Object name learning provides on-the-job training for attention

Smith, Linda B., Jones, Susan S., Landau, Barbara, Gershkoff-Stowe, Lisa and Samuelson, Larissa ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9141-3286 (2002) Object name learning provides on-the-job training for attention. Psychological Science, 13 (1). pp. 13-19. ISSN 0956-7976

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Abstract

By the age of 3, children easily learn to name new objects, extending new names for unfamiliar objects by similarity in shape. Two experiments tested the proposal that experience in learning object names tunes children's attention to the properties relevant for naming - in the present case, to the property of shape - and thus facilitates the learning of more object names. In Experiment 1, a 9-week longitudinal study, 17-month-old children who repeatedly played with and heard names for members of unfamiliar object categories well organized by shape formed the generalization that only objects with similar shapes have the same name. Trained children also showed a dramatic increase in acquisition of new object names outside of the laboratory during the course of the study. Experiment 2 replicated these findings and showed that they depended on children's learning both a coherent category structure and object names. Thus, children who learn specific names for specific things in categories with a common organizing property - in this case, shape - also learn to attend to just the right property - in this case, shape - for learning more object names.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: Funding Information: This research was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Development, HD28675. We thank Charlotte Wozniak for collecting the data, and Allison Howard, Ann Scheckler, Amber Cox, and Jeff Sing for coding them.
Uncontrolled Keywords: psychology(all) ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/3200
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Psychology
Related URLs:
Depositing User: LivePure Connector
Date Deposited: 25 Jan 2023 09:30
Last Modified: 25 Jan 2023 09:30
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/90789
DOI: 10.1111/1467-9280.00403

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