and �nominal� and relative uses

Cognitive Development, 2, 8 9 - I I 1 (1987)

Big and Little: "Nominal" and Relative Uses

Maria Sera Linda B. Smith Indiana University

Many have claimed that children treat relative adjectives "nominally." Studies have shown that children refuse to relabel objects, use relative terms only when there are extreme differences between objects, and ignore the relative differences of objects within categories. Although none of these reported uses are truly nominal since they imply relativistic judgments, they do suggest limits on children's understanding of relative terms. However, there is little evidence on which, if any, of these uses predominates, In 4 experiments, we examined 2-, 3-, and 4-year-olds' abilities to use big and l i tt le. We found that interpretations in accord with the proximate object of comparison dominated the children's uses overall. The "errors" that the youngest children did make primarily reflected an object's position relative to the stimulus array as a whole. The shifting from one standard to another and the magnitude of difference between objects had minor effects on performance. We also found that the positive term, big, was used more flexibly than l i tt le. Our overall pattern of results suggests that children's so-called nominal errors reflect the acquisition of the relativistic ways in which the terms are used by adults.

Children's performances across a variety of tasks suggest that they do not fully understand relative adjectives such as big, long, little, tall, short, high, and low until they are 4 or 5 years of age (Donaldson & Wales, 1970; Ehri, 1976; Klahr & Siegler, 1978; Maratsos, 1973; Sinclair-de-Zwart, 1969; Trabasso, 1977). Children's difficulty with relative terms is not surprising; relative terms unlike the more rapidly acquired nominal terms (MacNamara, 1982; Nelson, 1973), do not refer to stable attributes of objects but instead refer to a relationship between

an object and some frequently updated standard of comparison. A single object could be labeled, for example, as big in one context and little in another if the

Portions of this research were presented at the meetings of the Society for Research in Child Development, Toronto, 1985. This research was supported by National Science Foundation Grant No. BNS 81 09888, National Institute of Health Grant No. PHS ROi HDI9499, and Public Health Service Grant No. KO4 HD589 01. We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Carol McCord, Mary Jo Ratterman, Andrew Brown, and Beverly Spangler for their help in data collection; children, parents, and staff of Cherry Hill Day Care for their participation; and Judith Johnston, Susan S. Jones, and Bea Gattuso for their helpful c o m m e n t s on the manuscript.

Correspondence and requests for reprints should be addressed to Mafia Sera, Department of Psychology, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242.

Manuscript received October 28, 1986; revision accepted December 11, 1986 89

90 /Maria Sera and Linda B. Smith

standard of comparison differed sufficiently between the two contexts. In fact, the entire range of values falling anywhere along such a dimensional continuum can be labeled by either polar adjective since such terms refer to relative directions of difference and not to particular magnitudes.

Young children do not seem to understand the full nature of relative terms; indeed, it has been frequently suggested that they initially treat relative terms as if they were "nominals ." Evidence for early nominal interpretations consists primarily of anecdotal reports of children's errors in using relative terms. Three general types of errors have been reported. First, young children have been said to refuse to label an object with one term after they have labeled the object with another term (Gelman & Gallistel, 1978; MacNamara, 1982; Osherson & Mark- man, 1975; Piaget, 1929). For example, a child might refuse to call an object little (in the context of bigger objects) if that object has already been labeled as big. Such uses suggest that children might use the terms nonrelativistically, in the sense that they might treat the terms as if they map onto objects in a one-to- one fashion. Second, children's knowledge of relational terms has been viewed as nominal because they have been said to apply relative terms only to "extremely different" polar values (e.g., H. Clark, 1970). In these cases, the child would use the positive pole term to describe only extremely "intense" objects and the negative term to describe extremely "nonintense" objects. Such uses suggest that children's application of the terms might be restricted by the magnitude of difference between the objects. Third, young children have been said to use relative terms nominally by applying the terms only to a restricted range of values (i.e., a "category") within a series. For example, Ehri (1976) reports that young children describe a graded series of sizes as "the big ones and little ones." We shall call this usage, which has sometimes been characterized as nominal, a "categorical" usage since the terms appear to be restricted to a subset, or category, of values within a series. Such uses suggest that children do not extend relative adjectives across the entire range of values to which they may apply. In these cases, their uses might be restricted by categories they impose on the stimulus array as a whole.

In none of these reported cases, however, are children's uses of relative terms truly nominal. Effch implies an underlying ability to make relative comparisons and to label directions of difference. A refusal to relabel an object in a new comparison context involves making an initial relative comparison. The original labeling of an object as, for example, big rather than little, requires the comparison of that object to some standard (unless, of course, the child labels a particular-size object of any class big in all contexts--an unlikely possibility). Applications of relative adjectives only to extremely different objects similarly involve relative comparisons; in order to appropriately label an extremely different object as big (rather than as little), the objects must be compared to each other and the direction of difference assigned. Categorical uses also involve relative comparisons; they presuppose an initial directional comparison of all the objects

Big and Little 91

in the array and the derivation of some standard against which objects are subsequently compared. Children's uses of relative terms are not then truly nominal; they involve relative comparisons (see Nelson & Benedict, 1974; Smith, Cooney, & McCord, 1986, for discussion and further evidence on this point).

Children's uses of relative terms are not only inherently relative; some of them may also be "correct ." Mature speakers often use relative terms in categorical ways. Great Danes are considered big dogs by adults, and there seem to be contexts within which an adult might refuse to label a Great Dane as little despite its being smaller than some comparison object (e.g., an even larger Great Dane). For adults, then, there seem to be at least two ways of using relative terms. In one, the one that has often been considered to be the hallmark of "mature" use, the terms are used to refer to currently present directions of differences, and applications of a term to a single object varies according to the proximate standard of comparison. In the second, more categorical way, the terms refer to a direction of difference from some less variable standard. In our Great Dane example, the less variable standard of comparison may have been a dog of typical size. Importantly, both of these uses seem to be equally relativistic; the principle difference is in the definition and variability of the standard of the comparison. Perhaps, some of children's nominal interpretations are sim- ilar to those used by adults. Both children and adults may restrict their uses of relative terms such that they apply the terms somewhat stably to particular objects. The critical difference between adults and children, then, may not be in the kinds of interpretations that they give relative terms, but in that children's nominal interpretations may be more frequent and appear in more contexts than adults'.

What do children's greater tendency to interpret relative terms in nominal-like ways suggest about their understanding of such terms? Children's so-called erroneous and nominal uses of relative terms may be neither truly erroneous nor nominal. Yet despite their being nismoners, the contrast between more nominal- like and "more relativistic" might be a developmentally useful one. In contexts in which older users of the language use relative terms to refer to the direction of difference between an object and some variable proximate standard of comparison independent of objects' actual sizes or magnitudes of difference, young children, in contrast, are reported to refuse to relabel objects, to apply the terms only to extremely different objects, or to use the terms categorically. What does this greater tendency toward nominal-like uses mean? The answer to this question is not clear. Each of the nominal uses reported in the literature implies a different sort of limitation on children's understanding of the words.

The finding that children refuse to relabel objects suggests a limit in the number of contexts in which young children can compare any one object. Per- haps children can make only one relative comparison per object within one context. Such a one-object-one-relation limitation would be consistent with

92 Maria Sera and Linda B. Smith

much literature in cognitive development--in particular with suggestions from children's classificatory behavior that objects can participate as members of only one class at a time (lnhelder & Piaget, 1964). They would also be consistent with one of the principles of Lexical Contrast Theory (E. Clark, 1983), which states that the early meanings of a pair of words contrast. This theory predicts then that children should find it difficult to apply a contrasting pair of words to a single referent.

The finding that children use opposing terms only when objects are extremely different might suggest a limit on their apprehension of directions of difference. For example, young children may know that slightly different-size objects differ, but they may only appreciate that the objects in fact differ in size. and apprehend the direction of that difference when the magnitude of difference is large. There is evidence about perceptual development that supports such a notion (Kemler, 1982).

Finally, the finding that children interpret relative terms categorically would suggest that once children define stable categories over a series of objects, they do not tend to make within-category comparisons. Notice that this last possibility suggests a restricted use of the terms much like that evident in adults. The first two possibilities, of a one-relation-one-object restriction and a dependence on large magnitudes of difference, suggest restricted uses without mature counter- parts. Categorical uses, however, have a mature counterpart in that when adults categorize dogs as large and small, they do so relative to some shared internal standard that partitions that series into categories. Children may also define stable standards that partition categories and may do so even in contexts in which there is not some communally shared standard for the particular class of objects.

The first goal of this study is to examine the pervasiveness of nominal uses of relative terms by young children. Such data are needed because current evidence consists primarily of anecdotal reports of children's responses in tasks not designed to measure such interpretations. Such reports may reflect only a few children's infrequent uses. In fact, some researchers have suggested that the earliest uses of relative terms are relative to the proximate standard and that it is only comparisons relative to particular standards that develop (Carey, 1978; Landau & Gleitman, 1985; Nelson & Benedict, 1974; Wales, 1971). The second goal of this study is to determine which (if any) of the three types of nominal-like uses best captures children's uses. By specifying the precise nature of children's patterns of use, we will better understand children's underlying knowledge of relative terms. In the following four experiments we examined 2-, 3-, and 4- year-olds' ability to relabel objects, to label moderately different-size objects, and to label objects across a continuum of sizes with the words big and little. These terms appear to be the first relative adjectives used systematically by children (Wales) and so may be the first to reflect a complete understanding of relativistic meanings.

Big and Little 93

EXPERIMENT 1

Experiment 1 was designed to examine children's possible refusals to relabel an already labeled object with the opposing term and the role of the magnitude of difference between objects in children's application of polar adjectives. In this experiment, we presented children with a labeling task that consisted of two phases. In the 1 st phase, the child was presented with two objects and was asked to label each object as either big or little. After the child labeled these objects (either correctly or incorrectly), the 2nd phase immediately followed: One object was removed and was replaced by a third object. The child was then asked again to label the objects as big or little. If the child relabeled an originally big object as little with a change in context, we would have evidence that she or he can consecutively compare a single object to at least two others and knows that the terms refer to directions of difference between objects and so must change with changes in the comparison object.

The experimental trials were organized so that on half of the Phase 2 trials objects differed by a small amount while on the remaining trials, the two objects differed by a large amount. Will the child be more likely to relabel an object when the objects differ by a large amount? An affirmative answer would suggest that the child can rapidly shift standards of comparison if the difference between the objects in "ex t reme ." Note that in our method we made no effort to discour- age the various restricted uses but instead designed a task that would be sensitive to different types of restrictions.

Method

Subjects. The subjects were 30 preschoolers; ten 2-year-olds (M = 2;5; range = 2;1-2;9) , ten 3-year-olds (M = 3;5; range = 3;0-3;11), and ten 4-year- olds (M = 4;4; range = 4;0-4;11) . Seven additional 2-year-olds participated in a discrimination task. All subjects were native speakers of English.

Materials. The stimuli were 30 circles .5 cm thick, ranging from I to 12 inches (2 .54-30.48 cm) in diameter. Ten series of 3 circles were constructed. The sizes of circles making up each series are listed in Table 1. Each series was distinctively decorated. We employed a separate discrimination task to ensure that our smallest stimulus differences (the Phase 1 differences in Table 1) were discriminable to the youngest subjects. In this discrimination task, the child was presented with 3 circles; 2 were of equal size. One of these circles was placed above the other 2, and the child was asked to point to the circle that was like it. For each of the l-inch contrasts, performance was above 75% and averaged 79% overall. Thus we can be reasonably sure that the subjects were able to discrimi- nate all of the contrasts.


Table 1. Diameters , in Inches, of the Circles Presented in Experiment 1 (1 inch = 2 .54 cm)

Phase

Size Difference Trial 1 2 New Label Required

Small (1 inch) I. 4,5 5,6 little Differences 2. 5,6 4,5 big

3. 7,8 8,9 little 4. 8,9 7,_8 big

Large (4 inch) 5. 4,5 5,9 little Differences 6. 5,6 1,5 big

7. 7,8 8,12 little 8. 8,9 4,8 big

Same Size 9. 4,5 5,5 Trials 10. 5,6 5,5

Note: The underlined number indicates which circle was constant across both phases.

Procedure. Before the experimental session began, the child was told that a game would be played using the words big and little and was asked to say the words. Then, in order to familiarize the child with the task, the child and experimenter "prac t iced" with 2 red sticks, 3 and 12 inches long. The experimenter pointed to each stick and prompted the child by saying, "This one is _ _ . " Five 2-year-olds did not provide either term in the practice trials; they did not participate in the experimental trials and were replaced by other 2-year- olds. After the practice trials, the test trials began (see Table I). The child was shown the 2 circles in Phase 1 and completed the experimenter 's prompts ( " th i s one is _ _ , " and "'this one is _ _ . " ) . Children who participated in the experimental trials readiIy supplied the words big and little. All possible responses to the two stimuli were accepted: correct (e.g. , big-little), reversed (e.g. , little-big), both big (big-big), and both little (little-little). Immediately after the child had labeled the Phase 1 objects, one of them was removed and a new one (the remaining object from the series) replaced it. The child again completed the experimenter 's prompts. No feedback was provided after any response. All of the circles remained on a table throughout the experiment, in full view of the child, All subjects were tested individually, and most completed the task in one 30-minute session.

Design. There were 10 unique trials divided into 3 categories: small difference (4 unique trials), large difference (4 unique trials), and no difference (2 unique trials) trials (see Table I). Each of the 3 kinds of trials differed primarily in the magnitude of difference between the objects presented in the 2nd phase

Big and Little 95

(small, large, or zero). The zero difference trials were included so that responses of big-big or little-little would be viewed as allowable by the child. Trials were designed so that each absolute size was to be relabeled big as often as it was to be relabeled as little (see, e .g. , Trials 1 and 2). It should be clear from Table 1 that a decrement in performance from Phase 1 to 2 would solely reflect children's unwillingness to relabel objects because across all trials the constant object was the same size in Phase 1 as in Phase 2. The experimental session consisted of the presentation of three repetitions of the 10 unique trials in a random order for a total of 30 trials.

R E S U L T S

We first examined overall performance. In this analysis, a response in Phase 1 or 2 was scored as correct if the child supplied the correct label for both objects in the phase. So, the proportion correct expected by chance was .25. Figure 1 shows the proportion correct labelings in each phase for both small (1 inch) and large (4 inch) difference trials. As is evident from Figure 1, correct labeling depended on the age of the child and on the magnitude of difference between the objects. An analysis of variance for a 3 (Age) x 2 (Phase) x 2 (Magnitude of Difference) design revealed main effects of Age, F(1,27) = 8.65, p < .01, Magnitude of Difference, F(1,27) = 28.38, p < .01, and Phase, F(1,27) =

Contrast Size

1.0

= = Phase 1

o.-.o Phase 2

......... C h a n c e

Small Large

/ /

/ d

~...o

/

AGE

Figure 1. Mean proportional correct labeling and relabeling of small and large contrasts for each age group


11.56, p < .01, and a significant Age x Phase x Magnitude of Difference interaction, F(2,27) =" 4.68, p < .05. Post hoc analyses (Tukey's B, ct = .05) revealed that on small-difference trials, trials in which the magnitude of difference was l inch in both phases, only 2-year-olds' performance deteriorated on Phase 2. On large-difference trials, performance was better on Phase 2 than Phase l for all age groups, suggesting that the magnitude of difference between objects is a critical determiner of how objects are labeled.

In a second analysis, we specifically examined children's ability to shift their label of a particular object with change in the proximal standard of comparison. We did this by examining the probability of a correct Phase 2 response given a correct Phase l response on the constant circle for small- and large-difference trials. Figure 2 shows these probabilities. We analyzed these data with an Age and Magnitude of Difference ANOVA, which revealed main effects of Age, F(2,27) = 12.31, p < .001 and Magnitude of Difference, F(i ,27) = 22.42, p < .001, and a significant Age x Magnitude of Difference interaction, F(2,27) = 7.31, p, < .003. On small-difference trials, both 2- and 3-year-olds had some difficulty relabeling objects; on large-difference trials only the 2-year-olds had any difficulties (Tukey's B, ct = .05). However, this analysis only characterizes about half of the 2-year-olds' responses, as they provided the "correct" label for the constant object in Phase I on 68% of such trials. Furthermore, even though 2- year-olds do not shift labels as readily as 3- and 4-year-olds when an extremely different object is introduced, they do so much more frequently than would be expected by chance (.64 vs . .25) . While this analysis suggests growth in the ability to relabel objects with change in the proximate standard, it also shows that

1.0 C~

" S r r . 8 C

~ . 6 C

~ ...

~- .2C . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I--- 0 I 2

o . - - 0 Smal l Contrasts ¢ ~. Large Contrasts

Chance

I I 3 4

Age (in years)

Figure 2. Conditional probabilities of correctly relabeling the constant circle on small and large contrasts for each age group

Big and Little 97

the ability to relabel is present very early at least when the magnitude of difference between an object and a new standard is large.

The results shown in Figure 1 for our overall analysis and in Figure 2 that shows specifically the ability to relabel particular objects may appear discrepant for the 3-year-olds. On small-difference trials, 3-year-olds' overall performance is equally good on both Phase 1 and 2 yet our detailed analysis suggests some relabeling difficulty. That 3-year-olds do not show this relabeling difficulty in our overall analysis reflects the fact that these children sometimes labeled objects correctly in Phase 2 after an initial incorrect labeling in Phase 1. The cases of correct on Phase 2 but incorrect on Phase 1 that contributed to the overall analysis but not to the relabeling analysis were mostly cases in which objects were labeled big-big in Phase I and little-big in Phase 2 on Trials 2 and 4 shown in Table 1. They account for 25% of all correct Phase 2 responses on small- contrast trials in our overall analysis. Other cases of label shifts that did not contribute to the relabeling analysis (i.e., labeling Phase 1 objects little-little and Phase 2 objects big-big on Trials ! and 3) occurred infrequently, 3% and 2% of the trials for 2- and 3-year-olds, respectively.

Performances on the "zero-di f ference" trials are consistent with growth in the tendency to relabel. For 2-year-olds, the predominant response pattern (40% of the trials) on zero difference trials was the labeling of both circles in Phase 2 with the same label that they had applied to the constant circle in Phase 1. For example, on Trial 9, they would label the Phase 1 circles little-big and the Phase 2 circles big-big. For 3- and 4-year-olds, in contrast, the predominant response pattern (48% and 68% respectively) was to label the Phase 2 circles randomly as little-big. Some 4-year-olds commented that the circles " look the s ame , " while others appeared to be making their judgments on the basis of miniscule size differences. In short, the results from these trials suggest that the 3- and 4-year- olds more than the 2-year-olds interpreted the task as a two-alternative forced- choice procedure that required relabeling.

Overall, the results from this experiment indicate that children who are just acquiring the terms have some difficulty shifting to a different standard of comparison when a new object is introduced. Once an object is labeled big, these children are reluctant to relable the object as little (or vice versa) when a new, but not very different standard is added. The older children, 4-year-olds, do not have such difficulties but easily shift standards with the introduction of new objects. However, performance on the large-difference trials showed that even the youngest children frequently shift standards when a very different object is added. Relabeling thus appears to be difficult for young children only when the differences involved are small.

Better overall performance when objects differ by a large rather than a small amount could suggest either a limit on children's apprehension of size differences or a categorical interpretation of the terms. In all of the large-difference trials, the values of the added circles fell near an end of the stimulus continuum


(see Table 1) Consequently, the improved performance that we observed on the large-difference trials might not have been due to the large difference per se, but rather to the facilitation of a categorical judgment. Two objects that differ by a large amount are more likely to fall on opposite sides of any category standard that children might have imposed on the stimulus array than two objects that differ by a small amount. The pattern of children's errors in the 1st phase (the phase in which all of the circles differed by l inch) is consistent with this possibility. As shown in Figure 3, the likelihood of labeling two objects as big- big (in Phase l) increases as the size of the objects increases, and the tendency to label two objects as little-little increases as circle size decreases even for sizes that fall in the middle of a series. The important point from these data is that whether an object is initially judged as big or little seems to depend on the objects' position in the series.

Figure 3 reveals an additional (and often reported) finding: different levels of overall performance on the terms. In our study, children made many more errors by calling two objects big-big than by calling them little-little. Given that some pairs of objects primarily elicited little-little "errors" (see e.g., Pair 4 -5 in Figure 3), these data suggest that the overall tendency to call objects big reflects a restricted use of the word little. That is, children extend the word big across the entire continuum of sizes, and at the same time fail to extend the word little to objects that are relatively large, but smaller than other comparison objects. Thus, 4- and 5-inch objects are more likely to be called little-big respectively, but 8- and 9-inch objects are more likely to be called big-big. Apparently, the word big is used more flexibly than the word little.

= I 1.c

t -

r " .o

Age 2-year-olds 3-year-o lds 4-year- o lds

©.'"'-Q

D.....~ I I I I

4 , 5 5 , 6 7 , 8 8 , 9 4 5 5 , 6 7 , 8 8 , 9 4 , 5 5 , 6 7 , 8 8 , 9

Object Sizes (in inches) H Both"big" o.-o Both "little"

Figure 3. Children's judgments of a pair of objects as either both big or little as a function of the objects' sizes within the series

Big and Little 99

In sum, this experiment provides support for the notion that young children sometimes refuse to apply a new term to an already labeled object when the comparison object changes. When the object differences are small, 2- and 3- year-olds do not always relabel appropriately. However, even 2-year-olds frequently relabel when the new comparison object differs substantially. This result alone shows that big and little can refer to directions of difference even for children who have just started using the terms. Our results also indicate that children at all ages are more likely to apply polar opposite terms to two objects when there is a large magnitude of difference between the two objects. Greater use of contrasting terms when relabeling very different-size objects may reflect either a dependence on large differences per se, or categorical judgments, that is, labeling relative to the categorical partition of the whole series of stimulus objects. We reexamine children's ability to relabel in Experiment 2 and the role of large differences and categorical position in Experiments 3 and 4.

EXPERIMENT 2

In this experiment, we pursue our finding in Experiment 1 that the youngest children have some difficulty relabeling, or shifting to a different standard of comparison when a new object is introduced. Recall, that our conditional probabilities analysis of Experiment 1 only took into account two thirds of the 2-year- olds' responses as these children labeled the constant object in Phase 1 incorrectly on 32% of the trials. Given the rather considerable difficulties of the children in Phase 1 it may be inappropriate to label their difficulties in Phase 2 as problems in "relabeling." Accordingly, in this experiment we increased the likelihood of a correct Phase 1 response by presenting clrildren with pairs of objects that differed by 4 inches ("extremely") in that phase and then looking at their ability to relabel one of those objects. In this way, we hopefully measure the youngest children's difficulty in relabeling unencumbered by difficulties in their applying initial correct relative labels.

Method

Subjects. The subjects were ten 2-year-olds (M = 2;7; range = 2;3-2;11).

Materials. The stimuli were 18 objects; 9 circles and 9 squares 0.5 cm. thick. Six series of 3 objects were constructed. A series consisted of all circles or all squares. Each series contained a 1-inch (2.54 cm) object, a 5-inch (12.70 cm) object, and a 9-inch (22.86 cm) object.

Procedure. The procedure was identical to the procedure in Experiment 1. The child was told that a game would be played using the words big and little and


was asked to say the words. Then the child and experimenter practiced with two sticks: Pointing to each stick in turn the experimenter said, "This one is _ _ . " Most children were tested in one 15-minute session.

Design. Each series of sizes was presented as a trial. On 3 of the trials the 1- and 5-inch objects were presented in Phase 1 and the l-inch object was replaced by the 9-inch object in Phase 2. On the other 3 trials the 5- and 9-inch objects were presented in Phase 1 and the 9-inch object was replaced by the l-inch object in Phase 2. So, the 5-inch object was to be relabeled big as often as it was to be relabeled little. The 6 trials were presented in a random order.

R E S U L T S AND D I S C U S S I O N

First, we examined the degree to which children labeled the 5-inch object correctly in Phases 1 and 2 with each term. For example, we compared the number of times children correctly labeled the 5-inch object big in Phase I - - re la t ive to a 9-inch ob jec t - - to the number of times they called the 5-inch object big in Phase 2 - - a l so relative to a 9-inch object. These data appear in Table 2. There appears to be a slight decrement in performance from Phase 1 to 2. However, a two-way analysis of variance with Term (big or little) and Phase (Phase 1 or 2) as factors yielded no significant effects. Apparently, children are just (about) as likely to relabel an object with a term as they are to label the object with the correct term in the first place.

As in Experiment 1, we specifically examined children's ability to shift their labels with changes in the proximal object of comparison by determining the probability of a correct Phase 2 response given a correct Phase l response on the constant circle. We compared this probability, which was .85, to the reverse probabil i ty-- that is, the probability of a correct Phase 1 response given a correct Phase 2 response on the constant circle (0.93) by a t-test for matched samples. The difference between these two probabilities was not statistically significant, t(9 ) = 0.47.

The results from this experiment indicate that 2-year-olds can relabel, as they do so most of the time (85% of the time) with large differences between the to- be-labeled objects. Clearly, if young children are sometimes unwilling to relabel,

Table 2. Percentages of Correct Labeling of 5-inch Objects in Phase 1 and 2 With Both Terms

Big Little

Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 1 Phase 2

80 73 87 80

Big and Little 101

their unwillingness is not pervasive. Apparently, children by the age of 2 know that even though big and little contrast in meaning, the terms may be applied to a single referent.

EXPERIMENT 3

The data of Experiment 1 were consistent with both a categorical limit on childrens' uses of big and little and a magnitude of difference limit. Accordingly, in this 3rd experiment, one question we addressed was whether children were imposing a sharp boundary (i.e., a standard) on the series such that objects on one side of that boundary were big and on the other side little. The 2nd question we addressed was whether the categorical position of an object in the entire series primarily determined which term was applied, or whether the magnitude of difference between the object and the proximate comparison object was the primary determinant. For example, is a 3-inch object just as likely to be called little as a 5-inch object? Is it just as likely to be called little in the context of the 5- inch object as in the context of a 7-inch object?

Two tasks were employed to answer these questions. In the Category Task, we presented children with a series of objects, one at a time, and asked them to label single objects either as big or little. From these data, we derived the child's category boundary that was defined as the size at which objects were labeled big 50% of the time. In the Comparison Task, children were shown two objects and were asked to label each as either big or little. The pairs of objects were chosen from the same series that was used in the Category Task. As in Experiment l, some !baits differed bv small (2-inch) amounts and some pairs differed by large (4-inch) amounts. Using the boundary that was obtained from the Category Task, we compared the child's ability to label pairs of objects when both objects fell within a category (big or little) to their ability to label objects when each object fell in a different category. We also compared the child's ability to label each object when that object appeared in the context of another object that differed by either a small or a large amount.

Method

Subjects. The subjects were 24 preschoolers. Since the 4-year-olds tested in Experiment 1 made very few errors, only 2- and 3-year-olds were tested in this experiment. The 2-year-oids ranged in age from 2;4 to 2;11, with a mean age of 2;8. The 3-year-olds ranged in age from 3;0 to 3;11 with a mean age of 3;9. All subjects were native speakers of English.

Materials. Two sets of stimuli were constructed: a series of orange circles and a series of red squares. The diameters of the circles and the width of the squares were l, 3, 5, 7, 9, and I I inches.


Procedure. In the Category Task, the child was told that a game would be played using the words big and little and was asked to say the words. The child was then shown the entire series of objects. Finally, the child was presented with the objects one at a time and was asked to label each object as either big or little. On each trial the child would be asked; "What is this one'?" Children who did not answer, were asked if the object was big or little. In this task, subjects were tested in one 15-minute session.

The Comparison Task was procedurely identical to Phase 1 of Experiment 1. The child was told that a game would be played using the words big and little and was asked to say the words. Then, in order to familiarize the child with the task, the child and the experimenter practiced with two sticks. Pointing to each one in turn the experimenter said, "This one is _ _ . " Children who did not provide either of the words did not participate in the test trials. Most subjects were tested in one 30-min session.

Design. All subjects participated in both tasks on separate days. Half of the subjects in each age group received the Category Task first and the other half received the Comparison Task first. The experimenter who tested the child in one task was different from the experimenter who tested that same child in the other task. Children received a different set of stimuli on each task.

In the Category Task, each stimulus (1-, 3-, 5-, 7-, 9-, and 11-inch objects) was presented 4 times for a total of 24 trials in a random order. In the Com- parison Task, the following 9 pairs of objects were presented to the child: 1-3, 3 -5 , 5 - 7 , 7 -9 , 9 -11 , I - 5 , 3 -7 , 5 - 9 , and 7-11 . Each pair was presented 4 times, in a random order, for a total of 36 trials.

R E S U L T S

The Category Task. For each subject, the proportion of times each object was called big was calculated (which was equal to I minus the proportion of times each object was called little). In order to test whether the shape of the resulting function reflected a relatively sharp categorical split, we asked whether the curve was ogival. The function would be identified as an ogive if the relationship between the proportion of times an object was labeled big and stimulus size became linear when the proportions were expressed as z scores (Gescheider, 1976). For each subject, the proportion of times they called each object big was expressed as a z score, then the correlation coefficient was calculated between stimulus size and each subject's set of z scores. The average correlation coefficient was .948. Only one 2-year-old's correlation coefficient was below .88 (it was .578); this subject called most of the objects little--her data were not included in analyses that required the use of subjects' boundaries. For each of the remaining 23 subjects, we calculated the location of the category boundary, which was defined as the size at which objects were labeled big 50% of the time.

Big and Little 103

The average location (stimulus size) of this boundary was 6.3 inches--apparently indicating a near-perfect binary split; however, individual subjects varied in where each placed the boundary (SD = 3.7). We also calculated the slope at the boundary for each subject (least squares logistic fit). These slopes were submitted to a two-way ANOVA with Age and Task Order as factors, which yielded no significant effects--indicating that the slope or sharpness of the category boundary did not vary as a function of Age nor experience with the stimulus sizes. In sum, performance in this task suggests that children do split a continuum of sizes into two categories with a relatively sharp boundary--at least in a task that strongly suggests such labeling.

The Comparison Task. In order to compare labeling of pairs of objects that fell within a category to labeling of pairs that fell between the categories, we scored a response as correct if members of the pair were labeled big-little, that is, in terms of directions of difference relative to each other. Then, for each child, we calculated the percentage of such correct responses when the objects fell within the category little, between the categories, and within the category big. In this analysis, we examined performance as a function of Age, Region (Within Little, Between Categories, or Within Big) and Task Order (Comparison Task first or Comparison Task second). We combined performance on small and large contrasts because some subjects imposed a boundary such that none of the large contrasts fell within the category big, or for other subjects, within the category little. (However, across subjects, within big and within little included equal numbers of large contrasts.)

The analysis yielded a significant effect of Region, F(2,38) = 6.38, p < .003. Children responded more accurately if the contrast fell within little (78% correct), or between categories (82%), than if the contrast fell within big (58%). In other words, if the child labeled two objects as little in the Category Task, she or he was more likely to label those same two objects as big-little in the Comparison Task than if the child had labeled both objects as big in the Category Task. The results from this analysis indicated that children are reluctant to extend little to objects in the category big, but can extend big to objects in the category little. Notice, then, that we found no general within-category deficit. Indeed, children mostly labelled objects relative to the currently available comparison object (i.e., the other object in the pair).

The effects of magnitude of difference and position in a series were examined independently of each other by comparing correct relative labeling of each size when it appeared in the context of an object that differed by a small amount and when it appeared in the context of an object that differed by a large amount. For each absolute size, the number of correct responses was determined such that if a child labeled, for example, the 3- and the 5-inch circles as little-little, the label for the 3-inch object was scored as correct and the label for the 5-inch object was scored as incorrect. Accordingly, for each child, we obtained the number of


times 1-, 3-, 5-, and 7-inch objects were correctly called little relative to the immediate object of comparison when the object pairs differed by 2 versus 4 inches. Similarly, we obtained the number of times 5-, 7-, 9-, and I l-inch objects were correctly labeled big when the other object in the pair differed by small and large amounts. Table 3 shows these data. We analyzed correct use of each term with an ANOVA with Position (1 inch, 3 inch, 5 inch, and 7 inch for little; 5 inch, 7 inch, 9 inch, and 11 inch for big), Magnitude (2- or 4-inches) and Term (big or little) as factors. We observed a main effect of Position, F(3,69) = 3.27, p < .025; however, Position interacted with Term, F(3,69) -- 1.67, p < .001. Whereas children's use of little was affected by the object's position in the series, their use of big was not (Tukey's B, a = .05). Again, children appear to use big to refer to the larger of two perceptually present objects across the entire series of sizes before they use little to refer to the smaller of two objects across the entire series. There were no significant effects of Magnitude. The largest effect of magnitude was observed in the labeling of the 7-inch object as little; this object was slightly more likely to be called little when it appeared in the context of an I l-inch object than when it appeared in the context of a 9-inch object (65% vs. 71%). Thus, even for the most difficult case of applying little to categorically big objects, the absolute size of the proximate contrast does not matter much. Taken together, the significant effects of Position and the absence of a Magnitude effect suggest that children's errors with little stem from a use of the terms in which categorical position in the stimulus array, not magnitude of difference, appears to be the major factor determining performance.

However, performance on all trials was significantly above chance. The dominant use of the terms was relative to the proximate direction of difference. The total pattern of results suggests that even 2-year-olds' knowledge of big and little is sophisticated: When given single objects along a stimulus continuum, they impose a relatively sharp boundary (standard) which divides the continuum into two categories; when given pairs of objects, they often abandon the categorical standard and compare the objects to each other. Even for very young children, big and little appear to refer to directions of difference between objects posi-

Table 3. Percent Correct Contextual Labeling of Single Objects at Various Positions in the Series (Chance = 50%) in Experiment 3

Label Required

I 88 97 2 91 92 3 95 79 4 99 68

Position Big Little

Big and Little 105

tioned anywhere along the series. However, in this experiment (and as in Experi- ment 1) children appear better able to apply the word big across the continuum than the word little. We pursue this assymmetry in children's use of the terms in the final experiment.

EXPERIMENT 4

Do children ever fail to extend big to small sizes within a series? Children may have difficulty extending both polar terms to the opposing regions of the series but the stimulus and task situations of the first 3 experiments may in some way have mitigated children's difficulties in extending big. Perhaps, for example, the objects in the first 3 experiments were, relative to some subjective standard, big. Alternatively, use of the positive polar term may develop at a more rapid rate than the negative term such that it is used more flexibly. We pursued this asymmetry in the use of big and little by asking children to label objects drawn from series of absolute sizes that was approximately half as large as the series we used in Experiments 1 and 3. Children who are presented with a smaller range of absolute sizes might be less likely to extend big across the continuum and more likely to extend little. On the other hand, a replication of the pattern of results that we obtained in Experiments 1 and 3 would assure us that children's limited uses were determined by the series of sizes perceptually available and not by the absolute sizes that we had used, nor by some internalized standard for big and little for circles and squares that children may have brought to the task. In order to increase the sensitivity of the task, we also made it more difficult by asking children to label series of objects with three terms: big, medium, and little. Our primary interest was in children's use of big to refer to the biggest and little to refer to the littlest. We were not particularly interested in the use of medium per se, but employed this term primarily to provide a third alternative. Use of big (and little) in the comparative sense required in this task should be more difficult than in Experiments i and 3 because use of big (and little) to refer to the biggest object (littlest) in this case requires a simultaneous comparison to two other objects.

Method

Subjects. Ten 2-year-olds (M = 2;8; range 2;6-2;11), ten 3-year-olds (M = 3;7; range 3;0-3;1 i) and ten 4-year-olds (M = 4;6; range 4; 1-4;1 l) participated.

Materials. The test stimuli consisted of a total of 18 green cardboard "gingerbread people," which were constructed out of rectangles of the following sizes (width × height--inches): 1.75 x 2.00, 2.50 x 3.50, 3.50 x 4.00, 4.50 x 5.50, 5.00 × 6.00, and 5.50 x 7.00. These 6 sizes resulted in rectangles that differed in total area by at least 5.25 inches (or 13.34 cm). For notational


simplicity, the sizes will be designated as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, with 1 being the smallest and 6 being the largest. Two triplets of black cardboard semicircles ( "mice" ) were constructed for the practice trials. The mice in one triplet had 12-, 8-, and 4-inch diameters. The mice in the other triplet were of equal sizes, with 8-inch diameters.

Procedure. Each session began with 2 practice trials using the mice triplets. In the 1st practice trial, the child was shown the three mice of different sizes and was told, "This is the big one, this is the medium one, and this is the little one." Then, the child was to label the stimuli as the experimenter pointed to each mouse and said, "This is the _ _ . " Children who did not produce any of the appropriate terms did not participate in the rest of the experiment and were replaced by other subjects. In the 2nd practice trial, children were shown the three mice of equal sizes and the experimenter prompted the child to supply the label by saying, "This is the _ _ , " and pointing to an object. The 2nd practice trial was included so that the child would not view a response of, for example, big-big-big as odd. The test trials followed the procedure of the 2nd practice trial. When not in use, the gingerbread people were kept in envelopes attached to a poster board next to the experimenter such that the series of sizes were perceptually available (but not emphasized) throughout the experiment. Most children were tested in one 30-minute session.

Design. Three types of trials were designed. The first consisted of objects that differed only moderately and fell at the relatively small end of the series; these trials contained Objects 1, 2, and 3. The 2nd trial type also consisted of objects that did not differ extremely; however, these objects fell at the relatively large end of the series; such trials contained Objects 4, 5, and 6. The final type of trial consisted of objects that were extremely different, or that fell across the entire series; these trials consisted of Objects 1, 3, and 5, or Objects 2, 4, and 6. Each trial type was presented 4 times for a total of 12 trials per session.

RESULTS

The labeling of each object in a triplet was scored independently of the labeling of the other two objects. For each relative size, the number of correct responses was determined. If a child, for example, labeled Objects 4, 5, and 6 as big-big- big, the labels for Objects 4 and 5 were scored as incorrect and the label for Object 6 was scored as correct. The proportions correct on each term for each subject were submitted to an ANOVA with 3 factors: Age (2-, 3-, or 4-year- olds), Relative Size (big, medium, or little within the triplet), and Region (large end, small end, or across the series). Several significant effects emerged that were further analyzed by Tukey tests (a = .05). We observed a main effect of Age, with older children performing better than younger children, F(2,27) =

Big and Little 107

3.53. p < .05. Age, however, did not interact with any other factors indicating that the overall performance pattern was the same for all age groups. We also found a significant effect of Region; children performed better if the triplets fell across the continuum than if the triplets fell either at the relatively large or the small end of the continuum F(2,24) = 30.64, p < .001. A 3rd main effect of Relative Size was also observed, F(2,54) = 41.05, p < .001 and was due primarily to children's errors in labeling the medium object. A Significant Re- gion x Relative Size interaction also emerged, F(4,108) = 38.58, p < .001. Table 4 shows the proportion of times a term was correctly used for each relative size within each of the continuum regions. Since Age did not interact with any other factors, the tabled proportions represent averages of the 3 age groups. The Region x Relative Size interaction reflected several facts. First, children were better at applying big to the biggest objects when the triplet fell at the large end of the stimulus continuum; and they were better at applying little to the littlest object in the triplet when the littlest object fell at the negative pole of the continuum. Furthermore, children appear to use big more readily than little to refer to the currently present direction of difference. Specifically, big was applied to objects from the lower end of the stimulus continuum more often than little was applied to objects on the upper end of the stimulus continuum (.78 vs. .51) . In other words, despite the fact that the stimulus continuum consisted of a smaller series of sizes than the series presented in Experiments 1 and 3, big was usually extended across the entire series of sizes when little was not. These results clearly indicate that an object's position in the perceptually available series as well as the immediate comparison object influences children's use of the terms.

Not surprisingly, given the greater cognitive demands of finding an object that is between two others in size (lnhelder & Piaget, 1964). and the relative infrequency of the word medium in language (Kucera & Francis, 1967) and probably even greater infrequency in language directed to children, performance with the term medium was poor even for 4-year-olds (60%). Use of the term was facili- tated when the stimulus triplets fell across the entire series (and objects within the triplet thus differed by a fair amount). In these trials, the objects that were to be

Table 4. Proportion of Times Each Term Was Correctly Applied to Each Relative Size Within the Continuum Regions

Continuum Region

Relative Size Large Small Across

Big .99 .78 .98 Little .51 .98 .95 Medium .34 .40 .49


labeled as medium were Sizes 3 and 4 - - s i z e s that actually fell in the middle of the series. Thus, improved performance on these trials may also reflect interpretations in terms of position within a series.

G E N E R A L D I S C U S S I O N

We began this research by asking whether and how young children's uses of relative terms are fimited. We found some evidence of restricted uses; the direction of difference between proximal objects is not the sole factor controlling children's applications of the terms. However, it does appear to be the dominant factor. In all four experiments, labelings relative to the immediate contrast re- gardless of prior labeling or actual sizes were the most common. For example, in Experiment 1, the tendency to refuse to relabel objects with the introduction of new comparisons only occurred when the size difference between objects was small and when these difficulties with initial labeling were removed in Experi- ment 2, very young children, 2-year-olds, were found to readily relabel on 85% of all trials. Apparently, even children who are just acquiring the terms know that big and little do not refer to static properties of objects. Relabeling, or the shifting from one polar opposite to another with a change in the comparison object, is a clear indication of knowledge that the terms refer to directions of difference between objects, and not to stable properties of individual objects.

Although children do appear to understand the relativistic nature of relative terms, they do sometimes use the terms to refer to a relation other than the direction of difference between a pair of objects. The principal such limitation that we observed was the use of big and little to refer to the categorical position of an object within a stimulus series as a whole. Although children were more likely to use opposing terms when the objects were extremely different, the results of Experiments 3 and 4 strongly indicate that it is the relative size of an object within the series and not the magnitude of difference between the immediately present objects that matters. So, for example, children were equally likely to call a 5-inch object little in the context of a 7-inch object as in the context of a 9-inch object, but they were more likely to call a 3-inch object little (in the context of a 5-inch object) than a 5-inch object (in the context of an 7-inch object). In short, when children do not label a pair of objects in terms of the direction of difference relative to each other, it is because they label the objects according to their position in a series. Notice that this usage is relational; the relation being used by the child, however, is the relation between an object and the series as a whole.

Although we have in the context of our experimental analyses labeled any usage that did not refer to the immediate direction of difference as "e r roneous , " we do not mean to suggest that they truly are errors or that such interpretations are necessarily " impover i shed . " Indeed, the principal restricted usage that we

Big and Little 109

observed, the object-to-series, or "categorical ," interpretations seem quite com- plex. To consistently label a particular-size object as, for example, big, given some presented series of objects presupposes an initial comparison of all the objects in the array and the derivation of a category standard. This initial directional comparison of all of the stimulus sizes and the formation of category standards is not obviously simpler nor more primitive than the set of directional comparisons within pairs of objects that has often been taken as indicating mature treatment of the terms. However, categorical treatments seem to be developmentally primitive in the sense that such codings decline with age and labelings of objects in terms of the proximate direction of difference increase with age.

Perhaps, this trend toward labeling relative to the immediate comparison context reflects growth in understanding of our specific tasks and not growth in the use of relative adjectives. We do not find such an "explanation" satisfying for several reasons. First, although our task is ambiguous as to whether categorical or "relat ive" labelings are required, the tasks are more biased toward labeling relative to the immediate context than not: Two objects are put forth, and two distinct labels are to be applied. The analysis of the zero difference trials in Experiment 1 suggest that 3- and 4-year-olds at any rate induced a forced choice task from this situation. Second, recasting our results in terms of task understanding does not provide an alternative explanation but instead may re- quire our original characterization. Why are older children more likely than younger children to infer a "relative-to-immediate context" coding from our task? Why do young children often interpret the task as demanding categorical- object-to-series interpretations? We suggest that it may be because although categorical and relative (in terms of the immediate context) interpretations are part of mature usage, the categorical one may, for some reason, be more accessible to young children.

There is other evidence consistent with the notion that a categorical treatment of modifiers is developmentally simple. Park, Tsukagoshi, and Landau (1985) report that both children learning English and children learning Japanese organize the dimension of color into two (perhaps polarized) categories of warm- light and cool-dark. If we combine our findings with those of Park et al. we seem to have a case in which children who are learning property terms initially set up two categories and sometimes tend to ignore the differences (linguistically) between the members of each of those categories. With development, their uses of terms become more refined, in that they learn how the terms in that domain are used within each of those categories. Notice that, given this initial tendency, the learning of some dimensional adjectives will be "easier ," since this strategy is a correct one for terms that refer to quantifiable dimensions such as size, and an incorrect strategy for terms that refer to qualitative dimensions such as color.

One possibility is that categorical uses are simpler than labeling according to


the current context because directions of difference need be considered only in the initial derivation of the category standards. After that, particular sizes need only be named, and directions of differences need not be considered again. If determining directions of difference is for some reason difficult for young children, determining directions of difference (from a category boundary) once for all objects would seem a cognitively efficient strategy. Another possibility is that categorical uses are not simpler, but that they are highly accessible because they are frequently used in language to children. Relative terms are regularly used categorically by adults when they refer to such things as "the small spoon" or "the big dog" and such uses may be particularly prevalent in adult speech to children. Carey (1978) reports that very young children are aware of the category boundaries for sizes in such basic categories as shoes. Young children, then, may sometimes interpret the terms categorically not because of any lack of understanding but because such interpretations are reasonable, correct, and highly relevant for their usual purposes (see Smith, Cooney, & McCord, 1986).

Our finding of an asymmetry in categorical errors with big and little also supports the notion that categorical or object-to-series interpretations are some- how simpler than repeatedly determining directions of difference between pairs of objects. We found that little was not used to refer to directions of difference across the entire dimensional continuum. Earlier comprehension of positive-pole over negative-pole terms has been repeatedly (though not universally) observed, and in this context it is not surprising to find more advanced use of big than little. However, in this case, priority of big over little is not all-or-none. Both terms are apparently understood as applying to directions of difference; however, big is flexibly applied across the entire continuum before little. In other words, big appears to be used to refer to a direction of difference independent of positional information before little. The ultimate explanation of the asymmetry in our results is unclear given the nonuniversality of the asymmetries in the literature and the lack of a currently accepted theory on this point.

To return to our original question: Do children initially interpret relative terms as nominals? Our answer is a qualified no. We observed no pervasive tendency to refuse to label single objects with both polar adjectives, nor was use of the terms determined by the absolute magnitude of difference between objects. Two uses of big and little dominated our results: The use of the terms to refer to currently present directions of difference, and use of the terms to refer to an item's position within a series; the latter use falls into the set previously called nominal. However, these two uses are both relativistic and prevalent in mature speech. Our total pattern of results suggests that young children, like adults, use the terms to convey both categorical (object-to-series) and currently present directional information, but use of the terms to refer to the contextually current directional difference increases with age. In this sense, then, children seem not to so much err by misinterpreting relative terms, but rather seem to be successfully working out two of the senses in which the adjectives are used.

Big and Little 111

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and �nominal� and relative uses

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