Young children are sensitive to how an object was created when deciding what to name it.
How do young children extend names for human-made artifacts, such as knife, toy, and painting? We addressed this issue by showing 3-year-olds, 5-year-olds, and adults a series of simple objects and asking them for each, 'What is this?' In one condition, the objects were described as purposefully created; in another, the objects were described as being created by accident. This manipulation had a significant effect on the participants' responses: even 3-year-olds were more likely to provide artifact names (e.g. 'a knife') when they believed the objects were intentionally created and material-based descriptions (e.g. 'plastic') when they believed the objects were accidentally created. This result supports a theory of artifact naming in which intuitions about intention play an important role.
Gelman
S A
SA
Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, 525 E. University Avenue, MI 48109-1109, Ann Arbor, USA. gelman@umich.edu
Bloom
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P
D000328:Adult; D001364:Awareness; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003210:Concept Formation; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007804:Language Development; D008297:Male; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D012660:Semantics; D014706:Verbal Learning