Abstract

The congnitive dictionaries of Korean, German, and North American children and adolescents 4 to 18 years of ago were inferred from their word associations. Enactive transformations were predominant for 4- to 6-year-olds in all 3 cultures. By 8 years of age, Korean and American children showed a marked shift in response patterns; i.e. iconic among Korean and logical among American children. On the other hand, the German children showed a marked shift toward functional and logical responses from 10 years of age. Findings were discussed in terms of (1) the universality of the enactive mode at the early age levels and its relationship to the theories of Piaget (1980) and Bruner (1966) regarding the action related nature of early language development; and (2) the shift in the early elementary school grades when children begin to develop cognitive dictionaries commensurate with their respective cultures.