Representational Inertia in Preschoolers’ Object Label Learning

Preschoolers’ object label generalization was hypothesized to be influenced by the representation that they form for an object before a label is introduced for it. The more detailed this representation, the less broadly the children should generalize the label to other objects. In the current experiments (thirty-two 3-year-olds, thirty-two 4-year-olds, and sixty-four college students), the level of detail of the representation of a novel object was manipulated by presenting participants with a search and recognition task involving objects that were either perceptually similar or dissimilar to the novel object. It was hypothesized that the tasks that involved perceptually similar objects would help children to form a more detailed representation of a target objects than if the tasks included perceptually dissimilar objects, leading to narrower label generalization. Four-year-olds showed the predicted pattern of label generalization. They generalized the label less broadly in the similar condition than in the dissimilar condition. However, the label generalization of 3-year-olds and college students was not influenced by condition. The representation young children form during early experience with specific objects may provide children with a useful tool when deciding which objects share the same name. Possible explanations for the differences between the age groups are discussed.