Prior research reports that children up to 3-years-oId map novel adjectives to object properties only in very limited situations (Gelman & Marlcman, 1985; Taylor & Gelman, 1988; Hall, Waxman, & Hurwitz, 1993; Klibanoff & Waxman, 1997; Waxman & Markow, 1997). Yet we know by 24-months children use adjectives. In two experiments we provide 36-month-olds (Experiment 1) and 24-month-olds (Experiment 2) with rich cross-situational and syntactic information. We show that 24- & 36-month-olds learn adjective-to-property mappings when given multiple examples of the mapping, and when object names are used. We claim that previous experiments failed to find robust adjective acquisition because at least one of these sources of information (multiple exemplars) was excluded. We also suggest that children's initial learning about the meanings of adjectives is affected by syntactic properties of the noun phrase in which they appear.

In three experiments, adults attempted to learn words with subordinate-level meanings (dalmatian) by sampling thereferent world cross-situationally. Xu & Tenenbaum, 2007 predicted that encountering three uses of a word, each referringto a dalmatian would evoke “suspicious coincidence” inferencing, leading to the subordinate meaning (dalmatian). Exp. 1found little evidence for this; cross-situational exposure led to a basic-level bias. This bias was unchanged even when thesample was increased to five subordinate exemplars (Exp. 2). Exp. 3 encouraged semantic contrast by simultaneously teachingeach subject a word for the subordinate-level and the basic-level category within the same semantic domain (dap=dalmatian;blit=dog). Participants now showed non-basic level learning, but more in line with mutual exclusivity: they may think “dap”means dalmatian but “blit” means all-dogs-except-dalmatians. We conclude that the basic-level interpretation is powerful andcannot be removed by the mere observation of exemplar items over multiple word instances.

Symmetry is ubiquitous in nature, in logic and mathematics, and in perception, language, and thought. Although humans are exquisitely sensitive to visual symmetry (e.g., of a butterfly), linguistic symmetry goes far beyond visuospatial properties: Many words refer to abstract, logically symmetrical concepts (e.g., equal, marry). This raises a question: Do representations of symmetry correspond across language and vision, and if so, how? To address this question, we used a cross-modal matching paradigm. On each trial, adult participants observed a visual stimulus (either symmetrical or non-symmetrical) and had to choose between a symmetrical and non-symmetrical English predicate unrelated to the stimulus (e.g., "negotiate" vs. "propose"). In a first study with visual events (symmetrical collision or asymmetrical launch), participants reliably chose the predicate matching the event's symmetry. A second study showed that this "matching" generalized to static objects, and was weakened when the stimuli's binary-relational nature was made less apparent (i.e., one object with a symmetrical contour, rather than two symmetrically configured objects). Taken together, our findings support the existence of an abstract relational concept of symmetry which humans access via both perceptual and linguistic means. More broadly, this work sheds light on the rich, structured nature of the language-cognition interface, and points towards a possible avenue for acquisition of word-to-world mappings for the seemingly inaccessible logical symmetry of linguistic terms.