Abstraction is a core principle of Distributional Semantic Models (DSMs) that learn semantic representations for words by applying dimensional reduction to statistical redundancies in language. Although the posited learning mechanisms vary widely, virtually all DSMs are prototype models in that they create a single abstract representation of a…

In the present visual-world experiment, participants were presented with visual displays that included a target item that was a semantic associate of an abstract or a concrete word. This manipulation allowed us to test a basic prediction derived from the qualitatively different representational framework that supports the view of different…

Examines preschool children's comprehension of the differing implications of the verbs "think" and "know". Results indicated that 4-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, understood the differences between the terms. (JMB)

Three experiments with children between 5 and 7 years are described. It is shown that nominal predication of an unknown word by a superordinate term enables young children to make appropriate inferences concerning its attributes. The results are discussed in relation to semantic development and reasoning in the young child. (Author/RM)