Abstract

These studies have studied the process in which the noun-category bias and semantic constraints interact when 3- and 4-year-olds arid adults learn category names and proper names. Subjects learned a novel name for a familiar/unfamiliar animal or a familiar/unfamiliar artifact. Subjects inted the novel name as a category name (Exp. 1). Subjects made category name interpretation evens when the individuality of the members of a category had been enhanced (Exp. 2). The results evidenced the noun-category bias. However, when the novel name was applied to an object along with its category name, subjects who learned the name for an animal made more proper name interpretation than children who learned the name for an artifact The results suggest that word learners first rely on the noun-category bias, and then rely on the semantic cue that certain kinds are more likely to have proper names, if there is any information that the word is not a category name.