The concept of animacy versus the object bias principle in 18-month-olds' word learning

Researchers have postulated word-learning biases to explain infants' effortless acquisition of object words. One such bias, the whole object assumption, helps infants acquire new words by narrowing the referent of a novel label to an entire object, rather than to actions, spatial relations or p...

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Main Author: Katerelos, Marina
Format: Others
Published: 2000
Online Access:http://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/1146/1/MQ54276.pdf
Katerelos, Marina <http://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/view/creators/Katerelos=3AMarina=3A=3A.html> (2000) The concept of animacy versus the object bias principle in 18-month-olds' word learning. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
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spelling ndltd-LACETR-oai-collectionscanada.gc.ca-QMG.11462013-10-22T03:41:31Z The concept of animacy versus the object bias principle in 18-month-olds' word learning Katerelos, Marina Researchers have postulated word-learning biases to explain infants' effortless acquisition of object words. One such bias, the whole object assumption, helps infants acquire new words by narrowing the referent of a novel label to an entire object, rather than to actions, spatial relations or parts of that object (Woodward & Markman, 1998). This object bias is surprising given that motion is particularly salient to young infants (Poulin-Dubois, 1999). The main objective of the present experiment was to determine whether the whole object assumption could be overridden when a novel label is presented in the context of a novel object displaying an animate or an inanimate motion. To address this issue, 18-month-old infants were presented with an animate object, engaged in an animate motion and an inanimate object engaged in an inanimate motion. A novel label was paired with each of these events. On test trials, infants were simultaneously presented with the event originally paired with the target label and the event paired with the other label. In the generalization trials, the original pairings presented in the training phase were switched, such that infants saw the animate object performing the inanimate motion and the inanimate object performing the animate motion. The results of the present study revealed that as a group, 18-month-old infants were unable to learn a label for an object in motion. The current results are discussed in the context of the recent word learning literature 2000 Thesis NonPeerReviewed application/pdf http://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/1146/1/MQ54276.pdf Katerelos, Marina <http://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/view/creators/Katerelos=3AMarina=3A=3A.html> (2000) The concept of animacy versus the object bias principle in 18-month-olds' word learning. Masters thesis, Concordia University. http://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/1146/
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format Others
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description Researchers have postulated word-learning biases to explain infants' effortless acquisition of object words. One such bias, the whole object assumption, helps infants acquire new words by narrowing the referent of a novel label to an entire object, rather than to actions, spatial relations or parts of that object (Woodward & Markman, 1998). This object bias is surprising given that motion is particularly salient to young infants (Poulin-Dubois, 1999). The main objective of the present experiment was to determine whether the whole object assumption could be overridden when a novel label is presented in the context of a novel object displaying an animate or an inanimate motion. To address this issue, 18-month-old infants were presented with an animate object, engaged in an animate motion and an inanimate object engaged in an inanimate motion. A novel label was paired with each of these events. On test trials, infants were simultaneously presented with the event originally paired with the target label and the event paired with the other label. In the generalization trials, the original pairings presented in the training phase were switched, such that infants saw the animate object performing the inanimate motion and the inanimate object performing the animate motion. The results of the present study revealed that as a group, 18-month-old infants were unable to learn a label for an object in motion. The current results are discussed in the context of the recent word learning literature
author Katerelos, Marina
spellingShingle Katerelos, Marina
The concept of animacy versus the object bias principle in 18-month-olds' word learning
author_facet Katerelos, Marina
author_sort Katerelos, Marina
title The concept of animacy versus the object bias principle in 18-month-olds' word learning
title_short The concept of animacy versus the object bias principle in 18-month-olds' word learning
title_full The concept of animacy versus the object bias principle in 18-month-olds' word learning
title_fullStr The concept of animacy versus the object bias principle in 18-month-olds' word learning
title_full_unstemmed The concept of animacy versus the object bias principle in 18-month-olds' word learning
title_sort concept of animacy versus the object bias principle in 18-month-olds' word learning
publishDate 2000
url http://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/1146/1/MQ54276.pdf
Katerelos, Marina <http://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/view/creators/Katerelos=3AMarina=3A=3A.html> (2000) The concept of animacy versus the object bias principle in 18-month-olds' word learning. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
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