Tracking conceptual enrichment across development: Contributions of embodied and linguistic systems

Concepts form the foundation of human cognition, and their development in children is shaped by evolving sensory-perceptual, social, cognitive, and linguistic experiences. While previous research has largely focused on the emergence of category knowledge, less is known about how conceptual representations become increasingly enriched after initial acquisition and how multiple representational systems contribute to this process. In this study, three groups of children (3-4 years: N = 67; 5-6 years: N = 79; 8-9 years: N = 50) and a group of adults (N = 40) from central Chinese mainland completed spatial arrangement tasks with familiar items from one artifact category (household items, HHIs) and one natural kind category (vegetables & fruits, VFs). Participants' mental representations were inferred from their arrangements and compared with predictions from embodied (sensorimotor, social-cognitive) and linguistic (Word2Vec) models. Results showed that children's conceptual organization became increasingly structured with age, with both embodied and linguistic systems contributing in overlapping but distinct ways. Category-specific patterns also emerged: VFs were strongly influenced by language and social-cognitive representations from early ages, whereas HHIs relied more on sensorimotor and social-cognitive systems, with alignment to adult-like organization emerging later. These findings indicate that conceptual enrichment involves the cumulative integration of multiple representational systems, and that developmental trajectories differ across conceptual categories, consistent with enrichment-based and dual coding perspectives.