Individual differences in children's and parents' generic language

How generic language shapes the development of social thought

Generic language, that is, language that refers to a category as an abstract whole (e.g., 'Girls like pink') rather than specific individuals (e.g., 'This girl likes pink'), is a common means by which children learn about social kinds. Here, we propose that children interpret generics as signaling that their referenced categories are natural, objective, and have distinctive features, and, thus, in the social domain, that such language affects children's beliefs about the social world in ways that extend far beyond the content they explicitly communicate. On this account, even generics expressing uncontentious content (e.g., 'Girls are great at math') can lead children to think of categories as defining fundamentally distinct kinds of people and contribute to the development of stereotypes and other problematic social phenomena.

Toddlers do not preferentially transmit generalizable information to others

Children actively and selectively transmit information to others based on the type of information and the context during learning. Four- to 7-year-old children preferentially transmit generalizable information in teaching-like contexts. Although 2-year-old children are able to distinguish between generalizable and non-generalizable information, it is not known whether they likewise transmit generalizable information selectively. We designed a behavioral study to address this question. Two-year-old children were presented with three novel boxes, identical except for their color. In each box, one of two equally salient actions led to a generalizable outcome (e.g., playing a [different] tune in each box), whereas the other led to a non-generalizable outcome (e.g., turning on a light, vibrating the box, or making a noise). In the discovery phase, children had a chance to discover the functions of each box presented one-by-one. Then, in the exploration phase, they were given the opportunity to independently explore all three boxes presented together. Finally, in the transmission phase, an ignorant recipient entered the room and asked the child to show them how these toys work. We measured whether children preferentially transmitted either generalizable or non-generalizable information when they were asked to demonstrate the function of the toys to a naïve adult. We found that children did not display any preference for transmitting generalizable information. These findings are discussed with respect to toddlers' selectivity in transmitting information but also the development of sensitivity to information generalizability. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT: Young children transmit information to others and do so with some degree of selectivity to a variety of factors. Generalizability is an important factor affecting information transmission, and older children tend to associate generalizable information with teaching-like interactions. We tested whether toddlers selectively transmitted it to others over non-generalizable information. We found that toddlers do not show a preference to transmit generalizable over non-generalizable information.

Learning dimensions of meaning: Children's acquisition of but

Connectives such as but are critical for building coherent discourse. They also express meanings that do not fit neatly into the standard distinction between semantics and implicated pragmatics. How do children acquire them? Corpus analyses indicate that children use these words in a sophisticated way by the early pre-school years, but a small number of experimental studies also suggest that children do not understand that but has a contrastive meaning until they reach school age. In a series of eight experiments we tested children's understanding of contrastive but compared to the causal connective so, by using a word learning paradigm (e.g., It was a warm day but/so Katy put on a pagle). When the connective so was used, we found that even 2-year-olds inferred a novel word meaning that was associated with the sentence context (a t-shirt). However, for the connective but, children did not infer a non-associated contrastive meaning (a winter coat) until age 7. Before that, even 5-year-old children reliably inferred an associated referent, indicating that they failed to correctly assign but a contrastive meaning. Five control experiments ruled out explanations for this pattern based on basic task demands, sentence processing skills or difficulty making adult-like inferences. A sixth experiment reports one particular context in which five-year-olds do interpret but contrastively. However, that same context also leads children to interpret so contrastively. We conclude that children's sophisticated production of connectives like but and so masks a major difficulty learning their meanings. We suggest that discourse connectives incorporate a class of words whose usage is easy to mimic, but whose meanings are difficult to acquire from everyday conversations, with implications for theories of word learning and discourse processing.

Parents' talk about conceptual categories with infants: stability, variability, and implications for expressive language development

Children's exposure to talk about conceptual categories plays a powerful role in shaping their conceptual development. However, it remains unclear when parents begin to talk about categories with young children and whether such talk relates to children's language skills. This study examines relations between parents' talk about conceptual categories and infants' expressive language development. Forty-seven parent-infant dyads were videotaped playing together at child age 10, 12, 14, and 16 months. Transcripts of interactions were analyzed to identify parents' talk about conceptual categories. Children's expressive language development was assessed at 18 months. Findings indicate that parents indeed talked about conceptual categories with infants and that talk was stable across time, with college-educated parents producing more than non-college-educated parents. Further, parents' talk about conceptual categories between 10 and 16 months predicted children's 18-month expressive language. This study sheds new light on mechanisms through which early experiences may support children's language development.

The influence of linguistic form and causal explanations on the development of social essentialism

Generic descriptions of social categories (e.g., boys play baseball; girls have long hair) lead children and adults to think of the referenced categories (i.e., boys and girls) in essentialist terms-as natural ways of dividing up the world. Yet, key questions remain unanswered about how, why, and when generic language shapes the development of essentialist beliefs. The present experiment examined the scope of these effects by testing the extent to which generics elicit essentialist beliefs because of their linguistic form or because of the causal information they convey. Generic language led children (N = 199, M_age = 6.07 years, range = 4.5-7.95) to essentialize a novel social category, regardless of the causal information used to describe category-property relations (either biological or cultural). In contrast, both linguistic form and causal information influenced adults' (N = 234) beliefs. These findings reveal a unique role of linguistic form in the development and communication of essentialist beliefs in young children.

Evidence for multiple sources of inductive potential: Occupations and their relations to social institutions

Several current theories have essences as primary drivers of inductive potential: e.g., people infer dogs share properties because they share essences. We investigated the possibility that people take occupational roles as having robust inductive potential because of a different source: their position in stable social institutions. In Studies 1-4, participants learned a novel property about a target, and then decided whether two new individuals had the property (one with the same occupation, one without). Participants used occupational roles to robustly generalize rights and obligations, functional behaviors, personality traits, and skills. In Studies 5-6, we contrasted occupational roles (via label) with race/gender (via visual face cues). Participants reliably favored occupational roles over race/gender for generalizing rights and obligations, functional behaviors, personality traits, and skills (they favored race/gender for inferring leisure behaviors and physiological properties). Occupational roles supported inferences to the same extent as animal categories (Studies 4 and 6). In Study 7, we examined why members of occupational roles share properties. Participants did not attribute the inductive potential of occupational roles to essences, they attributed it to social institutions. In combination, these seven studies demonstrate that any theory of inductive potential must pluralistically allow for both essences and social institutions to form the basis of inductive potential.

What is social essentialism and how does it develop?

Social essentialism consists of the commonly held belief that certain ways of categorizing people (e.g., gender and race) reflect meaningful, fundamental distinctions found in nature-that some kind of category "essence" (e.g., something in their blood or their DNA) explains why groups of people (such as boys and girls) are different from one another. Yet as common as they are, essentialist beliefs can give rise to adverse consequences, including stereotyping and social prejudice. In this chapter, we examine the development of social essentialism. To begin, we briefly address the evidence that these beliefs are the result of developmental processes that unfold beginning in early childhood (and not something innate that children are born with). Then, we consider the nature of those processes; specifically, how basic processes underlying conceptual development give rise to different components of essentialist beliefs. We then address how different essentialist beliefs might be integrated into a coherent essentialist view of a category, and finally into a coherent essentialist view of a domain.

That's how "you" do it: Generic you expresses norms during early childhood

Prior research indicates that children construe norms as general and construe preferences as individual. The current studies tested whether this expectation is built into how children interpret and use language. We focused on the pronoun you, which is ambiguous between a canonical interpretation (referring to the addressee) and a generic interpretation (referring to people in general). In Study 1, children (N=132, ages 3-10years) were asked a series of questions containing "you," referring to either descriptive norms (e.g., "What do you do with bikes?") or preferences (e.g., "What do you like to do with bikes?"). In Study 2, parents conversed with their children (N=28, ages 2-4years) about prescriptive norms (e.g., "What should you do with books?") and preferences (e.g., "What do you like about books?"). In both studies, children's choice of pronoun in their answer revealed whether they interpreted you in the questions as generic or canonical. Results indicated that children more often interpreted you as generic in the normative contexts (i.e., responded with generic you, e.g., "You read them") and as canonical in the preference contexts (i.e., responded with I, e.g., "I read them"). This pattern emerged by early preschool, providing the first evidence that the distinction between norms and preferences directs young children's interpretation and use of everyday language.

The integrity of lexical acquisition mechanisms in autism spectrum disorders: A research review

Research on autism spectrum disorders (ASD) has rapidly expanded in recent years, yielding important developments in both theory and practice. While we have gained important insights into how children with ASD differ from typically developing (TD) children in terms of phenotypic features, less has been learned about if and how development in ASD differs from typical development in terms of underlying mechanisms of change. This article aims to provide a review of processes subserving lexical development in ASD, with the goal of identifying contributing factors to the heterogeneity of language outcomes in ASD. The focus is on available evidence of the integrity or disruption of these mechanisms in ASD, as well as their significance for vocabulary development; topics include early speech perception and preference, speech segmentation, word learning, and category formation. Significant gaps in the literature are identified and future directions are suggested. Autism Res 2016, 9: 810-828. © 2015 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Nonverbal generics: human infants interpret objects as symbols of object kinds

Human infants are involved in communicative interactions with others well before they start to speak or understand language. It is generally thought that this communication is useful for establishing interpersonal relations and supporting joint activities, but, in the absence of symbolic functions that language provides, these early communicative contexts do not allow infants to learn about the world. However, recent studies suggest that when someone demonstrates something using an object as the medium of instruction, infants can conceive the object as an exemplar of the whole class of objects of the same kind. Thus, an object, just like a word, can play the role of a symbol that stands for something else than itself, and infants can learn general knowledge about a kind of object from nonverbal communication about a single item of that kind. This rudimentary symbolic capacity may be one of the roots of the development of symbolic understanding in children.

Nonverbal generics: human infants interpret objects as symbols of object kinds

Human infants are involved in communicative interactions with others well before they start to speak or understand language. It is generally thought that this communication is useful for establishing interpersonal relations and supporting joint activities, but, in the absence of symbolic functions that language provides, these early communicative contexts do not allow infants to learn about the world. However, recent studies suggest that when someone demonstrates something using an object as the medium of instruction, infants can conceive the object as an exemplar of the whole class of objects of the same kind. Thus, an object, just like a word, can play the role of a symbol that stands for something else than itself, and infants can learn general knowledge about a kind of object from nonverbal communication about a single item of that kind. This rudimentary symbolic capacity may be one of the roots of the development of symbolic understanding in children.