“See? Look. Wow!”). The
experimenter repeated the appropriate phrase twice
before encouraging the child to handle the target, “Can
you play with the gep?” The experimenter then
demonstrated the target again while producing the noun,
verb, or general language phrase.
Category Objects. After the presentation of the
target object, the experimenter introduced the child to
two category objects that shared the same shape and two
category objects that shared the same function as the
target. Each of the two perceptual category objects and
each of the two functional category objects were
presented
as
a
set.
Set
presentation
(perceptual/functional sets) was counterbalanced within
trials and between subjects. The experimenter brought
out both objects of each set simultaneously and both
objects remained in view while the experimenter
demonstrated the action with the alternate object. For
example, the experimenter brought out both perceptual
category objects at the same time, demonstrated a
specific action with one, set it to the side in full view,
and then demonstrated the same action with the other
perceptual category object. In allowing the child to
view similar items at the same time, we hoped to
encourage the child to form categories based on
different types of similarity (perceptual or functional
similarity.) The experimenter demonstrated an action
with each object twice, accompanied by a general
language phrase designed to draw the child’s attention
to the object’s perceptual quality in the Noun condition
(See? Look at this one. Wow.), to the functional
property in the Verb condition (See? Look what I can
do with this. Wow.), and to no specific quality in the No
Word condition (See? Look. Wow). Children were
discouraged from exploring the category objects;
however, in cases where children persisted, the
experimenter ensured that the child explored one item
of each set (one perceptual and one functional
comparison item).
Exploration of Test Objects. After the presentation
of the comparison objects, the experimenter brought out
Effect of Word Type
the test objects, one perceptual and one functional
match. At this point, the experimenter did not ask the
child any questions, but simply encouraged the child to
explore the test objects, “See? Look at these. What can
you do with these?” If the child played exclusively
with one object, the experimenter further encouraged
the child to explore the neglected object. Touching and
playing with the test objects was especially important in
this experiment, because unlike in previous studies, the
experimenter never demonstrated actions with the test
objects. This play time was the only opportunity for
children to discover what the test items could and could
not do. In addition, Landau, Smith and Jones (1998)
found that 2-year-olds were unable to judge whether
objects could carry out their functions simply by
looking at them. By encouraging children to touch and
manipulate the objects for themselves, we hoped they
would discover the physical qualities important to the
objects’ functional capacities.
Test. The experimenter removed the test items
from view and then brought out the original target
object. Once again, the experimenter demonstrated the
target action while producing a noun (“Look. It’s a gep.
See, it’s a gep.”), verb (“Look. I’m gepping it. See,
I’m gepping it.”), or general language phrase (“See?
Look. Wow!”). The experimenter put away the target
object, and retrieved each of the test objects. In a
forced-choice trial, the experimenter asked the child to
extend the label to only one of the test objects, asking
“Where’s the gep? Can you hand me the gep?” in the
Noun condition or “Which one geps? Which one can
gep?” in the Verb condition. In the No Word condition,
the child was asked to simply hand the experimenter
one of the objects, “Give me one. Which one?”
Coding. The behavior of each participant was
scored at least twice. First, each session was scored
live. Experimenters worked in pairs. One recorded the
child’s play with the target, exploration of test objects,
and choice at test while the other conducted the
experiment. Later, a third colleague watched the videotaped experiment and independently coded the child’s
behavior a second time. Any discrepancies were
resolved by a third-coder.
Results
Children’s choice at test was our dependent
measure. As children were given only two choices
(perceptual/functional) at test, the total number of
perceptual choices was directly related to the total
number of functional choices made by each child.
Therefore, running analyses with respect to both choices
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would have been redundant. We chose to use the
number of perceptual choices at test as the dependent
measure. The mean number of perceptual choices made
in the Noun, Verb, and No-Word conditions were 2.55,
1.80, and 1.55, respectively, and are depicted in Figure
1.
3
*
2.5
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
Noun
Verb
No Word
Condition
Figure 1 Depiction of the mean number of perceptual choices
by condition, Experiment 1. Significant differences exist
between the mean number of perceptual responses in the Noun
condition and the Verb condition, and between the Noun
condition and the No word condition.
A one-way ANOVA computed with Word (Noun,
Verb, No Word) as a between subjects factor, and the
number of perceptual choices as the dependent measure,
revealed a significant main effect of Word, (F,(2,57) =
6.85, p<.01). Post-hoc independent samples t-tests with
Bonferroni corrections showed that children in the Noun
condition made more perceptual choices than did
children in the Verb and No Word conditions (t(38) =
2.67, p<.02; t(38)= 3.57, p <.01, respectively.) One
sample t-tests showed that the number of choices was
significantly greater than chance in the Noun condition
(t(19)=2.77, p <.02) and significantly less than chance
in the No Word condition, (t(19) = -2.27, p <.05).
These analyses help show how the children as a
group responded differently depending on the word type
they heard, but we were also wondered whether
individual children showed consistency across the four
trials. First, we examined the data with respect to
general consistency; children were coded simply as
being consistent (at least 3 out of 4 consistent responses
across trials) or inconsistent (2 perceptual and 2
functional responses). In the Noun condition, 12/20
children were consistent; whereas in the Verb and No
Word conditions, 13/20 in each condition were
consistent.
As would be expected given this
breakdown, chi square analyses found no significant
Effect of Word Type
difference in simple consistency patterns between the
three conditions.
To more closely examine patterns of consistency,
we gave consistent children more specific codes
indicating perceptual or functional consistency.
Children classified as perceptually consistent chose the
perceptual match at test on at least 3 of the 4 trials.
Likewise, children classified as functionally consistent
were those that chose the functional match at test on at
least of the 3 of the 4 trials. The number of consistent
responses in each condition is available for closer
inspection in Table 3.
Chi square analyses confirmed significant
differences in the patterning of perceptual consistency
across the three conditions, χ2 (2, N = 30) = 6.19, p<.05.
Chi square analyses confirmed significant differences in
the patterning of functional consistency across the three
conditions as well, χ2(2, N = 30) = 7.80, p<.05. Results
from the chi square analyses cumulatively confirm
significant differences in the patterning of consistent
responses across the three conditions, when taking into
account specific strategies adopted. Notice that most of
the children who were consistent in the Noun condition
were perceptually consistent, whereas most of the
persistent children in the No Word condition were
functionally consistent. Children in the Verb condition
appear to be more closely split in terms of strategy.
Experiment 2
Experiment 1 found evidence to support the shape
bias, and weak evidence to support the idea that
children are beginning to pay attention to action in the
Verb condition. The design of Experiment 2 was
identical to that of Experiment 1, except that we
increased the salience of the functional information by
ensuring that each of the targets, their functional
category objects and functional test match objects,
produced a noticeable change. 1
Suggestions we received at an international
conference where we presented results from Experiment
1 influenced the decision to alter our stimuli. A lecture
attended at this conference also inspired critical thought
about the meaning of “function.” If it is said that an
object has a function, does it not naturally follow that
this object has a natural purpose, or that it can at least be
used to accomplish some goal? Although it is true that
the target object had to have certain properties to
1
We presented results from Experiment 1 at the International
Conference of Infant Studies in May, 2004. Several researchers made
this suggestion; we decided to take their advice.
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Method
Participants. Thirty 2-1/2-year-old children, 17
girls and 13 boys, with a mean age of 2;8 (range 2;42;10) participated in this experiment. Children were
recruited in the same manner as in Experiment 1, and
none of the children in Experiment 2 had participated in
Experiment 1.
An additional 42 participants were recruited and
participated in the study, but their data were excluded
from analysis. Of these children, 17 were very
distracted or did not complete all four trials of the study,
two scored “0 correct” on a preliminary practice trial,
two did not speak English, and 22 were omitted due to
experimental errors. Thirteen children were omitted
from the Noun condition, 18 from the Verb condition,
and 11 from the No Word condition.
Stimuli. Three of the four stimuli sets used in
Experiment 1 were used in Experiment 2. Two of these
sets were modified, and one was left the same. The
functional items (target, functional category objects, and
functional test match) of the two sets were changed to
increase their functional salience. We added magnets to
the functional objects within the one set so that these
objects now picked up metal discs when squished. With
respect to the second set, a small wooden clipboard with
attached nylon fibers was added so that instead of only
brushing the floor, the functional items now could be
used to straighten nylon fibers. The third set already
had a salient function (making noise), so this set was not
changed. A detailed description of how these sets were
altered from Experiment 1 is available in Table 4.
The items used in the fourth set were completely
replaced. The new target was a cylinder consisting of
two connected pieces that, when twisted, could be
aligned to create a fun image. The corresponding
functional category objects and test object were shaped
differently than the target, but could also be twisted to
create images. The perceptual category objects and test
object were cylindrical like the target, but made of a
single piece that could not be twisted. For a description
of all the stimuli in this set, see Table 5.
Design and Procedure. The design and procedure
were identical to that of Experiment 1. At test, only the
perceptual and functional test matches were placed
before the child; any additional items used to complete
the function (such as the metal disc in the Gep set and
the clipboard in the Dax set) stayed in the box. These
items were only available to the child during the
Exploration of Test objects. Making these items
available at test would have introduced the possibility of
extension to the third item instead of to the perceptual
or functional match. We did not wish to complicate our
results, so we kept the number of choices available at
test consistent across trials.
Results
The results of Experiment 2 are depicted in Figure 2.
2
Mean number of perceptual choices
complete the demonstrated target actions in Experiment
1 (ie, an object must be soft if it is to be squished), it is
doubtful that these object properties would in normal
circumstances be identified as the “functions” of these
objects. The demonstrated actions in most trials did not
convey intent. They produced no meaningful change;
they were, in a sense, inconsequential. We decided to
run a study in which the actions we demonstrated
actually conveyed the functions of the objects we used.
For practical reasons, we wished to keep the same
stimuli we had used in Experiment 1. We were able to
creatively alter three of the four sets to meet our needs;
the last set we completely replaced. We expected that
objects capable of producing an interesting, noticeable
change might better help children focus on functional
object characteristics, and associate the nonsense words
with the action associated with completing a concrete
function.
Effect of Word Type
1.5
1
0.5
0
Noun
Verb
No Word
Condition
Figure 2. Mean number of perceptual choices at test by
condition, Experiment 2. No significant differences found
between means.
As in Experiment 1, we used the number of perceptual
choices at test as the dependent measure. The mean
number of perceptual choices made in the Noun, Verb,
and No Word conditions were 1.90, 1.60, and 1.40,
respectively (Figure 2). A one-way ANOVA computed
with Word (Noun, Verb, No Word) as a between
subjects factor, and the number of perceptual choices as
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the dependent measure showed no significant main
effect of word type, F(2,27) < 1.
Independent samples t-tests computed for each
condition showed that children failed to answer
differently from chance in all three conditions; although
the difference between the mean and chance level (2)
approached significance in the No Word condition, t(9)
= -2.25, p = .051.
Consistency was coded in the same way as it had
been in Experiment 1. First, we examined the data with
respect to general consistency. In all three conditions,
7/10 children were simply consistent. We further
examined the results in terms of perceptual and
functional consistency; chi square analyses found no
significant differences in the patterning of consistent
responses across the three conditions. Individual
responses are depicted in Table 4.
It would have been interesting to compute an
ANOVA with Experiment as a between subjects factor
to examine how altering the functional objects changed
children’s patterns of response. However, before
beginning Experiment 2, we had completely replaced
one of the four stimuli sets. Any change in the
children’s patterning of response could have been due to
the functional salience of the test items. To solve this
problem, we could have excluded the data from the
replaced set, and only included in analysis the data
collected from the remaining three sets. We chose not
to pursue this solution because of the unequal number of
participants run in each study; at this time only 30
participants have been run in Experiment 2, whereas 60
were run in Experiment 1.
Discussion
The results of Experiments 1 indicate that even
children as young as 2-1/2- years old are beginning to
understand that nouns and verbs have different
referents. We hypothesized that children in the Noun
condition would choose the perceptual match, that
children in the Verb condition would choose the
functional match, and that children in the No Word
condition would select at chance. We found that
children in the Noun condition did indeed choose the
perceptual match at test significantly more often than
would be expected by chance. However, we did not
find the results we expected with respect to the Verb
and No Word conditions. Children chose at chance
level in the Verb condition. Even more surprisingly, in
the No Word condition children chose the functional
match more than expected.
Effect of Word Type
The difference in responses between the Noun and
Verb conditions implies that children at this age do have
different expectations about the meaning of various
word-types.
But, although we found a significant
difference between the number of perceptual choices
that children made in the Noun and Verb conditions,
this difference can be explained by the high proportion
of perceptual choices children made in the Noun
condition as opposed to a high proportion of functional
choices made in the Verb condition. In other words, the
results indicate that children appeared to understand that
nouns refer to similarly shaped objects, but did not have
a strong understanding that verbs refer to actions. The
scattered pattern of response in terms of consistency in
the Verb condition, when compared to the Noun and No
Word conditions, further highlights the trouble children
seem to be having when learning verbs.
In the No Word condition, children chose the
functional match at test more than we had expected.
The nature of our task, without the cue of specific word
type, drew children’s attention to the functional
properties of objects. This finding enhances our
interpretation of the children’s performance in the Noun
condition. Not only did children in the Noun condition
choose the perceptual choice at test significantly more
often than would be expected from chance; they had to
overcome a baseline that was significantly lower than
chance. They were able to focus on perceptual qualities
although the situation itself naturally directed their
attention elsewhere. Children’s behavior in the Noun
condition of Experiment 1 compliment previous studies
supporting the shape bias (e.g., Baldwin, 1989; Landau,
Smith & Jones, 1988; Smith, Jones, & Landau, 1992).
We had hoped that increasing the functional
salience of our stimuli in Experiment 2 would help
children focus on the functional qualities of the test
objects in the Verb condition.
For reasons
aforementioned, we could not directly compare the
results from each of the studies using statistical analysis.
Gathering from a casual inspection of the means, it
appears that changing the functional salience of the
objects did help children focus more on function in the
Verb condition, as expected. However, at the same
time, this shift in attention also seems to have also
affected children’s choices across the board, in the
Noun and No Word conditions as well as in the Verb
condition. The mean number of perceptual choices in
the Noun condition in Experiment 1 was 2.55; in
Experiment 2 it dropped to 1.90. The mean number of
perceptual choices made also dropped in the other two
conditions, but not as drastically (1.8 to 1.6 in the Verb
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condition, and 1.55 to 1.40 in the No Word condition).
The increased functional salience eliminated the
differences in responding between the conditions that
was found in the Experiment 1. Furthermore, children
failed to answer differently than would be expected
from chance in all three conditions.
Thus, contrary to what we expected, children in the
Noun condition appear to have been most influenced by
our change. This is puzzling given the results from most
other research on the subject.
Jones, Smith, and
Landau (1991) found that 3 and 5-year-old-children
extended nouns to similarly shaped objects more often
than to objects that supported the same function as a
target in a series of three experiments.
Even when
they defined objects in terms of their function (“Rifs are
made by a special company so they can do this
(demonstrate function,”) young children persisted in
extending names to similarly shaped objects. Although
we also found support consistent with the shape bias in
Experiment 1, we did not in Experiment 2 when we
increased the functional salience of the demonstrated
target actions. Given the fact that Jones, Smith, and
Landau (1991) emphasized function even more than we
did during the introduction of their objects, one might
naturally wonder why our results were so different.
One possibility is that our stimuli differed in some
important way from the stimuli used by Jones, Smith,
and Landau. In both experiments conducted by Jones
and colleagues (1991) using novel objects, the shapes of
the stimuli they chose to use were well-defined. It might
be that the more novel or unique the shape, the more
likely it is for a child to identify that shape as the key
feature important to the meaning of a new word. The
objects that Jones Smith and Landau (1991) used in the
first of their experiments were extremely novel. Thus,
even when Jones, Smith and Landau stressed function,
the shape still may have seemed more interesting or
more salient to the children participating in the
experiments. Though the objects they used in
Experiment 2 were less novel than those used in
Experiment 1, they still had well-defined, somewhat
unusual shapes not normally associated with a variety of
everyday objects.
The stimuli we used in our studies, on the other
hand, have less distinct shapes than ones used in other
similar studies. Given this difference, perhaps our
divergent results in Experiment 2 become less
perplexing. The shapes of the objects we used may
have been less interesting to children, such that when
the functional salience of the objects was increased,
children’s interest was successfully diverted away from
Effect of Word Type
perceptual properties, even in Noun condition. For
example, we used an everyday round Tupperware dish,
as our target in the “Koob” set. Not only had children
likely encountered very similar items in their own
kitchens, the shape itself is characteristic of many
objects we see everyday. (Children in the Noun
condition did indeed perform contrary to our hypothesis
in this set in both Experiments 1 and 2, see Tables 5, 6.)
Directly related to the idea that the novelty of the
shape of the stimuli may play a role in the interpretation
of words, is the idea that people may show reluctance in
accepting a new name for objects for which they already
have names. This idea, referred to as the Principle of
Mutual Exclusivity (Markman and Watchel, 1988), may
also help explain why many children failed to extend
names based on perceptual similarity in the Noun
condition. We noticed that with respect to some of our
stimuli, several children showed that they already had
words for the target items we introduced. For example,
several children called the “Dax” target a “brush”,
although we had altered what may be considered the
standard brush shape by adding a second handle. These
children obviously identified a brush as something with
bristles, rather than by the happenstance fact that
brushes usually have one handle. If they accepted the
new label as a word at all, they may have equated it
with the word “brush.” As a result, they may have
been more likely to generalize the name based on
familiar object parts than the novel target object as a
whole, especially when the functional capacity of the
bristles (to disentangle nylon thread, as in Experiment
2) was emphasized.
As it turns out, children
randomized to the Noun condition chose the perceptual
match 12/20 times in the Dax trial in Experiment 1, and
5/10 times in Experiment 2.
Whereas the use of novel stimuli may have
increased the likelihood that children would choose
perceptually in the noun condition, the use of novel
stimuli in the Verb condition might be detrimental to
verb learning. Kersten and Smith (2002) found that
children are better able to focus on the motion rather
than on the appearance of objects when familiar objects
are used. Given this idea, we might expect that our
objects sets that children likely identified as familiar
and that might have been problematic in the Noun
condition, might have facilitated verb-learning and
appropriate extension of the verb to the functional
match in the verb condition.
For example, we believe that the “Gep” target has
the most distinct shape when compared to the target
stimuli used for the other three trials. For this reason,
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we might expect children randomized to the Noun
condition to more closely behave at test according to
our hypothesis. On the other hand, we might expect
children randomized to the Verb condition to have more
difficulty focusing on the action and function
demonstrated with the novel “Gep” target, due to its
novelty, especially in Experiment 2. These expectations
are confirmed in Experiment 2; see Table 6.
As we did not design our study to examine how
specific differences in stimuli may be affecting
children’s choices at test; our conclusions concerning
the impact of these factors are tentative at best. The
stimulus sets varied along a number of dimensions, such
that it is impossible to determine the meaning of any
difference in response between sets.
The results from Experiments 1 and 2 dovetail with
results from previous research indicating that verb
learning is difficult for young children. Even when the
target actions were designed to demonstrate concrete
functions of objects, children had trouble extending
verbs to the functional match at test. The change in
responding in Experiment 2 implies that children are
vulnerable to any change in stimuli, and that additional
research is needed to determine what specific aspects of
stimuli primarily influence children’s extension of
nouns and verbs. In the future, we plan to more closely
design our stimuli with these issues in mind. As our
primary area of interest concerns children’s
understanding and extension of verbs, we are
considering including more familiar objects to better
assess whether 2-year-olds can extend verbs to actions
in easier circumstances.
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