Susan S. Jones

The importance of shape in early lexical learning

Abstract We ask if certain dimensions of perceptual similarity are weighted more heavily than others in determining word extension. The specific dimensions examined were shape, size, and texture. In four experiments, subjects were asked either to extend a novel count noun to new instances or, in a nonword classification task, to put together objects that go together. The subjects were 2-year-olds, 3-year-olds, and adults. The results of all four experiments indicate that 2- and 3-year-olds and adults all weight shape more heavily than they do size or texture. This observed emphasis on shape, however, depends on the age of the subject and the task. First, there is a developmental trend. The shape bias increases in strength and generality from 2 to 3 years of age and more markedly from early childhood to adulthood. Second, in young children, the shape bias is much stronger in word extension than in nonword classification tasks. These results suggest that the development of the shape bias originates in language learning—it reflects a fact about language—and does not stem from general perceptual processes.

The place of perception in children's concepts ☆

Current research on childrens concepts and categories reflects a growing consensus that nonperceptual knowledge is central to concepts and determines category membership, whereas perceptual knowledge is peripheral in concepts and at best a rough guide to category membership. In this article, we assess the theoretical and empirical bases for this view. We examine experiments that seem to support the idea that concepts are principally nonperceptual, and find that the evidence is not compelling. We then turn to research on childrens lexical category formation, which highlights multidirectional interactions between perception, language, and other kinds of knowledge, in specific contexts. This evidence suggests that conceptual knowledge encompasses both perceptual and nonperceptual knowledge as equal and interacting partners. The evidence also suggests a view of concepts, not as mentally represented structures, but as assemblies of knowledge computed on-line in specific task contexts. A view of concepts as primarily nonperceptual is gaining ground. This view is influencing the kinds of experiments being done, and perhaps more importantly, the kinds of experiments not being done. In this article, we argue that there is no compelling basis either in theory or in data for the idea that concepts are principally, centrally, or most importantly nonperceptual. We begin by presenting a composite description of concept structure derived from the proposals of a number of researchers. Although this view may not be held in its precise form by any single theorist, we believe it accurately captures

Count Nouns, Adjectives, and Perceptual Properties in Children's Novel Word Interpretations

Three-year-old children were shown a novel exemplar toy and asked to judge test items that differed from the exemplar in shape, coloration, or material substance. In the count noun condition, children judged whether test items had the same novel name as the exemplar. In the adjective condition, children judged whether a test hern could be described by the same novel adjective as the exemplar. The results of 3 experiments indicated that children systematically attend to shape in interpreting novel count nouns, but their interpretation of adjectives is contextually determined. By the age of 6, children have acquired roughly 14,000 words (Templin, 1957). How do they acquire so many words so fast? If one views the childs acquisition of word-referent relations as an instance of unbiased hypothesis testing, then the rate of early word acquisition is difficult to explain. As Quine (1960) pointed out, the use of a word in the context of some scene provides evidence consistent with many hypotheses, only one of which will usually be correct. Chomsky (1986) similarly argued that if language learners were free to form any possible hypotheses about intended meaning from spoken language, then it would be unlikely that they would learn language as rapidly as they do because it would be unlikely that they would test the correct hypotheses early in language learning by happenstance alone. Chomsky argued that the rapid and error-free language learning that we observe in children requires that children be biased to entertain some hypotheses more than others. This idea has motivated much research on childrens early word learning. Developmentalists have shown that childrens novel word extensions are constrained or biased in certain directions. For example, young children appear biased to interpret count nouns as referring to object categories and not individual objects (Katz, Baker, & MacNamara, 1974) or thematic relations between objects (Markman & Hutchinson, 1984; Waxman & Kosowski, 1990). Children are biased to allow only one label for a single referent (mutual exclusivity, e.g., Markman, 1989; Markman & Wachtel, 1988), and they are biased to attend to shape when extending a novel count noun across novel objects (Landau, Smith, & Jones, 1988). The existence of these biases is sometimes cited as an explanation of rapid word growth; the idea is that word learning proceeds as fast as it does precisely because word learning biases exist.

Syntactic context and the shape bias in children's and adults' lexical learning

Abstract Previous research has shown that young children and adults share a shape bias in learning novel object count nouns: they generalize the label to objects sharing the same shape as a standard but differing greatly in size or texture (Landau, Smith, & Jones, 1988) . Three experiments tested the hypothesis that this shape bias is linked specifically to the acquisition of count nouns and therefore should be altered systematically by manipulating the form class of the novel word. Three-year-olds, five-year-olds, and adults were shown an object and taught a novel word in one of several different syntactic contexts and were asked to generalize the word to objects varying from the standard in shape, size, or texture. In the count noun context, “This is a dax,” all subjects showed the original shape bias even when the standard objects texture was made extremely salient. In the superordinate context, “This is a kind of dax,” 5-year-olds and adults showed a weaker shape bias, broadening their acceptance of shape changes. In the adjective context, “This is a daxy one” 5-year-olds and adults narrowed their acceptance of texture changes and broadened acceptance of shape changes, as did 5-year-olds in another adjective context, “This is a dax one.” Three-year-olds showed similar patterns of differentiation over the kind of and adjective contexts, but in a much weaker form. The results are discussed in terms of the representation of objects and their properties, the syntactic representation of these, and the joint interaction of syntax and perception in the early acquisition of words describing objects.

An Audience Effect on Smile Production in 10-Month-Old Infants

This report presents evidence that smile production in 10-month-old infants is affected by the presence or absence of an audience for the facial display. The audience effect does not appear to be mediated by emotion. The evidence indicates that the production of facial expressions is at least partly independent of emotion and partly dependent on a social-communicative context from a very early age.

Late talkers show no shape bias in a novel name extension task

By 2 1 /2 years of age, children typically show a shape bias in object naming ‐ that is, they extend object names mostly to new instances with the same shape. The acquisition of a shape bias is related to a marked increase in the rate of object name learning. This study asks whether, conversely, children who do not readily acquire new object names lack a shape bias. Twelve 2- to 3year-old ‘late talkers’ ‐ children whose total vocabularies rank below the 30th percentile for their age ‐ were compared with age-matched children with larger vocabularies in a novel object name extension task. The controls extended novel names across novel objects with the same shape. The late talkers showed no group perceptual bias, but many individuals extended novel names across objects with the same surface texture. The implications of the results both for the role of attentional biases in object name learning and for the etiology of some late talking are discussed.

Smile production in older infants : the importance of a social recipient for the facial signal

2 studies tested the hypothesis that infant smile production depends on the availability of a social recipient for the facial signal, as well as on appropriate internal events. We examined the effects of attentive and inattentive, familiar and unfamiliar social objects on smile production in 1 1/2-year-old infants outside of social interactions. Like adults, these infants directed a majority of the smiles produced during nonsocial activity to an attentive social object. Overall smiling frequency was much lower when the only potential recipient (the mother) was inattentive, but the effect did not appear to be mediated by negative emotion. Only smiles directed to mother were reduced: nonsocial smiling (at the toys) was not sensitive to mothers inattention, and when an attentive, friendly stranger was present, she was accepted as a substitute target for social smiles. We conclude that an open channel of social communication promotes the outward expression of internal affect in infants.

How children name objects with shoes

Abstract Many studies report a shape bias in childrens learning of object names. However, one previous study suggests that the shape bias is not the only perceptually based bias displayed by children learning count nouns. Specifically, children attended to texture as well as shape when extending a novel name to novel objects with eyes. Two experiments attempt to extend this finding, asking whether children will also attend to texture in the presence of another cue to animacy—shoes. In Experiment 1, 80 2- and 3-year-olds participated in either a Name generalization or Similarity judgment task. The novel objects were identical except that for half of the children the objects had shoes. In the Similarity condition, children made their judgments by overall similarity. In the Name condition, 2-year-olds extended the novel name by shape across objects both with and without shoes. In contrast, 3-year-olds generalized the novel name by shape when the objects had no shoes but by texture when the objects had shoes. Experiment 2 challenged this finding, using a forced choice procedure and objects that differed from the named exemplar more markedly in shape. Twenty 3-year-olds participated in a Name generalization task, half for objects with shoes, half for objects without shoes. Again, children attended reliably more to texture when the objects had shoes than when they had no shoes. The results are discussed in terms of the development of different perceptually based biases and the relation of such biases to a taxonomic bias in early word learning.

Symbolic Play Connects to Language through Visual Object Recognition.

Object substitutions in play (e.g. using a box as a car) are strongly linked to language learning and their absence is a diagnostic marker of language delay. Classic accounts posit a symbolic function that underlies both words and object substitutions. Here we show that object substitutions depend on developmental changes in visual object recognition: 18- to 30-month old children (n = 63) substitute objects in play after they have developed the adult-like ability to recognize common objects from sparse models of their geometric structure. These developmental changes in object recognition are a better predictor of object substitutions than language or age. A developmental pathway connecting visual object recognition, object name learning, and symbolic play is proposed in which object substitutions are like the canary in the coal mine: they are not causally related to language delay, but their absence is an easily detected signal of a problem in language acquisition.

Developmental change in young children's use of haptic information in a visual task: The role of hand movements

Preschoolers who explore objects haptically often fail to recognize those objects in subsequent visual tests. This suggests that children may represent qualitatively different information in vision and haptics and/or that childrens haptic perception may be poor. In this study, 72 children (2½-5 years of age) and 20 adults explored unfamiliar objects either haptically or visually and then chose a visual match from among three test objects, each matching the exemplar on one perceptual dimension. All age groups chose shape-based matches after visual exploration. Both 5-year-olds and adults also chose shape-based matches after haptic exploration, but younger children did not match consistently in this condition. Certain hand movements performed by children during haptic exploration reliably predicted shape-based matches but occurred at very low frequencies. Thus, younger childrens difficulties with haptic-to-visual information transfer appeared to stem from their failure to use their hands to obtain reliable haptic information about objects.