Johanson Megan, Papafragou Anna
University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716, USA.
University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716, USA.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2016 Apr;144:130-51. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2015.11.010. Epub 2015 Dec 28.
Language has been assumed to influence categorization for both adults and children but the precise role and potency of linguistic labels in category formation remains open. Here we explore how linguistic labels help fit objects into categories when relevant perceptual information is either ambiguous or inconsistent with the labels. We also ask how the effects of labels compare to those of other types of information such as facts. We presented 4-year-old children and adults with tasks in which they had to categorize a perceptually ambiguous natural-kind stimulus with one of two equidistant standards (Exp. 1 and 2) or group an ambiguous natural-kind stimulus into a category with a perceptually dissimilar standard (Exp. 3). Participants had access to labels (e.g., "This one is a lorp/pim"), observable facts (e.g., "This one has a long/short beak"), or unobservable facts (e.g., "This one drinks water/milk") that grouped the ambiguous stimulus with one of the standards. Both children and adults followed label- and fact-driven category boundaries for perceptually ambiguous stimuli (Exp. 1 and 2), and continued to do so even when the labels or facts pointed to perceptually incongruent categories (Exp. 3). These findings suggest a strong causal role for both labels and facts in categorization and have implications about theories of how categorization develops in children.
人们一直认为语言会影响成人和儿童的分类，但语言标签在类别形成中的确切作用和效力仍不明确。在这里，我们探讨当相关的感知信息不明确或与标签不一致时，语言标签如何帮助将物体归入类别。我们还会询问标签的效果与其他类型的信息（如实情）相比如何。我们让4岁儿童和成年人完成一些任务，在这些任务中，他们必须将一个感知上模棱两可的自然类刺激与两个等距标准中的一个进行分类（实验1和2），或者将一个模棱两可的自然类刺激归入一个与感知上不同的标准的类别中（实验3）。参与者可以获得标签（例如，“这个是lorp/pim”）、可观察到的实情（例如，“这个有长/短喙”）或不可观察到的实情（例如，“这个喝水/牛奶”），这些信息将模棱两可的刺激与其中一个标准归为一组。儿童和成年人在感知上模棱两可的刺激方面都遵循标签和实情驱动的类别边界（实验1和2），即使标签或实情指向感知上不一致的类别，他们也会继续这样做（实验3）。这些发现表明标签和实情在分类中都具有强大的因果作用，并对儿童分类发展的理论具有启示意义。
