When you are trying to learn a new language, you start with simple words and you associate those with the objects that you see around you. Once you are able to attach a specific meaning to an object, animal, or some other thing, it becomes part of your vocabulary. From there, you start building on the words you know.
Listen beautiful relax classics on our Youtube channel.
In language development, it was generally thought that children are only able to learn more specific terms later. But researchers have found that children use the same sophisticated method of reasoning when acquiring new nouns, the way adults would.
In a series of experiments with children 3 to 5 years old, the researchers found that when children are learning new nouns, they use what they know about these objects — how typical or unusual they are for their categories (such as fish, dog, bird or flower) — to help them figure out what these words mean. This type of sophisticated reasoning was thought to only develop later.
The researchers coined this tactic the “blowfish effect.” If children see a blowfish (or a greyhound or an unusual tropical flower) and learn a new word to go with it, they will assume it refers to that specific type of object and not the broader category of fish (or dogs or flowers).
(Image credit: George Parrilla/Wikimedia Commons)
Source: neatorama