Development of Linguistic-Mediated Abstraction: Insights from Word Ladders task
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What is the developmental trajectory of language-mediated abstraction skills in school children, and to what extent are language-mediated abstraction skills influenced by semantics? We address these questions asking school-aged children to generate semantic relations of categorical inclusion for words varying in concreteness. Results show that language-mediated abstraction (the ability to generate increasingly more general words starting from a prompt) improves over time, is independent of age, and characterizes both, concrete and abstract concepts. However, abstract concepts used as prompts stimulate children to construct shorter ladders. Additionally, variations in abstraction pathways were observed across development, with extra-semantic relations, beyond taxonomic ones, being most prominent in children of intermediate ages and for abstract and emotional words. These findings support theories distinguishing concreteness and specificity as distinct aspects of the general notion of abstraction, both of which effects category formation and organization.
