ACQUISITION OF SUBORDINATE CATEGORIES BY 3-YEAR-OLDS - THE ROLES OF ATTRIBUTE SALIENCE, LINGUISTIC INPUT, AND CHILD CHARACTERISTICS

This study was concerned with factors that may affect young 3-year-old s' acquisition of subordinate categories. Three factors were considere d: (a) salience of the attribute or attributes which differentiate a s ubordinate category from other subordinates subsumed under the same ba sic level category, (b) presence or absence of linguistic input identi fying the relevant attribute, and (c) characteristics intrinsic to the child. Three child characteristics were measured: (a) size of general comprehension vocabulary, (b) size of subordinate category name vocab ulary, and (c) cognitive style. Results indicated that subordinate cat egories were easier to learn if their differentiating attribute was hi ghly salient and/or linguistic input identifying the relevant attribut e was provided. Correlational analyses pointed to a series of relation s between the child characteristics measured and the number of subordi nate categories acquired during the experiment, particularly for low s alience categories. Implications of the three factors for the acquisit ion of expertise on object domains are considered.