Young children's understanding of attributes and dimensions: a comparison of conceptual and linguistic measures

Preschoolers' (2-, 3-, and 4-year-olds) understanding of attributes and dimensions was examined in 3 experiments. Attribute knowledge is the knowledge that a particular attribute--for example, red--can be instantiated in a variety of distinct objects. Dimension knowledge is the knowledge that there are qualitatively distinct kinds of attributes; for example, red and blue are attributes of the same kind, a kind that is different from that of big. Preschoolers' understanding of attributes and dimensions was assessed by both a conceptual measure and a linguistic measure. A language-free follow-the-leader task served as the conceptual measure. In this task, all the children showed strong attribute knowledge. However, 2-year-olds did not appear to differentiate attributes into their dimensional kinds. The observed trend in the linguistic task was not isomorphic to that observed in the conceptual task. The acquisition of some attribute and dimension labels appears to follow closely the trend in conceptual development, whereas the acquisition of others (specifically, size-attribute labels) lags severely behind the attainment of the basic concepts. The results provide new information about the development of object comparison and the acquisition of dimensional terms.