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Salient object parts and infants' acquisition of novel object words

Concordia University

Susan A. Graham

Concordia University

Andrea S. Riddle

Concordia University

In the present study, we tested the hypothesis that the early acquisition of object labels is facilitated by the presence of perceptually salient object parts. Twenty-two infants (mean age = 1;8.21 years) participated in four lexical training sessions during which they were introduced to two types of object words: words whose referents possessed one salient part (e.g., peacock) and words whose referents had no salient parts (e.g., pigeon) as rated by adult judges. Multiple-choice comprehension tests were administered at the end of each session to assess word learning. A generaliz ation task was also administered to examine the status of object parts in determining word extension. The results indicated that the words whose referents possessed a salient part were learned more easily than those whose referents did not possess a salient part. The magnitude of this effect was related to the size of children's vocabularies, but not to the age of the children. These findings support the hypothesis that salient object parts contribute to the acquisition of object labels in the early stages of lexical development.

First Language, Vol. 15, No. 45, 301-316 (1995)
DOI: 10.1177/014272379501504503


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