How Children Learn the Meanings of Words: 1st (First) Edition

by Paul Bloom

How do children learn that the word "dog" refers not to all four-legged animals, and not just to Ralph, but to all members of a particular species? How do they learn the meanings of verbs like "think," adjectives like "good," and words for abstract entities such as "mortgage" and "story"? The acquisition of word meaning is one of the fundamental issues in the study of mind.

According to Paul Bloom, children learn words through sophisticated cognitive abilities that exist for other purposes. These include the ability to infer others' intentions, the ability to acquire concepts, an appreciation of syntactic structure, and certain general learning and memory abilities. Although other researchers have associated word learning with some of these capacities, Bloom is the first to show how a complete explanation requires all of them. The acquisition of even simple nouns requires rich conceptual, social, and linguistic capacities interacting in complex ways.

This book requires no background in psychology or linguistics and is written in a clear, engaging style. Topics include the effects of language on spatial reasoning, the origin of essentialist beliefs, and the young child's understanding of representational art. The book should appeal to general readers interested in language and cognition as well as to researchers in the field.

Genres: Linguistics, Nonfiction, Language, Psychology, Parenting, Brain, Science

Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Paul Bloom is the Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science at Yale University. His research explores how children and adults understand the physical and social world, with special focus on morality, religion, fiction, and art. He has published more than a hundred scientific articles in journals such as Science and Nature, and his popular writing has appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, Slate, Natural History, and many other publications. He has won numerous awards for his research and teaching. His newest book--Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil--is coming out in November. Paul Bloom lives in New Haven with his wife and two sons.

Reviews

[Jon Gauthier · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very useful review of our understanding of child language acquisition circa 2000, still relevant today. (That it's still relevant today says as much about Bloom's presentation and writing style as it does about how enormously difficult it is to make progress in this field.)
The contents of the book are about what you'd expect from an undergraduate introduction to language acquisition.

For non-specialists, it's worth knowing that Bloom stakes out an unconventional view — or at least a non-consensus view — in this book, attributing many different observed phenomena in language acquisition to a single underlying faculty of domain-general social reasoning. This view has gained strength in the 18 years since this book's publication, but can not yet be called a consensus.

In some chapters, the book goes into a perfect amount of detail — presenting a coherent narrative punctuated by bits of interesting and convincing evidence. Other chapters are practically evidence-free, leaning more toward philosophy than science. We can't exactly fault Bloom for this fact: we just don't have a clear understanding as a research field, for example, on how language and conceptual knowledge relate to one another in the first years of a child's life. I only wish Bloom would have done a bit more epistemic signaling here — explicitly marking those places where the text contains far more opinion than fact.

See my public book notes here: http://www.foldl.me/notes/books/how-c...

[Nazbanou · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book. It doesn't matter whether you agree with Bloom's position on how children learn words or not, and it doesn't even matter if he has left out some of the references. The book is a very nice summary of decades of efforts in the developmental area concerning word learning. It's written very clearly and logically, as opposed to listing tons of studies without a coherent story of how they relate to one another. I like the organization of the chapters, and it does an excellent job of conveying the important details, without putting you to sleep.

[Ann Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Somewhat dated in terms of it sources--as much work continues to be done in areas of research re: autism, and neurological development studies--this is nonetheless an informative book that makes a plausible claim about how we learn, not just to read, but to make meanings of what we read.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for a review paper for my Linguistics class, but I'd say readable enough for even a non-specialist. Bloom provides more detail than I ever had considered on child acquisition of words, with particular detail to how the psychological "theory of mind" could help explain child lexical acquisition without resorting to overly restrictive models of innate cognition. A lot of the data he references suffer from being only from English, but he acknowledges that's the state of things.

[Christy · Rating 5 out of 5]

As an ECE specialist, I enjoyed furthering my understanding of the variety of ways to introduce language and literacy to young children. Bloom did not say other methods were detrimental, only that they may not be as productive. It's nice to see a change from the typical Erikson-Piaget-Skinner theories early educators typical dabble in.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love this book. Has a great chapter on theory of mind that includes the deficit in children on the autism spectrum. All around great read for those interested in language development.

[Ilib4kids]

When I read "Against Empathy", I found author write this one too. Kind of interesting for education.