Abstract
Young children named and described uses of nine kinds of common tableware across four sets that differed in shape and color nested in shape. Using tableware from two sets, some children were trained on conventional names and specific uses of all kinds of the same shape but different colors (within-shape condition) or of all kinds of different shapes and colors (across-shape condition); children in the activation condition saw and talked about the kinds in all four sets. After within- and across-shape training, percentages of appropriate names and labels of uses increased by varying amounts from very low percentages of names given before training and sometimes higher, but still low, percentages of uses. The activation condition did not increase percentages of names, but did increase percentages of uses, but less than for within- and across-shape conditions. These increases and other findings imply that young children can and do abstract sensory invariants/criterial attributes of multidimensional stimuli.
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References
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Barbara Howley assisted in observation and recording, and in the coding of responses and their transformation to forms for optical scanning.
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Ngo, P., Goss, A.E. Young children’s knowledge of names and uses of common tableware. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 27, 127–130 (1989). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03329918
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03329918