Much research has demonstrated a shape bias in categorizing and naming solid objects. This research has shown that when an entity is conceptualized as an individual object, adults and children attend to the object's shape. Separate research in the domain of numerical cognition suggest that there are distinct processes for quantifying small and…

Showed English- and Japanese-speaking 3-year-olds novel objects named with either known nouns referring to items similar in shape or material and color, or novel nouns. Found that with known nouns, children attended to shape when names referred to a shape-organized category, but not when names referred to a category organized by other properties.…

Two experiments examined toddlers' noun vocabularies and interpretations of names for solid and non-solid items. Results indicated that one side of the solidity-syntax-category organization mapping was favored. Seventeen- to 33-month olds do not systematically generalize names for solid things by shape similarity until they already know many…

Two experiments examined differences in the early noun learning of English- and Japanese-speaking children. Found that English-speaking children's vocabularies were heavily lopsided with many more object than animal names, whereas Japanese-speaking children's vocabularies were more evenly balanced. Results suggested that early learners of English…