CHILD DEVELOPMENT CLASS: BSHS361 UNIVERSITY OF PHOENIX

Child Development Class: BSHS361 University of Phoenix

Child Development Class: BSHS361 University of Phoenix

Introduction

Young children learn word meanings very quickly. This often reported observation suggests that they use word learning assumptions or principles. Proposed assumptions include the whole object assumption, the taxonomic assumption, the mutual exclusivity assumption, all submitted by Akhtar, the ontological categories submitted by Soja et al. (1991), the shape bias submitted by Landau, and the principle of contrast submitted by Clark. Although these assumptions and principles certainly explained some of the important nature of early word learning, they seem to have a major difficulty: applying these assumptions and principles may not always lead to a correct solution.

Application of the mutual exclusivity assumption may prevent the acquisition of superordinate/subordinate words. A blind application of the shape bias assumption will block the acquisition of any substance words. Finally, application of the whole object assumption may prevent the acquisition of part names. Because children eventually acquire most of these 'unapplicable' words, they must be equipped with other abilities that control the application of these assumptions.(Landau,1988)

The present article focuses on the application and control of the whole object assumption. Markman and Wachtel (1988) showed that American 3- and 4-year-olds interpreted a novel name as a name of a whole object if an adult experimenter provided a part name (e.g. trachea) of an unfamiliar object (e.g. lung). In their experiment, the experimenter mentioned what the child was about to see by providing a label 'trachea', and placed the picture of a lung on the table. Then she asked the child, for example, 'Which one is the trachea? This whole thing (the experimenter circled the object (lung) with her index finger), or just this part (the experimenter pointed to the part (trachea)?' The children responded that the whole thing (lung) was the name of the referent. (Akhtar,1996)

Method

Participants

Twenty-seven 2-year-old Japanese children participated in the experiment. Data from three children were excluded because of their failure to pay attention (two of them were 24 months old). The sample consisted of 24 2-year-olds (13 girls and 11 boys) drawn from day preschools in Yokohama City, Japan. The mean age was 30 months and the range was 24-35 months.

Materials

There were three phases in the experiment, a name training phase and two test phases of an isolated part test and a transfer test. The stimuli consisted of two sets of unfamiliar objects. Each set consisted of one original and three choice items. The original object for one set was a u-shaped bolt with a nut. The choice items for test 1 (an isolated part task) were a nut (part choice) and a u-shaped bolt without a nut (whole choice). The choice items for test 2 (a transfer task) were an i-shaped bolt with a nut (part choice) and a u-shaped bolt without a nut (whole choice) (Fig. 1). The original object for the other set was a plate hanger with two springs. The choice items for an isolated part test were two springs (part ...