Focusing on the relation: fewer exemplars facilitate children's initial verb learning and extension

Authors: Maguire, Mandy J.¹; Hirsh-Pasek, Kathy²; Golinkoff, Roberta Michnick³; Brandone, Amanda C.⁴

Source: Developmental Science, Volume 11, Number 4, July 2008 , pp. 628-634(7)

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Abstract:

One of the most prominent theories for why children struggle to learn verbs is that verb learning requires the abstraction of relations between an object and its action ( Gentner, 2003 ). Two hypotheses suggest how children extract relations to extend a novel verb: (1) seeing many different exemplars allows children to detect the invariant relation between actions in different contexts ( Gentner, 2003 ), and (2) repetition of fewer exemplars allows children to move beyond the entities involved to extract the relation ( Kersten & Smith, 2002 ). We tested - and 3-year-olds' ability to extend a novel verb after viewing the repetition of one novel actor compared to four different actors performing a novel action. Both ages were better at learning and extending a novel verb to a novel actor when shown only one actor rather than four different actors. These results indicate that during initial verb learning less information is more effective.

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2008.00707.x

Affiliations: 1: School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, University of Texas, USA 2: Department of Psychology, Temple University, USA 3: Department of Education, University of Delaware, USA 4: Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, USA

Publication date: 2008-07-01