University of Texas at Austin, Department of Psychology, 1 University Station A8000, Austin, TX 78712-0187, United States.
Cognition. 2012 Jan;122(1):74-9. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2011.08.011. Epub 2011 Sep 22.
The current study examines 3- and 5-year-olds' representation of the concept we label 'animal' and its two nested concepts -animal(contrastive) (including only non-human animals) and animal(inclusive) (including both humans and non-human animals). Building upon evidence that naming promotes object categorization, we introduced a novel noun for two distinct objects, and analyzed children's patterns of extension. In Experiment 1, children heard a novel noun in conjunction with two non-human animals (dog, bird). Here, both 3- and 5-year-olds readily accessed animal(contrastive) and extended the noun systematically to other (previously un-named) non-human animals. In Experiment 2, children heard a novel noun in conjunction with a human and non-human animal. Here, 5-year-olds (but not 3-year-olds) accessed animal(inclusive) and extended the noun systematically to humans and non-human animals. These results underscore the developmental challenge facing young children as they identify the scope of the fundamental biological term 'animal' and its corresponding, nested concept(s).
本研究考察了 3 岁和 5 岁儿童对我们称之为“动物”的概念及其两个嵌套概念的理解——动物（对比）（仅包括非人类动物）和动物（包含）（包括人类和非人类动物）。基于命名促进物体分类的证据，我们引入了一个新的名词来指代两个不同的物体，并分析了儿童扩展的模式。在实验 1 中，孩子们听到一个新名词与两个非人类动物（狗、鸟）一起出现。在这里，3 岁和 5 岁的儿童都很容易理解动物（对比），并系统地将名词扩展到其他（以前未命名的）非人类动物。在实验 2 中，孩子们听到一个新名词与一个人和一个非人类动物一起出现。在这里，只有 5 岁的孩子（而不是 3 岁的孩子）理解动物（包含），并系统地将名词扩展到人类和非人类动物。这些结果强调了幼儿在确定基本生物术语“动物”及其相应嵌套概念的范围时所面临的发展挑战。
