Two experiments examined young children's use of the familiarity principle when learning language. Found that even 2-year-olds successfully identified the referent of a proper name as the individual with whom the speaker was familiar. However, only 5-year-olds reliably succeeded at determining the individual with whom the speaker was familiar…

Three experiments examined the modes of processing that children and adults use in learning family-resemblance categories. Children and adults exhibited primarily analytic, rather than holistic, modes of learning. (PCB)

Four studies compared preschoolers' fast mapping of new proper and common names following indirect exposures requiring inference with their learning new names following ostensive cues. Found that inferential learning of names and learning by direct instruction were largely equivalent: learning from a situation with clear joint references…

Three studies examined 2-year-olds' ability to learn novel words when overhearing these words used by others. Found that children ages 2.5 years were equally good at learning novel object labels and action verbs when they were overhearers as when they were directly addressed. For younger 2-year-olds, this was true for object labels, but results…

Presents two studies which investigated the importance of subtle contexture factors on the young child's performance on cognitive problems--specifically, conservation. (ST)

Examined the effect of linguistic contrast in children's learning of color names. A novel color term for a stimulus color that was contrasted with a child's label helped five-year olds learn the new term. When the contrast was presented more than once, three- and four-year olds performed much like the five-year olds. (BC)

Comments on this issue's article by Ward, Vela, and Hass on children's category learning. Suggests that aspects of the authors' methodology may have led them to underestimate holistic processing. (PCB)

Examined the relation of positive affect to attention and learning in 5-, 7-, and 9-month olds. Found that at all ages positive affect was associated with long look durations and slower learning. Neutral affect was associated with short looks and faster learning. Learning was faster than expected for infants displaying both short looks and neutral…

In French, the transcription of the same sound can be guided by both probabilistic graphotactic constraints (e.g., t is more often transcribed ette after -v than after -f) and morphological constraints (e.g., t is always transcribed ette when used as a diminutive suffix). Three experiments showed that pseudo-word spellings of 8-to 11-year-old…

Infants were tested in three studies of the acquisition and long-term retention of category-specific information. Results document retention of category-specific information after intervals of two weeks. (PCB)

Describes the slot-filler model of taxonomic knowledge development in which preschoolers derive "slot-filler" categories from event schemas. Maintains that the model has received considerable support across methodologies, ages, and sociocultural contexts. Argues that Krackow and Gordon's theorizing and methods could not lead to reliable,…

Used a modification of Akhtar, Carpenter, and Tomasello's (1996) task involving interpretation of novel nouns to test whether 18- to 28-month-olds' smart word learning derived from general attention and memory processes rather than knowledge about the communicative intents of others. Findings similar to those of Akhtar and colleagues suggest that…

Examined implicit learning in 432 four- to 10-year-olds in 3 experiments, using a new paradigm based on drawing behavior. Found that children modified drawing behavior following specially devised practice in such a way that the changes could not be viewed as resulting from deliberate adaptive strategies, with modifications lasting for at least 1…