Spring 2020: Introduction to Scientific Research, Laboratory for Developmental Language Studies

1. Evaluation of Whole and Partial Objects by Children and Adults in Context vs.
No-Context: To Count or Not to Count?
Sanika Palande, Taylor Martinez
Dr. Kristen Syrett
When an individual hears count nouns such as “fork” or
“pencil”, they usually take the count noun to refer to the
whole object that represents a fork or pencil respectively.
Young children, however, demonstrate a different yet
interesting kind of knowledge; they are more inclined to
treat discrete partial objects (DPOs) as an entity on its
own, as if it were a whole object instead of a partial one.
For example, when shown a set-up as demonstrated in the
picture and asked to count the number of forks,
adults/older children count 4 or 5, while younger children
tend to count 6 1.
INTRODUCTION
ABSTRACT RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONMETHODS
CONCLUSION AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
REFERENCES
I would like to thank The Douglass Project and Dr. Syrett for
giving me the opportunity to work in the lab, and Nicole
Wodzinski and Kayla Fowler for their resources and support
during research.
1. Shipley, Elizabeth F., and Barbara Shepperson. 1990.
“Countable Entities: Developmental Changes.” Cognition34
(2): 109–136. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(90)90041-h.
2. Syrett, K., & Aravind, A. (under revision). Context sensitivity
and the semantics of count nouns in the evaluation of
partial objects by children and adults.
3. Myers, David G. 2019. Exploring Psychology in Modules.
Eleventh. New York, NY: Worth Publishers.
The aim of this research is to explore whether
children’s cognitive processes respond to
contextual information when making the decision to
evaluate an object as a referent for the given count
noun 2.
If children do indeed respond to contextual
information in expected ways, understand exactly
where children and adults differ in their linguistic
understanding and development 2.
An essential question is: What do children’s cognitive
abilities conjure when they hear certain count nouns like
”fork”? Is it a partial fork that is embedded in their cognitive
processes, or a whole fork? Or both? What if an entirely
different object from the given count noun is shown?
The answers to the questions above could be further
explored by considering context. Context could prove to be
vital in terms on determining children’s (and adults’)
responses to the validation of a given object, be it a partial
or whole version of the object, or a completely different
object from the count noun in question.
• Children’s conceptual representation of objects is not
that different from that of adults; their cognitive
process is just less skilled at recognizing contextual
information due to lack of experience in the world2.
• Whole objects are not necessarily the only referent for
a given count-noun2.
• Further questions: Do children make exceptions for
objects that are in the same superordinate category as
the requested count noun?
Participants: 44 Children balanced by gender,
split into two groups based on younger children vs.
older children, 34 Adults
Procedure:
1. Participants were shown a character who would make
a request to an animal(second character) to retrieve an
object- as shown below- with and without context.
2. The said animal would then comply to the first
character’s request by going to a certain location,
retrieving an object, and then presenting it to the first
character under the name of the count noun asked for.
3. The participants then had to evaluate whether the animal
successfully fulfilled the task by assigning a reward from those
shown below.
The trials were conducted separately for context and no-context.
For each, trials consisted of the following request-received pairs.
a) Same Object
• Whole object-Whole object (e.g. whole hat-whole hat)
• Whole object-Partial object (e.g. whole cup-half cup)
b) Different Objects
• Across Categories (e.g. sweater-grapes)
• Within Superordinate Categories (e.g. juice-milk)
Rutgers University Center for Cognitive Science, Psychology Building Annex, 152 Frelinghuysen Road, Piscataway NJ 08854
Figure 1: Results showing reward assignments by participants
1. Children do demonstrate a sensitivity towards DPOs
especially in context, although not as much as adults2.
2. Adults may also treat DPOs as whole objects in
certain scenarios2.