title: Developmental changes in semantic knowledge organization.
abstract: Semantic knowledge is a crucial aspect of higher cognition. Theoretical accounts of semantic knowledge posit that relations between concepts provide organizational structure that converts information known about individual entities into an interconnected network in which concepts can be linked by many types of relations (e.g., taxonomic, thematic). The goal of the current research was to address several methodological shortcomings of prior studies on the development of semantic organization, by using a variant of the spatial arrangement method (SpAM) to collect graded judgments of relatedness for a set of entities that can be cross-classified into either taxonomic or thematic groups. In Experiment 1, we used the cross-classify SpAM (CC-SpAM) to obtain graded relatedness judgments and derive a representation of developmental changes in the organization of semantic knowledge. In Experiment 2, we validated the findings of Experiment 1 by using a more traditional pairwise similarity judgment paradigm. Across both experiments, we found that an early recognition of links between entities that are both taxonomically and thematically related preceded an increasing recognition of links based on a single type of relation. The utility of CC-SpAM for evaluating theoretical accounts of semantic development is discussed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA. Electronic address: lunger@andrew.cmu.edu.
authors.forename: Layla
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Unger
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA.
authors.forename: Anna V
authors.initials: AV
authors.lastname: Fisher
authors.affiliation: Department of Statistics, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA.
authors.forename: Rebecca
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Nugent
authors.affiliation: Department of Statistics, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA.
authors.forename: Samuel L
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Ventura
authors.affiliation: Human-Computer Interaction Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA.
authors.forename: Christopher J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: MacLellan
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development / Q000502:physiology; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D003210:Concept Formation / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D012660:Semantics; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Cognitive development; Conceptual change; Conceptual knowledge; Knowledge organization; Semantic development; Semantic knowledge