Acquisition of the novel name-nameless category (N3C) principle by young children who have Down syndrome

Abstract

Acquisition of the novel name-nameless category (N3C) principle by 22 children with Down syndrome between the ages of 2.42 and 3.33 years was examined to investigate the generalizability of a new approach to early lexical development: the developmental lexical principles framework. Results indicated that, as predicted, the N3C principle (operationally defined as the ability to fast map a new word to a [basic level] category), is not available at the start of lexical acquisition. The predicted link between ability to use the N3C principle and ability to perform exhaustive categorization of objects was supported. Children who used the principle had significantly larger productive vocabularies than did those who did not and, according to maternal report, had begun to acquire new words rapidly.