Whether verbal labels help infants visually process and categorize objects is a contentious issue. Using electroencephalography, we investigated whether possessing familiar or novel labels for objects directly enhances 1-year-old children's neural processes underlying the perception of those objects. We found enhanced gamma-band (20-60 Hz)…

Compares two types of semantic development (the acquisition of disappearance words and success-failure words) to performance on two types of cognitive tasks (object-permanence and means-ends tasks) among infants. (HOD)

Three types of overgeneral uses of object names by young children were identified. Production data from 10 children were obtained using a standardized method of recording utterance contexts. Results showed that, like adults, children's object categories applied to objects of particular kinds. Most overgeneral uses were attributable to…

Describes a study of young children's production of novel words serving as names of objects and actions, which were matched according to consonant and syllable structure. On each measure, accuarate production of new consonants was greater for the object words, possibly because action words have greater semantic complexity than object words. (SED)