TY - CHAP A1 - Imai, Mutsumi A1 - Saji, Noburo A1 - Große, Gerlind A1 - Schulze, Cornelia A1 - Asano, Michiko A1 - Saalbach, Henrik T1 - General mechanisms of color lexicon acquisition : insights from comparison of German and Japanese speaking children T2 - Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society N2 - This research investigated how German-speaking children learn color words, both in terms of centroid mappings and boundary delineation, and how they construct the color lexicon as a connected system. The results were compared to those of Japanese children to draw insights on general mechanisms that underlie the acquisition of words in the color lexicon. For both languages, input frequency and category size contributed to the ease of learning. In contrast, in both language groups, naming (in)consistency in adults predicted the adult-like boundary delineation. KW - Kindersprache KW - Spracherwerb KW - Farbbezeichnung KW - Deutsch KW - Japanisch KW - Vergleich Y1 - 2020 UR - https://cognitivesciencesociety.org/cogsci20/papers/0814/0814.pdf SP - 3315 EP - 3320 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Glauer, Ramiro A1 - Sixtus, Elena A1 - Kachel, Gregor A1 - Lonnemann, Jan A1 - Hildebrandt, Frauke T1 - Children's understanding of demonstratives BT - An experimental study with German-speaking children between 5 and 7 years of age JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - Demonstratives (“this”/“that”) express a speaker-relative distance contrast and need to be substituted for each other systematically: depending on their relative position, what one speaker refers to by saying “this” another speaker has to refer to by saying “that.” This substitution aspect of demonstratives poses additional difficulties for learning demonstratives, because it requires recognizing that two speakers have to refer to the same thing with different words, and might be one reason for the reportedly protracted acquisition of demonstratives. In an online study conducted in German, it was investigated whether children in the estimated upper age range of demonstrative acquisition (5 to 7 years) understand demonstratives' substitution aspect with familiar (“dies”/“das”) and novel (“schmi”/“schmu”) demonstratives, and whether they understand novel words (“schmi”/“schmu”) when used non-demonstratively as labels (N = 73; between-subject). Children's accuracy was compared with adult performance (N = 74). The study shows that children between 5 and 7 years of age perform less accurately than adults in all conditions. While adults' performance was highly accurate in all conditions (between 75% and 92% correct), children performed below chance in both demonstrative conditions and above chance in the labeling condition. This suggests that children do not understand demonstratives in the presented setup. More detailed analyses of children's response patterns indicate that they instead treat words as mutually exclusive labels in any condition. KW - Demonstrativpronomen KW - Spracherwerb KW - Perspektivübernahme Y1 - 2024 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1403528 VL - 15 PB - Frontiers Media CY - Lausanne ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Saji, Noburo A1 - Saalbach, Henrik A1 - Große, Gerlind A1 - Schulze, Cornelia A1 - Imai, Mutsumi T1 - Cross-linguistic comparison of color word learning in German and Japanese children shows universal and language-specific processes JF - Scientific reports N2 - This study examines how German- and Japanese-speaking children acquire the meanings of color words, focusing on two theoretically distinct processes: centroid mapping and boundary delineation. While previous cross-linguistic studies have typically addressed these aspects in isolation, this paper explicitly investigates both processes simultaneously, assessing language-specific and perceptual factors contributing to lexical acquisition. Using previously collected Japanese data (re-analyzed here for comparative purposes) and newly collected German data, we explore how input frequency, naming inconsistency, category size, and perceptual saliency influence these processes. Our findings show that centroid mapping in both languages is primarily shaped by input frequency, that is, children learn prototypical meanings by hearing the respective color words often. In contrast, boundary delineation is predicted by naming consistency in adult speakers, that is, children’s differentiation of color categories is based on the consistency with which adults refer to the same color with the same word. The structural characteristics of each language’s lexicon affect these qualitative aspects, highlighting an interplay between perceptual constraints and language-specific lexical structures. This comparative approach provides novel insights into lexical and conceptual development, contributing to broader theoretical debates on continuity and discontinuity in semantic acquisition and informing computational models of lexical development. KW - Deutsch KW - Japanisch KW - Spracherwerb KW - Kind Y1 - 2025 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-23286-3 SN - 2045-2322 VL - 15 PB - Springer Nature CY - Berlin ER -