Verdine Brian N, Lucca Kelsey R, Golinkoff Roberta Michnick, Hirsh-Pasek Kathy, Newcombe Nora S
J Cogn Dev. 2016 Jan 1;17(1):142-161. doi: 10.1080/15248372.2015.1016610. Epub 2015 Mar 31.
How do toddlers learn the names of geometric forms? Past work suggests that preschoolers have fragmentary knowledge and that defining properties are not understood until well into elementary school. The current study investigates when children first begin to understand shape names and how they apply those labels to unusual instances. We tested 25- and 30-month-old children's ( = 30 each) understanding of names for shapes (commonly-encountered instances, e.g., equilateral triangles), shapes (more irregular instances, e.g., scalene triangles), and shapes (shapes within a larger picture, e.g., triangular slices of pizza). At 25 months, children know very few names, including those for canonical shapes. By 30 months, however, children have acquired more shape names, and are beginning to apply them to some of the less typical instances of the shapes. Possible mechanisms driving this initial development of shape knowledge and implications of that development for school readiness are explored.
幼儿是如何学习几何图形的名称的？过去的研究表明，学龄前儿童的知识是零散的，直到小学阶段才会理解定义性属性。当前的研究调查了儿童何时开始理解形状名称，以及他们如何将这些标签应用于不常见的实例。我们测试了25个月和30个月大的儿童（每组n = 30）对三种形状名称的理解：常见形状（例如等边三角形）、不规则形状（例如不等边三角形）和嵌套形状（例如披萨的三角形切片）。25个月大时，儿童知道的名称很少，包括标准形状的名称。然而，到30个月大时，儿童已经掌握了更多的形状名称，并开始将它们应用于一些不太典型的形状实例。本文探讨了推动形状知识初步发展的可能机制，以及这种发展对入学准备的影响。
