{"pk":26484,"title":"The paradox of relational development: Could language learning be (temporarily)\nharmful?","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Recent studies report a striking decline in children’s ability to\nnotice same-different relations around age 3 (Walker et al.,\n2015). We propose that such a decline results from an object\nfocus related to children’s avid noun-learning. To test this, we\nexamine children’s performance on a classic relational task –\nthe relational match-to-sample task (RMTS). Prior work has\nshown that 4-year-olds can pass this task (Christie & Gentner,\n2014). However, if nominal language induces an object focus,\ntheir performance should be disrupted by a noun-labeling\npretask. In two experiments, 4-year-olds either labeled objects\nor actions in a naming pretask. Then they completed the\nRMTS task. Consistent with the noun-focus explanation, the\nobject-naming group failed the RMTS task, whereas the\naction-naming group and a control group both succeeded.\nThis suggests that nominal language can lead to an object\nfocus, and that this could explain the temporary decline in\nchildren’s relational processing.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"Cognitive Development"},{"word":"relational processing"},{"word":"learning"},{"word":"Language"}],"section":"Papers","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3wx9j64b","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Christian","middle_name":"","last_name":"Hoyos","name_suffix":"","institution":"Northwestern University","department":""},{"first_name":"Ruxue","middle_name":"","last_name":"Shao","name_suffix":"","institution":"Northwestern University","department":""},{"first_name":"Dedre","middle_name":"","last_name":"Gentner","name_suffix":"","institution":"Northwestern University","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2016-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/26484/galley/16120/download/"}]}