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Whatever happened to meaning?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 1998

Jean M. Mandler
Affiliation:
Department of Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0515 jmandler@ucsd.edu

Abstract

Even in infancy, concept formation has to do with creating meaning, not with tracking substances. Preverbal infants can identify a substance such as a dog, but their first concept of this substance is not dog but animal. It is difficult to account for such global concepts by the perceptual processes involved in object identification, yet these concepts are the foundation on which later concepts are built.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
© 1998 Cambridge University Press

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