Journal article
C. Hoyos, Ruxue Shao, D. Gentner
Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 2016
Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 2016
Semantic Scholar
DBLP
Cite
Cite
APA
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Hoyos, C., Shao, R., & Gentner, D. (2016). The paradox of relational development: Could language learning be (temporarily) harmful? Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society.
Chicago/Turabian
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Hoyos, C., Ruxue Shao, and D. Gentner. “The Paradox of Relational Development: Could Language Learning Be (Temporarily) Harmful?” Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (2016).
MLA
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Hoyos, C., et al. “The Paradox of Relational Development: Could Language Learning Be (Temporarily) Harmful?” Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 2016.
BibTeX Click to copy
@article{c2016a,
title = {The paradox of relational development: Could language learning be (temporarily) harmful?},
year = {2016},
journal = {Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society},
author = {Hoyos, C. and Shao, Ruxue and Gentner, D.}
}
Abstract
Recent studies report a striking decline in children’s ability to notice same-different relations around age 3 (Walker et al., 2015). We propose that such a decline results from an object focus related to children’s avid noun-learning. To test this, we examine children’s performance on a classic relational task – the relational match-to-sample task (RMTS). Prior work has shown that 4-year-olds can pass this task (Christie & Gentner, 2014). However, if nominal language induces an object focus, their performance should be disrupted by a noun-labeling pretask. In two experiments, 4-year-olds either labeled objects or actions in a naming pretask. Then they completed the RMTS task. Consistent with the noun-focus explanation, the object-naming group failed the RMTS task, whereas the action-naming group and a control group both succeeded. This suggests that nominal language can lead to an object focus, and that this could explain the temporary decline in children’s relational processing.
