OBJECTS, CONCEPTS, WORDS: RELATIONS IN EARLY DEVELOPMENT (COGNITION, LEXICAL).
Item
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Title
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OBJECTS, CONCEPTS, WORDS: RELATIONS IN EARLY DEVELOPMENT (COGNITION, LEXICAL).
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Identifier
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AAI8515643
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identifier
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8515643
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Creator
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LUCARIELLO, JOAN.
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Contributor
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Katherine Nelson
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Date
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1985
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Psychology, Developmental
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Abstract
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This study addressed the question of developmental change in the lexical acquisition process. In the case of developmental differences, the aim was to specify the nature and cause of those differences.;Two groups of infants: Beginner (pre-vocabulary spurt) and Advanced (post-spurt/multi-word utterance) speakers, participated in a concept/word learning experiment. Learning involved mother-child dyads in the repeated enactment of an event incorporating the use of unfamiliar objects, representing the to-be-learned concepts/words. Receptive learning tests were administered. After learning, generalization tasks, testing word extension to concept exemplars and non-exemplars on the basis of perceptual, functional, and relational information about objects, were administered.;Results indicated that Advanced speakers learned more words than Beginner speakers. Additionally, Advanced speakers engaged in all forms of generalization behavior. Their words signified object concepts, in that conceptual knowledge of objects may be defined, in terms of intension, as specifying perceptual, functional, and relational knowledge about objects, and, in terms of extension, as specifying concept members. Beginner speakers evidenced extremely limited generalization. Their words basically referred only to the learning session objects. These generalization data indicate a developmental shift in word meaning, from referential, defined as the relation holding between a word and a specific, individual object, to denotational, defined as the relation holding between a word and the class of objects to which that word correctly applies.;The following variables did not account for these developmental differences: child age, object permanence development, maternal speech, and child action on objects. Analysis of another variable, the ability to form object concepts, revealed that both speaker groups formed object concepts, though Advanced speakers formed significantly more. However, important group differences were found in the relation between these concepts and the learning and generalization of words associated with them. Beginner speakers evidenced a lack of coordination between their conceptual and lexical systems, accounting for referential word meaning. Advanced speakers evidenced an interrelation between these systems, which affords denotational word meaning. This coordination in systems is also proposed to be responsible for better word and concept learning in Advanced speakers.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Psychology
