title: An explanatory heuristic gives rise to the belief that words are well suited for their referents.
abstract: The mappings between the words of a language and their meanings are arbitrary. There is, for example, nothing inherently dog-like about the word dog. And yet, building on prior evidence (e.g., Brook, 1970; Piaget, 1967), the six studies reported here (N=1062) suggest that both children and (at least to some extent) adults see a special "fit" between objects and their names, as if names were particularly suitable or appropriate for the objects they denote. These studies also provide evidence for a novel proposal concerning the source of these nominal fit beliefs. Specifically, beliefs about nominal fit may be a byproduct of the heuristic processes that people use to make sense of the world more generally (Cimpian & Salomon, 2014a). In sum, the present studies provide new insights into how people conceive of language and demonstrate that these conceptions are rooted in the processes that underlie broader explanatory reasoning.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 603 E. Daniel St., Champaign, IL 61820, USA. Electronic address: ssuther2@illinois.edu.
authors.forename: Shelbie L
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Sutherland
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 603 E. Daniel St., Champaign, IL 61820, USA. Electronic address: acimpian@illinois.edu.
authors.forename: Andrei
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Cimpian
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003210:Concept Formation / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D000066506:Heuristics; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology; D008297:Male; D014825:Vocabulary; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Conceptual development; Explanation; Heuristics; Inherence heuristic; Language; Nominal fit