Three experiments using a modified novelty-preference paradigm were conducted to reveal whether and how novel words influence object categorization. The data reveal that a linkage between words and object categories emerges early enough to serve as a guide in infants' efforts to map words to meanings. Both nouns and adjectives focused infants' attention on object categories, particularly at the superordinate level. Infants' progress in early word learning was associated with their appreciation of this linkage between words and object categories. These results are interpreted within a developmental and cross-linguistic account of the emergence of linkages between linguistic and conceptual organization.
Results show a pattern of similarities and differences.
Differences in sorting between taxonomists and maintenance workers reflect differences in weighting of morphological features. Landscape workers, in contrast, sort trees into goal-derived categories based on utilitarian concerns. These sorting patterns carry over into category-based reasoning for the taxonomists and maintenance personnel, but not for the landscape workers. Implications of these findings for theories of categorization are discussed.