Unger Layla, Fisher Anna V, Nugent Rebecca, Ventura Samuel L, MacLellan Christopher J
Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA.
Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2016 Jun;146:202-22. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2016.01.005. Epub 2016 Mar 12.
Semantic knowledge is a crucial aspect of higher cognition. Theoretical accounts of semantic knowledge posit that relations between concepts provide organizational structure that converts information known about individual entities into an interconnected network in which concepts can be linked by many types of relations (e.g., taxonomic, thematic). The goal of the current research was to address several methodological shortcomings of prior studies on the development of semantic organization, by using a variant of the spatial arrangement method (SpAM) to collect graded judgments of relatedness for a set of entities that can be cross-classified into either taxonomic or thematic groups. In Experiment 1, we used the cross-classify SpAM (CC-SpAM) to obtain graded relatedness judgments and derive a representation of developmental changes in the organization of semantic knowledge. In Experiment 2, we validated the findings of Experiment 1 by using a more traditional pairwise similarity judgment paradigm. Across both experiments, we found that an early recognition of links between entities that are both taxonomically and thematically related preceded an increasing recognition of links based on a single type of relation. The utility of CC-SpAM for evaluating theoretical accounts of semantic development is discussed.
语义知识是高级认知的一个关键方面。语义知识的理论解释认为，概念之间的关系提供了组织结构，这种结构将关于单个实体的已知信息转化为一个相互关联的网络，其中概念可以通过多种类型的关系（如分类学关系、主题关系）联系起来。当前研究的目的是通过使用空间排列方法（SpAM）的一种变体来收集一组可交叉分类为分类学或主题组的实体的分级相关性判断，以解决先前关于语义组织发展研究的几个方法学缺陷。在实验1中，我们使用交叉分类SpAM（CC-SpAM）来获得分级相关性判断，并得出语义知识组织发展变化的表征。在实验2中，我们通过使用更传统的成对相似性判断范式验证了实验1的结果。在这两个实验中，我们发现，对分类学和主题学上都相关的实体之间联系的早期识别先于基于单一关系类型的联系识别的增加。讨论了CC-SpAM在评估语义发展理论解释方面的效用。
