TY - JOUR
T1 - An explanatory heuristic gives rise to the belief that words are well suited for their referents
AU - Sutherland, Shelbie L.
AU - Cimpian, Andrei
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported in part by an NSERC predoctoral fellowship to Shelbie Sutherland and by research funds from the University of Illinois to Andrei Cimpian. We would like to thank the participating children and their families; the principals, teachers, and staff at the participating schools; the Cognitive Development Lab team for their assistance in collecting data; Yen Le, Olivia Dolleton, and Larisa Hussak for their assistance coding participants’ responses; and Lin Bian, Lucas Butler, Ori Friedman, Zachary Horne, Larisa Hussak, Vivian Li, Erika Salomon, Daniel Storage, and Christina Tworek for their helpful comments and discussion.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2015/10/1
Y1 - 2015/10/1
N2 - The mappings between the words of a language and their meanings are arbitrary. There is, for example, nothing inherently dog-like about the word dog. And yet, building on prior evidence (e.g., Brook, 1970; Piaget, 1967), the six studies reported here (N=1062) suggest that both children and (at least to some extent) adults see a special "fit" between objects and their names, as if names were particularly suitable or appropriate for the objects they denote. These studies also provide evidence for a novel proposal concerning the source of these nominal fit beliefs. Specifically, beliefs about nominal fit may be a byproduct of the heuristic processes that people use to make sense of the world more generally (Cimpian & Salomon, 2014a). In sum, the present studies provide new insights into how people conceive of language and demonstrate that these conceptions are rooted in the processes that underlie broader explanatory reasoning.
AB - The mappings between the words of a language and their meanings are arbitrary. There is, for example, nothing inherently dog-like about the word dog. And yet, building on prior evidence (e.g., Brook, 1970; Piaget, 1967), the six studies reported here (N=1062) suggest that both children and (at least to some extent) adults see a special "fit" between objects and their names, as if names were particularly suitable or appropriate for the objects they denote. These studies also provide evidence for a novel proposal concerning the source of these nominal fit beliefs. Specifically, beliefs about nominal fit may be a byproduct of the heuristic processes that people use to make sense of the world more generally (Cimpian & Salomon, 2014a). In sum, the present studies provide new insights into how people conceive of language and demonstrate that these conceptions are rooted in the processes that underlie broader explanatory reasoning.
KW - Conceptual development
KW - Explanation
KW - Heuristics
KW - Inherence heuristic
KW - Language
KW - Nominal fit
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U2 - 10.1016/j.cognition.2015.07.002
DO - 10.1016/j.cognition.2015.07.002
M3 - Article
C2 - 26226428
AN - SCOPUS:84938096992
SN - 0010-0277
VL - 143
SP - 228
EP - 240
JO - Cognition
JF - Cognition
ER -