{"pk":49175,"title":"Taking the C-nic Route: Object-Directedness and Path, Not Efficiency, Shape Adults' Word Extension","subtitle":null,"abstract":"What intuitions guide adults in extending the meanings of new words? Are these intuitions consistent with prelinguistic sensitivities operative in infancy? Across two preregistered experiments, adult participants saw simple grid-world environments in which characters moved in a \"C\" path efficiently (or not) to an object (or not). These events were labeled with a novel verb or noun. Participants were asked whether that word applied to new events varying in object-directedness, path, and efficiency. By contrast to infants' focus on efficiency, adults instead focused on object-directedness and path, and they did so similarly for both verbs and nouns. Language might thus build on universal, prelinguistic assumptions of goal-directedness and efficiency to specify what goal an agent might have (e.g., object- vs. location-directed) as well as how an agent might achieve that goal (e.g., this vs. that kind of path), ultimately restricting the hypothesis space for action understanding and supporting learning.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[],"section":"Papers with Oral Presentation","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2pq747b9","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Mohit","middle_name":"","last_name":"Mukherji","name_suffix":"","institution":"New York University","department":""},{"first_name":"Moira","middle_name":"Rose","last_name":"Dillon","name_suffix":"","institution":"New York University","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2025-01-01T13:00:00-05:00","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/49175/galley/37136/download/"},{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/49175/galley/38681/download/"}]}