This is “Minka” or “this is a stuffed animal” – whether an object is named individually or as part of a category influences people’s attention and memory at an early stage, shows a study. If different stuffed animals are named individually, twelve-month-old children can then recognize them better than if they were named with a collective term. When the same terms are used, attention is more likely to be focused on the similarities and only on the specific features of individual names, the researchers explain.
It is an important function of our mind that is closely related to language – we categorize and individualize: a person, a cat, a plant … These terms denote members of a group with certain similarities that we generalize. With “Martin”, “Minka” or “Rose”, on the other hand, we emphasize the individuality of the person or object. In adults, the importance of this connection is fairly well documented. So far, however, it is unclear how and when the connection between language and cognitive representation emerges in the course of childhood development.
Alexander LaTourrette and Sandra Waxman from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver have now investigated this question through an experimental study. The test participants were 77 toddlers aged 11.5 to 12.5 months. In the context of language development, this phase represents an early stage: At this age, toddlers often say a word for the first time that they can actually associate with a meaning.
Test with named plush toys
The studies started with a training phase: the young test subjects were presented one after the other with pictures of four plush animals of the same size in a similar style, but with different details: they were a cat, a duck, a pig and a panda. One group of children always heard the same name when the soft toys appeared one after the other: “Look at the boff!” In the other group, each soft toy was given an individual name: “Look at Etch!” Duck or “Look at you Arg!” With the plush pig.
During the tests, the children were silently presented with each training animal together with another that they had not yet seen – for example the duck and a monkey. The researchers concluded from the records of their looks whether the little ones recognized the duck as known. According to this, children look at a new object more intensely than at a familiar one: in the example, they should look at the monkey more if the duck already seems familiar to them.
Names focus on individual characteristics
As the researchers report, their evaluations showed that those children who had heard an individual designation for each animal recognized most of the plush toys they had seen before. In contrast, the success rate for the test subjects who had always heard the same name for all plush toys was significantly lower, the researchers report. According to LaTourrette and Waxman, the way an object is named determines the mental representation of an object and how it is imprinted on the mind, even in small children who are just beginning to speak.
As they explain, the effect is probably due to the fact that the same name always created the effect of a category term. Presumably this encouraged the children to only pay attention to similarities between the various stuffed animals. In contrast, the names meant that the children memorized the individual characteristics, which made it easier for them to recognize the stuffed animals later, say the scientists.
The results thus suggest that the development of the ability to generalize and individualize in connection with language begins early. However, the limit has not yet been explored. LaTourrette and Waxman are therefore now planning further investigations that will provide insights into when the interesting mental pattern begins to emerge in the course of the first year of life.