Smith L B
Child Dev. 1984 Apr;55(2):363-80.
Preschoolers' (2-, 3-, and 4-year-olds) understanding of attributes and dimensions was examined in 3 experiments. Attribute knowledge is the knowledge that a particular attribute--for example, red--can be instantiated in a variety of distinct objects. Dimension knowledge is the knowledge that there are qualitatively distinct kinds of attributes; for example, red and blue are attributes of the same kind, a kind that is different from that of big. Preschoolers' understanding of attributes and dimensions was assessed by both a conceptual measure and a linguistic measure. A language-free follow-the-leader task served as the conceptual measure. In this task, all the children showed strong attribute knowledge. However, 2-year-olds did not appear to differentiate attributes into their dimensional kinds. The observed trend in the linguistic task was not isomorphic to that observed in the conceptual task. The acquisition of some attribute and dimension labels appears to follow closely the trend in conceptual development, whereas the acquisition of others (specifically, size-attribute labels) lags severely behind the attainment of the basic concepts. The results provide new information about the development of object comparison and the acquisition of dimensional terms.
在3项实验中，研究了学龄前儿童（2岁、3岁和4岁）对属性和维度的理解。属性知识是指特定属性（例如红色）可以在各种不同的物体中体现出来的知识。维度知识是指存在质的不同类型的属性的知识；例如，红色和蓝色是同一种属性，与大这种属性不同。通过概念测量和语言测量来评估学龄前儿童对属性和维度的理解。一项无语言的模仿任务用作概念测量。在这项任务中，所有儿童都表现出很强的属性知识。然而，2岁儿童似乎没有将属性区分为不同的维度类型。在语言任务中观察到的趋势与在概念任务中观察到的趋势并不一致。一些属性和维度标签的习得似乎紧密跟随概念发展的趋势，而其他一些（特别是大小属性标签）的习得则严重滞后于基本概念的掌握。研究结果为物体比较的发展和维度术语的习得提供了新的信息。
