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An appearance-function shift in children's object naming

W E Merriman1, P D Scott, J Marazita

  • 1Department of Psychology, Kent State University, OH 44242.

Journal of Child Language
|February 1, 1993
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

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Children increasingly use an object's potential function over its appearance when naming items as they age. This developmental shift in object naming was observed in studies examining children's understanding of novel and deceptive objects.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Development
  • Developmental Psychology
  • Language Acquisition

Background:

  • Children's object naming is influenced by perceptual and functional properties.
  • Understanding potential function, an object's unrealized capability, is crucial for accurate naming.
  • The relationship between appearance, function, and naming in early development requires further investigation.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To examine the relative importance of appearance versus potential function in children's object naming.
  • To investigate how age affects the reliance on appearance and function in naming tasks.
  • To explore the connection between the appearance-function shift in naming and the understanding of the appearance-reality distinction.

Main Methods:

  • Study 1: Children (3;8, 4;8, 6;1 years) learned novel object names and then judged applicability based on appearance or potential function.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Study 1 also included deceptive objects to assess choices between familiar appearance and function names.
  • Study 2: Modified name training with equal emphasis on appearance and function, replicating Study 1 procedures.

    • Main Results:

    • The frequency of function-based responding significantly increased with age across both studies.
    • Children demonstrated a developmental shift towards prioritizing potential function in object naming.
    • No strong correlation was found between the appearance-function shift and the appearance-reality distinction.

    Conclusions:

    • Children's object naming development shows a progression from appearance-based to function-based categorization.
    • Potential function becomes a more salient cue than appearance for object naming with increasing age.
    • Understanding the appearance-reality distinction may develop independently of the shift towards function-based object naming.