Journal article
Mother-child communication about relative proximity to a landmark: What role does prototypicality play?
Journal of experimental child psychology, Vol.178, pp.41-59
02/2019
DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2018.09.004
PMID: 30326342
Abstract
This investigation examined how prototypicality affects mother-child communication about relative proximity. In the first two experiments, mothers of 2.5-, 3.0-, and 3.5-year-old children verbally disambiguated a target hiding container from an identical non-target hiding container when the two containers were placed at a smaller (more prototypical) or larger (less prototypical) distance from a landmark. Children then searched for the hidden object. When the absolute distance was smaller, mothers used more consistent frames of reference in their directions and even 2.5-year-olds largely followed those directions successfully. When the absolute distance was larger, mothers used multiple reference frames in their directions (a "kitchen sink" strategy) and children had more difficulty in following directions (especially 2.5-year-olds). A third experiment in which we controlled mothers' directions confirmed that the increased absolute distance, and not the mothers' direction-giving strategies, led to 2.5-year-olds' impaired search performance. These results indicate that young children's understanding of relative proximity develops from more prototypical cases (smaller distances) to less prototypical cases (larger distances) and that mothers' attempts to compensate for young children's difficulty with less prototypical cases did not improve their search performance.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Mother-child communication about relative proximity to a landmark: What role does prototypicality play?
- Creators
- Megan G Lorenz - Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA. Electronic address: megan-lorenz@uiowa.eduJodie M Plumert - Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA. Electronic address: jodie-plumert@uiowa.edu
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Journal of experimental child psychology, Vol.178, pp.41-59
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.jecp.2018.09.004
- PMID
- 30326342
- NLM abbreviation
- J Exp Child Psychol
- ISSN
- 0022-0965
- eISSN
- 1096-0457
- Grant note
- DOI: 10.13039/100000001, name: National Science Foundation, award: BCS-0343034; name: Starch Faculty Fellowship
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 02/2019
- Academic Unit
- Psychological and Brain Sciences; Injury Prevention Research Center
- Record Identifier
- 9984214751302771
Metrics
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