We studied how category typicality and out-of-category relatedness affect speeded category verification (vote ''yes'' if pictured object is clothing) in typically developing 4- to 14-year-olds and adults. Stimuli were typical and atypical category objects (e.g., pants, glove) and related and unrelated out-of-category objects (e.g., necklace,…

Outlines a theory of metaphor that posits varying levels of semantic processing and formalizes the levels in terms of kinds of semantic mapping operators. Predicted complexity of semantic mapping operators was tested using metaphor interpretations of 204 children aged 6-12 years and 24 adults. Processing score increased predictably with age. (SAK)

Investigates the effect of presentation context, taxonomy, and age of child on mothers' choices of category names in object-naming tasks. Contextual factors had a primary role in determining mothers' selections of category names, and the three independent variables had a complex and dynamic effect on mothers' naming practices. (Author/CI)

Reinterprets Jeannie R. Aschkenasy and Richard D. Odom's findings (Journal of Experimental Child Psychology; v34 n3 Dec 1982) on perceptual and cognitive development. The increasing dimensionalization of stimulus relations rather than the increasing detectability or influence of stimulus differences is argued. (BJD)

Three experiments investigated children's typical errors in judging the truth of universally quantified conditional sentences containing "P and not-Q." The error survived on sentences referring to particular things. For second- and fifth-graders, the error survived for nonuniversally quantified conditionals, and for second-graders, the…

"More" and "less" were analyzed into two meaning dimensions, "occurence" and "quantity", which were hypothesized to be developmentally related to acts of addition and subtraction. (SBT)

In an attempt to clarify the role of nonlinguistic preferences in children's responses to the words more and less, children 3-4 years of age were administered three tasks. (Author/SB)

A total of 12 second- and fifth-graders' semantic decision times for pictures and words were analyzed relative to the predictions derived from unitary- and dual-memory models. (MS)

Three experiments examined preschoolers' and adults' understanding of distinctive semantic functions of adjectives and count nouns. Found that 4-year olds and adults, but not 3-year olds, who heard the adjective version (e.g., "a blue bird") were more likely than those who heard the count noun version ("a bluebird") to choose…

In two experiments, 5-, 7-, and 11-year-old children and college students were presented on each trial with a sentence followed by a probe word. The children's task was to indicate whether the probe was in the sentence or not. (MS)

Investigates the role of intraverbal learning (a process through which semantic knowledge is acquired from purely linguistic information) in preschool children's acquisition of semantic concepts. Shows that the relative effectiveness of pictorial and intraverbal information depends on the child's age, the type of information supplied, and the…