Overextensions in comprehension and production revisited: preferential-looking in a study of dog, cat, and cow

This study investigated overextensions in comprehension and production using a new method (the preferential-looking paradigm) in which children (N = 99, mean age (younger) = 1;9, mean age (older) = 2;3) were asked to find the referent that matched the label they were given. Both Real Referent (in which there was a match) and Anomalous (in which there was no match) trials were included, as well as nonverbal control trials. During the Real Referent trials, all children significantly preferred the matching puppet. During the Anomalous trials, children showed no preference with two of the labels (dog and cat); however, they did show a preference when 'cow' was requested but not available. There were no differences based on prior overextension performance in production. It is concluded that overextensions in production are not diagnostic of children's underlying semantic representations, and that anomalous trials in comprehension provide useful information concerning young children's lexical entries.