If you've ever talked to a young child, chances are you've been encountered a "what's that?" question. The most natural response, from an adult perspective, may be to give the name of the object in question. For example, "what's that?" might result in the response "that's a pencil." One could argue that this simply reflects the question-answer ritual necessary for children to acquire their lexical vocabulary. However, is this what children are after? Have we satisfied their curiosity by giving this name-based information?
A few years ago, Nelson et al. (2004) examined this issue by showing children a number of unfamiliar objects and carefully considering the questions children asked about the objects. For example, children may ask a name-based question (e.g., what's this called? what's its name?), a function-based question (e.g., how does this work? what's it for?), or an ambiguous question (e.g., what's this? what is that?). As Figure 1 shows, across all age ranges (2, 3, and 4 years old), the most frequent question type was ambiguous, followed by function questions. Very few name-based questions were asked.
In addition to keeping track of the kinds of questions children asked, however, the researchers also varied the responses they gave children to these questions. The researchers reasoned that if children were satisfied with the information they were given, they wouldn't ask any follow-up questions. On the other hand, if the answer didn't satisfy the children, they would ask more questions. To that end, when asked an ambiguous question, the researcher would respond with either function information or name information. They recorded the number of follow-up questions the children asked after receiving one of these two answers. As Figure 2 shows, children asked significantly more follow-up questions when they initially received name-based answers. When the researcher gave them function-based answers to their initial question, children seemed to be satisfied with this response.
So...what do we take from these findings? One interesting implication of the results is that children may initially be developing concepts for novel objects that are based on function, rather than name, information. Other evidence for this possibility may be seen in the overgeneralization errors children make when they utilize the name of an object they know for a new object that seems to have similar function (e.g., using ball for all toys).
The study has some methodological challenges regarding the kinds of objects that were used and the procedure that was utilized to have children "model" the process of asking questions. However, it seems important to pursue the role of function during the initial stages of language acquisition.
Read more for a reference list of related studies...
Reading List
Casler, K., & Kelemen, D. (2005). Young children's rapid learning about artifacts. Developmental Science, 8, 472-480.
Greif, M. L., Nelson, D. G. K., Keil, F. C., & Gutierrez, F. (2006). What do children want to know about animals and artifacts? Domain-specific requests for information. Psychological Science, 17, 455-459.
Nelson, D. G. K., Egan, L. C., & Holt, M. B. (2004). When children ask, "What is it?" what do they want to know about artifacts? Psychological Science, 15, 384-389.
Nelson, D. G. K., & O'Neil, K. (2005). How do parents respond to children's questions about the identity of artifacts? Developmental Science, 8, 519-524.