Cognición en desarrollo: Aprendiendo palabras por medio de imágenes

(analytical): This study investigates children's and adults' learning of words in a picture learning context. Three quasi-experimental studies are presented. Studies 1 and 2 compare the performance of three-year-old children with that of adults. First, we teach teaches a new noun applied to an unknown object (pompe). Then, we teach the same word, but instead using it as an adjective that refers to a non-conventional property. Study 3 contrasted adults' learning of two adjectives with or without the spanish suffix ado (pompe-pompeado). Taken together these results show that children use contextual information to learn words, while adults place more relevance on linguistic information. As a result, the absence of a suffix made learning the adjective more difficult. We conclude that, under some conditions, children are more efficient than adults. These findings show the importance of ensuring that adults' inclusion is part of development studies.