Abstract
How do toddlers learn the names of geometric forms? Previous work suggests that preschoolers have fragmentary knowledge and that defining properties are not understood until well into elementary school. The current study investigated when children first begin to understand shape names and how they apply those labels to unusual instances. We tested 25- and 30-month-old children’s (N = 30 each) understanding of names for canonical shapes (commonly encountered instances, e.g., equilateral triangles), noncanonical shapes (more irregular instances, e.g., scalene triangles), and embedded shapes (shapes within a larger picture, e.g., triangular slices of pizza). At 25 months, children knew very few names, including those for canonical shapes. By 30 months, however, children had acquired more shape names and were beginning to apply them to some of the less typical instances of the shapes. Possible mechanisms driving this initial development of shape knowledge and implications of that development for school readiness are explored.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors would like to thank Nancy Jordan and Marcia Halperin for their consultation on this project and Natalie Brezack, Alicia Chang, Raissa Dempsey, Gabrielle Farmer, Maya Marzouk, Sujeet Ranganathan, and Katherine Ridge for their help on various aspects of the project.
ORCID
Brian N. Verdine
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5350-5323Roberta M. Golinkoff
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3299-9720Nora S. Newcombe
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7044-6046