Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

What's in a shape? Children represent shape variability differently than adults when naming objects.

M Abecassis1, M D Sera, A Yonas

  • 1Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 55455, USA.

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
|February 27, 2001
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Proteoforms in Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells as Novel Rejection Biomarkers in Liver Transplant Recipients.

American journal of transplantation : official journal of the American Society of Transplantation and the American Society of Transplant Surgeons·2017
Same author

Revised diagnosis and severity criteria for sinusoidal obstruction syndrome/veno-occlusive disease in adult patients: a new classification from the European Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation.

Bone marrow transplantation·2016
Same author

Factors Associated With Major Adverse Cardiovascular Events After Liver Transplantation Among a National Sample.

American journal of transplantation : official journal of the American Society of Transplantation and the American Society of Transplant Surgeons·2016
Same author

Donor-Specific HLA Antibodies in Living Versus Deceased Donor Liver Transplant Recipients.

American journal of transplantation : official journal of the American Society of Transplantation and the American Society of Transplant Surgeons·2016
Same author

Sinusoidal obstruction syndrome/veno-occlusive disease: current situation and perspectives-a position statement from the European Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (EBMT).

Bone marrow transplantation·2015
Same author

Fee-for-value and wRVU-based physician productivity-an emerging paradox.

American journal of transplantation : official journal of the American Society of Transplantation and the American Society of Transplant Surgeons·2015
Same journal

Executive function and preschoolers' responses to severe transgressions: implications for early forgiveness.

Journal of experimental child psychology·2026
Same journal

Shared cognitive risk factors underlying rapid automatized naming deficits for the comorbidity of developmental dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: A computational parameter estimation via Bundesen's theory of visual attention.

Journal of experimental child psychology·2026
Same journal

Do young children understand the objectivity of reality?

Journal of experimental child psychology·2026
Same journal

Learning words by ear or by eye: effects of modality on lexical configuration and lexicalization.

Journal of experimental child psychology·2026
Same journal

Thinking outside the Box: Causal uncertainty motivates children's over-imitation.

Journal of experimental child psychology·2026
Same journal

Effects of parental intervention on children's English utterances and behavioral responses in video-based second language learning.

Journal of experimental child psychology·2026
See all related articles

Children and adults generalize words based on shape, but how they categorize shape properties differs. Adults adhere to learned shape boundaries, while young children do not, suggesting developmental differences in object generalization.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive psychology
  • Developmental psychology
  • Linguistics

Background:

  • Children and adults often generalize novel words to objects based on shared shape properties.
  • The specific shape dimensions influencing this generalization and developmental differences remain unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the categorical representation of shape dimensions during word generalization in children and adults.
  • To determine if adults and children utilize distinct shape boundaries when generalizing object names.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized multidimensional scaling to define perceptual similarity between object sets.
  • Conducted generalization tasks with children (2;8–4;5 years) and adults, learning novel object names.
  • Assessed generalization from memory and with the exemplar present, to objects and line drawings.

Related Experiment Videos

Main Results:

  • Adults demonstrated categorical generalization, favoring objects within established shape boundaries.
  • Children (2;8–4;5 years) showed less adherence to shape boundaries, generalizing names equally to objects within and across boundaries.
  • Generalization patterns were consistent across tasks (memory vs. presence of exemplar).

Conclusions:

  • Adults' word generalization relies on categorical shape representations, implying a developed understanding of shape boundaries.
  • Young children's generalization patterns suggest a less constrained use of shape properties, potentially reflecting ongoing development in conceptual categorization.
  • Findings highlight developmental shifts in how shape information is utilized for word learning and generalization.