Two studies used a comprehension task and an elicited production task to examine whether preschool children and adults appreciated the semantic properties of generic utterances. Findings indicated that in both tasks, 4-year-olds and adults treated generics ("bears live in caves") as distinct from both indefinites ("some") and universal quantifiers…

In three experiments, adults and 30-month-old children (1) selected a novel object as the referent for a novel term; (2) extended the new word to another exemplar; and (3) allowed the new word to preempt another novel label from applying to the just-named object. (BC)

Examined in 2 studies 2- to 4-year-olds' learning of novel words and novel facts and extension of the words and facts to additional exemplars. Found that children extended the novel word to more category members than they extended the novel fact. By age 2, children observe extendibility of novel count nouns but are uncertain about extendibility of…

Examined 2-year-olds' comprehension and production of novel nouns, verbs, or actions at 3 intervals after training conducted in massed or distributed exposures. Found that for comprehension, children learned all item types in all training conditions at all retention intervals. Production was better for nonverbal actions than for either word type…