Fast mapping is a laboratory task, not a cognitive capacity

ABSTRACT

Fast Mapping is a laboratory task that typically involves an experimenter creating a nonsense name for an object the participant has never seen before. We demonstrate how researchers’ use of the term Fast Mapping has extended beyond its core meaning as a laboratory task to more abstractly denote an internal process, a skill that children employ in their everyday lives, and an inherent capacity. We argue that such over-extension is problematic.

KEYWORDS:

• Fast mapping
• over-extension
• autistic language development
• trademarks

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ We use identity-first language (e.g., autistic children, non-autistic children) rather than person-first language (e.g., children with autism, children without autism) because identity-first language is preferred by autistic people (Kenny et al., 2015), is recommended by APA (Dunn & Andrews, 2015), and is less likely to contribute to stigma (Gernsbacher, 2017).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Vilas Research Trust.