Is a picture worth a thousand words? Preference for auditory modality in young children.
Linguistic labels play an important role in young children's conceptual organization: When 2 entities share a label, people expect these entities to share many other properties. Two classes of explanations of the importance of labels seem plausible: a language-specific and a general auditory explanation. The general auditory explanation argues that the importance of labels stems from a privileged processing status of auditory input (as compared with visual input) for young children. This hypothesis was tested and supported in 4 experiments. When auditory and visual stimuli were presented separately, 4-year-olds were likely to process both kinds of stimuli, whereas when auditory and visual stimuli were presented simultaneously, 4-year-olds were more likely to process auditory stimuli than visual stimuli.
Sloutsky
Vladimir M
VM
Center for Cognitive Science, The Ohio State University, Columbus 43210, USA. Sloutsky.1@osu.edu
Napolitano
Amanda C
AC
D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D001307:Auditory Perception; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003210:Concept Formation; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D014796:Visual Perception