LEXICAL PRINCIPLES MAY UNDERLIE THE LEARNING OF VERBS

Citation
Rm. Golinkoff et al., LEXICAL PRINCIPLES MAY UNDERLIE THE LEARNING OF VERBS, Child development, 67(6), 1996, pp. 3101-3119
Citations number
60
Categorie Soggetti
Psychology, Educational","Psychology, Developmental
Journal title
ISSN journal
00093920
Volume
67
Issue
6
Year of publication
1996
Pages
3101 - 3119
Database
ISI
SICI code
0009-3920(1996)67:6<3101:LPMUTL>2.0.ZU;2-S
Abstract
To examine whether children (mean age 34 months) can fast map and exte nd novel action labels to actions for which they do not already have n ames, the comprehension of familiar and novel verbs was tested using c olored drawings of Sesame Street characters performing both familiar a nd unfamiliar actions. Children were asked to point to the character ' 'verbing,'' from among sets of 4 drawings. With familiar words and act ions, children made correct choices 97% of the time. With novel action words, children performed at levels mostly significantly above chance , selecting a previously unlabeled action or another token of a just-n ames action. In a second, control experiment children were asked to se lect an action from among the same sets of 4 drawings, but they were n ot given a novel action name. Here children mainly demonstrated perfor mance at levels not significantly different from chance, showing that the results from the main experiment were attributable to the presence of a word in the request. Results of these studies are interpreted as support for the availability of principles to ease verb acquisition.