User:Rachelschlaifer/sandbox

Noun-category bias
The noun-category bias suggests that children learn nouns more quickly than any other syntactic category. It has been found to appear in young children as early as the age of two and is used to help children differentiate between syntactic categories such as nouns and adjectives. Preschool-age children have been found to be inclined to interpret words from just one linguistic category- nouns. Gentner proposes that this might be due to the fact that nouns represent a more concrete object. The noun-category bias places regulations on the possible interpretations that a child might attach to a newly encountered noun. Experiments from Waxman and Gelman as well as Markman and Hutchinson provide results which support the claim that children show preference for categorical relations over random hypothesizing when learning new nouns. This suggests a correlation between language and thought and provides evidence for the theory that syntax and semantics are related. Kauschke and Hofmeister divide the noun-category bias into four separate components:  (1) nouns are acquired earlier than verbs and other word classes; (2) nouns form the majority of children’s early vocabularies; (3) nouns in children’s early vocabulary are predominantly object labels; (4) a preference for nouns promotes further language development.

Research has found that a noun bias exists in at least English, French, Dutch, German, Spanish, Hebrew, and Japanese. However, conflicting data from Korean, Mandarin, and Turkish leads researchers to believe that the noun-category bias may be language dependent. Dhillon claims that whether or not a language displays a noun-category bias depends on a language's null subject parameter

Shape bias
The shape bias proposes that children apply names to same-shaped objects. This stems from the idea that children are associative learners that have abstract category knowledge at many different levels. They should be able to identify specifics of each category (e.g. pickles are round, long, green, and bumpy). This knowledge aids children in categorizing newly encountered objects. The shape bias is a widely contested area of study in psycholinguistics. As of now, identically performed experiments have provided evidence that can be used to argue either for or against the shape bias. The argument is, essentially, whether or not there is a shift in language learning from perceptual to conceptual.

Perception plays a part in child development, however, it is a matter of to what extent. According to the shape bias, children would choose same-shaped object no matter which category they belonged to. For example, the word cat would mean all things that are cat-shaped. The juxtaposition to this is that children refer to kinds of objects which share unforeseen properties and perceptual features. For example, the word cat would refer to the idea of cats which share a same basic, though not exact, shape and often behave similarly.

Cimpian and Markman   argue for this view. Their research found that children were less likely to extend a shape bias when other alternative methods of categorization were offered. However,  Smith and Samuelson argue that Cimpian and Markman tested only already known lexical categories which negates the effects of simulating word learning. In addition. they argue that the shape bias is not to be considered as the exclusive tool used in word learning, only that it aids the process.