Are Chinese and German children taxonomic, thematic, or shape biased? Influence of classifiers and cultural contexts
OPEN ACCESS
Loading...
Author / Producer
Date
2010
Publication Type
Journal Article
ETH Bibliography
yes
Citations
Altmetric
OPEN ACCESS
Data
Rights / License
Abstract
This paper explores the effect of classifiers on young children’s conceptual structures. For this purpose we studied Mandarin Chinese- and German-speaking 3- and 5-year-olds on non-lexical classification, novel-noun label extension, and inductive inference of novel properties. Some effect of the classifier system was found in Chinese children, but this effect was observed only in a non-lexical categorization task. In the label extension and property generalization tasks, children of the two language groups show strikingly similar behavior. The implications of the results for theories of the relation between language and thought as well as cultural influence on thought are discussed.
Permanent link
Publication status
published
External links
Editor
Book title
Journal / series
Volume
1
Pages / Article No.
194
Publisher
Frontiers Media
Event
Edition / version
Methods
Software
Geographic location
Date collected
Date created
Subject
linguistic relativity; cultural psychology; cognitive development; categorization; word learning; inductive reasoning; classifiers
Organisational unit
03753 - Stern, Elsbeth (ehemalig) / Stern, Elsbeth (former)