Noun Labels Research Articles

Seeing the Forest but Naming the Trees: An Object-Over-Place Bias in Learning Noun Labels.

Objects and places are foundational spatial domains represented in human symbolic expressions, like drawings, which show a prioritization of depicting small-scale object-shape information over the large-scale navigable place information in which objects are situated. Is there a similar object-over-place bias in language? Across six experiments, adults and 3- to 4-year-old children were asked either to extend a novel noun in a labeling phrase, to extend a novel noun in a prepositional phrase, or to simply match pictures. To dissociate specific object and place information from more general figure and ground information, participants either saw scenes with both place information (a room) and object information (a block in the room), or scenes with two kinds of object information that matched the figure-ground relations of the room and block by presenting an open container with a smaller block inside. While adults showed a specific object-over-place bias in both extending novel noun labels and matching, they did not show this bias in extending novel nouns following prepositions. Young children showed this bias in extending novel noun labels only. Spatial domains may thus confer specific and foundational biases for word learning that may change through development in a way that is similar to that of other word-learning biases about objects, like the shape bias. These results expand the symbolic scope of prior studies on object biases in drawing to object biases in language, and they expand the spatial domains of prior studies characterizing the language of objects and places.

The Grammar of Persuasion: A Meta-Analytic Review Disconfirming the Role of Nouns as Linguistic Cues of Subsequent Behavior

Recent discoveries suggest that nouns, as a word class, exhibit a greater capacity to model real-life behavior. In some previous studies participants prompted with a noun label rather than a semantically corresponding verb ( be a voter vs. vote) were more likely to vote. However, many attempts to replicate the original results have shown unsuccessful. To shed light on the effectiveness of subtle linguistic manipulations, we conducted a meta-analysis of 28 effect sizes ( N = 13,376), being an exact or conceptual replications of original studies. Although the average effect was significant ( g = 0.12), the concurrent diagnostics indicated a low trust in the replicability or stability of the effect. Based on that, we cannot conclude that the greater effectiveness of nouns as cues has been reliably demonstrated. We discuss theoretical prospects involving the verb-action link as well as the self-verification motives.

How children's media and teachers communicate exclusive and essentialist views of science and scientists.

Language that uses noun labels and generic descriptions to discuss people who do science (e.g., "Let's be scientists! Scientists discover new things") signals to children that "scientists" is a distinctive category. This identity-focused language promotes essentialist beliefs and leads to disengagement from science among young children in experimental contexts. The extent to which these cues shape the development of children's beliefs and behaviors in daily life, however, depends on (a) the availability of identity-focused language in children's environments and (b) the power of these cues to shape beliefs over time, even in the noisier, more variable contexts in which children are exposed to them. Documenting the availability of this language, linguistic coding of children's media (Study 1) and prekindergarten teachers' language from one science lesson (Study 2; n = 103; 98 female, one male, four unknown; 66% White, 8% African American, 6% Asian/Asian American, 3% mixed/biracial; 21% of the sample, of any race, identified as Hispanic/Latinx) confirmed that identity-focused language was the most common form of science language in these two samples. Further, children (Study 3; n = 83; Mage = 4.36 years; 43 female, 40 male; 64% White, 12% Asian/Asian American, 24% mixed/biracial; 36% of the sample, of any race, identified as Hispanic/Latinx) who were exposed to lower proportions of identity-focused language from their teachers developed increasingly inclusive science beliefs and greater science engagement over time. These findings suggest that linguistic input is an important mechanism through which exclusive beliefs about science are conveyed to children in daily life. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Visual and Haptic Perception of Affordances of Feelies

Most human-made objects are designed with a particular function and a particular user in mind. This means that most objects have well-defined affordances. An important question that remains unanswered concerns the perception of affordances of objects that were not created for a specific purpose. Investigating perception of affordances of such objects would provide insight into how affordances are perceived via exploratory activity. In addition, the comparison of perception of affordances of ambiguous objects across vision and haptics would offer a strong test of the lawfulness of information about affordances (i.e., the invariance of such information over transformation). The use of - objects created by Gibson (1962) with no obvious function and unlike any common object - could shed light on these processes. The present study showed that when observers reported potential uses for feelies, modality significantly influenced what kind of affordances were perceived. Specifically, visual exploration reulted in more noun labels (e.g. toy) and haptic exploration resulted in more verb labels (i.e. throw). These results suggested that overlapping, but distinct classes of action possibilities are readily perceivable using vision and haptics. Semantic network analyses revealed that visual exploration resulted in object-oriented responses focused on object identification, whereas haptic exploration resulted in action-oriented responses. Cluster analyses confirmed these results. Affordance labels produced in the visual condition were more consistent, used fewer descriptors, were less diverse, but were more novel than those in the haptic condition. How the unique shape of feelies influences affordance judgments is currently being investigated, but the multiple convex and concave surface regions could be critical in providing information about affordances, with different patterns of surface curvature specifying different affordances.

Visual and Haptic Perception of Affordances of Feelies.

Most objects have well-defined affordances. Investigating perception of affordances of objects that were not created for a specific purpose would provide insight into how affordances are perceived. In addition, comparison of perception of affordances for such objects across different exploratory modalities (visual vs. haptic) would offer a strong test of the lawfulness of information about affordances (i.e., the invariance of such information over transformation). Along these lines, "feelies"- objects created by Gibson with no obvious function and unlike any common object-could shed light on the processes underlying affordance perception. This study showed that when observers reported potential uses for feelies, modality significantly influenced what kind of affordances were perceived. Specifically, visual exploration resulted in more noun labels (e.g., "toy") than haptic exploration which resulted in more verb labels (i.e., "throw"). These results suggested that overlapping, but distinct classes of action possibilities are perceivable using vision and haptics. Semantic network analyses revealed that visual exploration resulted in object-oriented responses focused on object identification, whereas haptic exploration resulted in action-oriented responses. Cluster analyses confirmed these results. Affordance labels produced in the visual condition were more consistent, used fewer descriptors, were less diverse, but more novel than in the haptic condition.

Counterstereotyping can change children’s thinking about boys’ and girls’ toy preferences

Children think that peers prefer gender-stereotypical toys over gender-counterstereotypical toys. These beliefs can limit children’s exploration of gender-counterstereotypical behaviors and prevent the development of broad skills and interests. The current research tested interventions to combat gender-based stereotyping about toys among children aged 4 to 7 years (N = 373). Across four experiments featuring seven different intervention versions, participants saw videos where a teacher provided counterstereotypical messages about toy preferences (e.g., “boys like dolls,” “girls like trucks”). The phrasing of the messages (e.g., generic vs. demonstrative) and accompanying photographs (e.g., images of many children vs. one child) varied across experiments. In all intervention conditions, participants made more counterstereotypical (and fewer stereotypical) predictions about peers’ toy preferences after viewing intervention videos; differences in the phrasing of the intervention message (e.g., “boys like dolls” vs. “this kid likes dolls”) had little effect on participants’ predictions. In Experiment 4, an intervention condition containing generic phrasing and gender noun labels (e.g., “boys like dolls”) changed children’s selection of toys for peers. This research provides promise for counterstereotyping as an impactful and easily implementable intervention strategy.

Don’t call me delusional: Stigmatizing effects of noun labels on people with mental disorders.

Don’t call me delusional: Stigmatizing effects of noun labels on people with mental disorders.

Literate and preliterate children show different learning patterns in an artificial language learning task

Literacy affects many aspects of cognitive and linguistic processing. Among them, it increases the salience of words as units of linguistic processing. Here, we explored the impact of literacy acquisition on children’s learning of an artifical language. Recent accounts of L1–L2 differences relate adults’ greater difficulty with language learning to their smaller reliance on multiword units. In particular, multiword units are claimed to be beneficial for learning opaque grammatical relations like grammatical gender. Since literacy impacts the reliance on words as units of processing, we ask if and how acquiring literacy may change children’s language-learning results. We looked at children’s success in learning novel noun labels relative to their success in learning article-noun gender agreement, before and after learning to read. We found that preliterate first graders were better at learning agreement (larger units) than at learning nouns (smaller units), and that the difference between the two trial types significantly decreased after these children acquired literacy. In contrast, literate third graders were as good in both trial types. These findings suggest that literacy affects not only language processing, but also leads to important differences in language learning. They support the idea that some of children’s advantage in language learning comes from their previous knowledge and experience with language—and specifically, their lack of experience with written texts.

Essentialist beliefs, stigmatizing attitudes, and low empathy predict greater endorsement of noun labels applied to people with mental disorders

Maass, Suitner, and Merkel (2014) identified several negative consequences of the use of noun labels (e.g., John is a schizophrenic) applied to people with mental disorders. The current studies examined whether the endorsement of noun labels is associated with individual differences in essentialist beliefs, stigmatizing attitudes, and empathy, seeking to replicate and extend the findings of Howell and Woolgar (2013). In Study 1 (N=282), undergraduates with high scores on measures of essentialist thinking and stigmatizing attitudes were more likely to endorse noun labels. In Study 2 (N=258), undergraduates with low empathy scores and high stigmatizing attitude scores were more likely to endorse noun labels. These findings are discussed with respect to additional implications of noun labels applied to those with mental disorders, such as perceived treatability.

Constraints on the Acquisition of Social Category Concepts

Determining which dimensions of social classification are culturally significant is a developmental challenge. Some suggest this is accomplished by differentially privileging intrinsic visual cues over nonintrinsic cues (Atran, 1990; Gil-White, 2001), whereas others point to the role of noun labels as more general promoters of kind-based reasoning (Bigler & Liben, 2007; Gelman, 2003). A novel groups procedure was employed to examine the independent effects of noun labels and visual cues on social categorization. Experiment 1 demonstrated that in the absence of a visual cue, a noun label supported social categorization among 4-year-olds and 7-year-olds. Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated that children and adults fail to differentiate between intrinsic and nonintrinsic visual cues to category membership, suggesting that this distinction is not central to the acquisition of social category concepts. Experiments 2 and 3 also showed that in the absence of a shared noun label, visual cues were not sufficient for younger children to form social categories. Experiment 4 ruled out a potential demand characteristic in the previous experiments. Together, these results reveal the primacy of verbal labels over visual cues for social categorization in young children and suggest a developmental change between ages 4 and 7 in the ability to construct new representations of social category concepts.

The development of induction based on noun and feature labels

In two experiments, we examined the development of sensitivity to the inductive potential of shared novel noun and feature labels. Children (4-year-olds, 5-year-olds, and 8-year-olds) and adults were presented with a complete base stimulus and an incomplete target. The task was to infer whether the missing target feature matched the corresponding base feature. The base and target were given matching or mismatching novel labels, which were either count nouns or adjectives describing object features. Use of matching labels for induction increased with age. Nevertheless, all age groups were more likely to make inferences based on novel noun labels rather than feature labels. These results support the view that even preschool children grasp the conceptual significance of count nouns for induction.

Suffixing, prefixing, and the functional order of regularities in meaningful strings

The world?s languages tend to exhibit a suffixing preference, adding inflections to the ends of words, rather than the beginning of them. Previous works has suggested that this apparently universal preference arises out of the constraints imposed by general purpose learning mechanisms in the brain, and specifically, the kinds of information structures that facilitate discrimination learning (St Clair, Monaghan, & Ramscar, 2009). Here I show that learning theory predicts that prefixes and suffixes will tend to promote different kinds of learning: prefixes will facilitate the learning of the probabilities that any following elements in a sequence will follow a label, whereas suffixing will promote the abstraction of common dimensions from a set of preceding elements. The results of the artificial language learning experiment support this analysis: When words are learned with consistent prefixes, participants learned the relationship between the prefixes and the noun labels, and the relationship between the noun labels and the objects associated with them, better than when words were learned with consistent suffixes. When words were learned with consistent suffixes, participants treated similarly suffixed nouns as being more similar than nouns learned with consistent prefixes. It appears that while prefixes tend to make items more predictable and to make veridical discriminations easier, suffixes tended to make items cohere more, increasing the similarities between them.

Essentialism and compassion: Predicting preference for noun labels applied to people with mental disorders

Two studies, one correlational and one experimental, examined preference for noun labels applied to people with mental disorders (e.g., John is a schizophrenic) as a function of differences in essentialist thinking and compassion. Study 1 (N=360) showed that those high in essentialist thinking were more likely than those low in essentialist thinking to endorse noun labels. Study 2 (N=86) showed that those led to experience state compassion were less likely to endorse noun labels than those in a control condition. This research is discussed with respect to processes underlying these effects, the positive psychology of language, limitations and future research directions, and implications for reducing stigmatizing attitudes towards those with mental disorders.

Consequences of “Minimal” Group Affiliations in Children

Three experiments (total N=140) tested the hypothesis that 5-year-old children's membership in randomly assigned "minimal" groups would be sufficient to induce intergroup bias. Children were randomly assigned to groups and engaged in tasks involving judgments of unfamiliar in-group or out-group children. Despite an absence of information regarding the relative status of groups or any competitive context, in-group preferences were observed on explicit and implicit measures of attitude and resource allocation (Experiment 1), behavioral attribution, and expectations of reciprocity, with preferences persisting when groups were not described via a noun label (Experiment 2). In addition, children systematically distorted incoming information by preferentially encoding positive information about in-group members (Experiment 3). Implications for the developmental origins of intergroup bias are discussed.

Does speed matter? A comparison of the effectiveness of fluency and discrete trial training for teaching noun labels to children with autism

AbstractThis study used an alternating‐treatment design to compare the efficacy of discrete trial training (DTT) with fluency training (FT) for the acquisition, stimulus generalization, and retention of noun labels in children with autism. Four elementary‐age students diagnosed with autism were taught to expressively label nouns using a DTT format and a FT format. A between‐treatments comparison of the total number of nouns retained at 6 weeks post intervention was also conducted to compare retention. The results of this study showed that FT was superior to DTT in all of these areas. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

LINKING SYNTAX AND INDUCTIVE REASONING: CATEGORICAL LABELING AND GENERIC NOUN PHRASES

When a person is characterized categorically with a noun label (e.g., Linda is a feminist), people tend to think that the attributes associated with that person are central and long-lasting (i.e., labeling effect). This bias, which is related to category-based induction and social misattributions such as stereotyping, has been known to occur because we associate the person with prototypical attributes represented in the category. One experiment described in this article indicates that the labeling effect can occur separately from the attributes represented in the category. The experiment suggests that labeling bolsters not only the perception of prototypical attributes but also the awareness of unrelated or even irrelevant attributes. The results from the experiments suggest that some generic information inherent in noun labels play a crucial role in category-based reasoning.

Do 9-month-old infants expect distinct words to refer to kinds?

In 3 experiments, 9-month-old infants' expectations for what distinct count noun labels refer to were investigated. In Experiment 1, a box was opened to reveal 2 objects inside during familiarization: either 2 identical objects or 2 different objects. Test trials followed the same procedure, except before the box was opened, the contents were described using 2 distinct labels ("I see a wug! I see a dak!") or the same label twice ("I see a zav! I see a zav!"). Infants who heard a label repeated twice looked longer at 2 different objects versus 2 identical objects, whereas infants who heard 2 distinct labels showed a different pattern of looking. Experiments 2 and 3 presented infants with object pairs that only differed in shape or color, and it was found that infants expected the different-shaped (but not the different-colored) objects to be labeled by distinct count nouns. Because the property of shape is a cue to kind membership and the property of color is not, these results suggest that even at the beginning of word learning, infants may expect distinct labels to refer to distinct kinds of objects.

Being What You Say: The Effect of Essentialist Linguistic Labels on Preferences

Three experiments examined the effects of essentialist linguistic labels on perceptions of preferences of others and of the self. In Experiment 1, participants evaluated the preferences of others described with noun labels (e.g., “Susan is a chocolate-eater”) as stronger, more stable, and more resilient than those described with descriptive action verbs (“Susan eats chocolate a lot”). Experiments 2 and 3 revealed the analogous effect for self-perception: participants evaluated their own preferences that they had described with nouns (rather than verbs) as stronger, more stable, and more resilient. These results indicate that the very manner in which attitudes are expressed can affect their status and evaluation. Linguistic forms that imply essentialist properties (e.g., nouns) can engender the inference that such attitudes are dispositional and therefore strong and stable. More generally, these results show that attitudes are plastic constructions shaped by subtle but pervasive cognitive and social input from the environment.

Carrot-Eaters and Creature-Believers: The Effects of Lexicalization on Children's Inferences About Social Categories

This article examines how language affects children's inferences about novel social categories. We hypothesized that lexicalization (using a noun label to refer to someone who possesses a certain property) would influence children's inferences about other people. Specifically, we hypothesized that when a property is lexicalized, it is thought to be more stable over time and over contexts. One hundred fifteen children (5- and 7-year-olds) learned about a characteristic of a hypothetical person (e.g., “Rose eats a lot of carrots”). Half the children were told a noun label for each character (e.g., “She is a carrot-eater”), whereas half heard a verbal predicate (e.g., “She eats carrots whenever she can”). The children judged characteristics as significantly more stable over time and over contexts when the characteristics were referred to by a noun than when they were referred to by a verbal predicate. Lexicalization (in the form of a noun) provides important information to children regarding the stability of personal characteristics.

A preliminary account of the effect of otitis media on 15-month-olds' categorization and some implications for early language learning.

In the present study, 24 infants 14 to 16 months old (M = 15.3 months) with a history of otitis media (OM) and tube placement were tested for categorical responding within a visual familiarization-discrimination paradigm (cf. Roberts & Jacob, 1991; Roberts, 1995a). Sixteen infants were, on average, 4.6 months post-tubes. At the time of testing, hearing was reported to be normal. During both the familiarization and testing phases, reiterant speech ulterances (e.g., "ti ti the sasasa," "bo bo the sasasa," "gu gu the sasasa," "sasasa") were randomly presented contingent on infants' looking at line drawings of selected animals. The inclusion of the article the in these utterances provides an important grammatical cue signaling an upcoming noun label. Using these same procedures, utterances, and animal stimuli, normal-hearing 15-month-olds without a reported history of OM had categorized successfully in two previous experiments. In contrast, the OM infants did not respond categorically under these conditions. This suggests that even mild hearing loss may adversely affect categorical responding under specific input conditions and that this effect may persist after normal hearing is restored. A plausible account is that fluctuating hearing loss may cause the low-phonetic-substance article to vacillate above and below some attentional threshold. The resulting inconsistency in the article's availability would disrupt the co-occurrence relation between the article and cues already connected to joint attentional/referential interactions and categorical treatment of objects (cf. Roberts, 1995a). Such a disruption has implications for the acquisition of words and other aspects of language.