A basic principle of object individuation--that predicables (or adjectival, verbal, or prepositional expressions) do not individuate--gives rise to a competence theory related to their interpretation. It is that we interpret predicables as sub-kinds of the kinds that type them. Evidence of children's competence in this matter is reviewed. Two experiments are presented, exploring the sensitivity of 20 children, aged 2;11 to 3;11 (mean 3;6), to changes in adjective interpretation across unrelated and related kinds. For instance, children were tested on their understanding that a nonsense adjective picked out sub-kinds of toy bears and balls on the basis of unrelated attributes. They were also tested on their understanding that the opposites "big" and "little" could describe the same individual object when typed by basic level and superordinate level kinds (e.g. that a little bat could be a big toy). Children's responses were near perfect, indicating that the basic logical framework for predicable interpretation used by adults is in place by age three.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.26138 |
| Date | January 1993 |
| Creators | Sharpe, Dean |
| Contributors | Macnamara, John (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Science (Department of Psychology.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001399778, proquestno: MM94521, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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