title: Get Your Facts Right: Preschoolers Systematically Extend Both Object Names and Category-Relevant Facts.
abstract: There is an ongoing debate over the extent to which language development shares common processing mechanisms with other domains of learning. It is well-established that toddlers will systematically extend object labels to similarly shaped category exemplars (e.g., Markman and Hutchinson, 1984; Landau et al., 1988). However, previous research is inconclusive as to whether young children will similarly extend factual information about an object to other category members. We explicitly contrast facts varying in category relevance, and test for extension using two different tasks. Three- to four-year-olds (N = 61) were provided with one of three types of information about a single novel object: a category-relevant fact ('it's from a place called Modi'), a category-irrelevant fact ('my uncle gave it to me'), or an object label ('it's called a Modi'). At test, children provided with the object name or category-relevant fact were significantly more likely to display systematic category extension than children who learnt the category-irrelevant fact. Our findings contribute to a growing body of evidence that the mechanisms responsible for word learning may be domain-general in nature.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of LondonLondon, UK; School of Psychology, London Metropolitan UniversityLondon, UK.
authors.forename: Amanda K
authors.initials: AK
authors.lastname: Holland
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Hull Hull, UK.
authors.forename: Emily
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Mather
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Essex Colchester, UK.
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Simpson
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Hull Hull, UK.
authors.forename: Kevin J
authors.initials: KJ
authors.lastname: Riggs
keywords: categorization; cognitive development; domain general; extension; language development; word learning