We investigated whether low-functioning children with autism generalise labels from colour photographs based on sameness of shape, colour, or both. Children with autism and language-matched controls were taught novel words paired with photographs of unfamiliar objects, and then sorted pictures and objects into two buckets according to whether or…

We investigated whether preschool children with specific language impairment (SLI) exhibit the shape bias in word learning: the bias to generalize based on shape rather than size, color, or texture in an object naming context ("This is a wek; find another wek") but not in a non-naming similarity classification context ("See this?…

Human participants and recurrent ("connectionist") neural networks were both trained on a categorization system abstractly similar to natural language systems involving irregular ("strong") classes and a default class. Both the humans and the networks exhibited staged learning and a generalization pattern reminiscent of the…

In experiment 1, novice fourth-grade students (N = 92) who compared multiple examples that separately varied each critical aspect and then simultaneously varied all critical aspects developed better conceptual knowledge about the "altitude of a triangle" than students who compared multiple examples that did not separately vary each critical aspect…

To examine whether enantiomorphy (i.e., the ability to discriminate lateral mirror images) is influenced by the acquisition of a written system that incorporates mirrored letters (e.g., b and d), unschooled illiterate adults were compared with people reading the Latin alphabet, namely, both schooled literate adults and unschooled adults…