Object labels (e.g., ‘spoon,’ ‘door,’ ‘bike’) often evoke a characteristic SHAPE. That is, something can be called a ‘spoon’ if it shares a characteristic shape with other spoons. Most children spontaneously learn to attend to shape of new object labels by roughly 2 years of age, when they have learned 100-200 words. Learning to attend to the shape of concrete objects seems to help children increase their vocabulary for concrete objects.
Smith et al. (2002) found that children could be encouraged to attend to shape earlier than is typical with a very simple intervention: An experimenter met with 17-month-old children, one at a time, for 20 minute sessions, once a week, for 8 weeks. During each session, the experimenter introduced the child to a few novel objects while making the importance of each object's shape clear. At the end of the 8 weeks, the children's vocabulary of object words increased significantly compared to another group of children who did not take part in the intervention.
Inspired by this finding, we created an online version of the intervention that you are welcome to try out with your child!
We created 8 engaging 5-10 minute videos that highlight the importance of shape for four novel object labels [see 2].
We used the intervention with 3-5 year old autistic children, since autistic individuals are often delayed in language learning and in learning to prioritize the shape of object labels. Results showed the videos were effective in teaching the children to attend to shape when extending new labels for new object labels. The videos can be watched by any child who has not yet learned to prioritize the shape of objects when learning new labels for objects [to see whether your child has met that milestone see 1]
For more detail, please see a brief summary aimed at parents and laypeople here or a scientific description of the project and results (Abstract).
If you are interested in whether this might be useful for your child, please read the following:
You can see how likely your child is to prioritize novel count nouns on the basis of shape here. [the target choice on each trial is the object that shares the same shape as the example; no feedback is provided; if your child chooses the same shaped object on 60% of trials, they already attend to shape, congratulations!]
If your child seems unsure of which object to choose or seems as likely to choose the object with the same color/ texture instead of the one with the shape shape: your child is welcome to watch a 4-8 minute video each week for 8 weeks. All 8 videos are here. Please sit with your child while they watch.
Please, do not force your child to watch: Nearly all verbal children will learn to attend to the shape of novel objects in time, even without the intervention.
If your child watches the videos, you can see for yourself whether they are more likely to prioritize shape when learning new novel object labels here. [again, you will need to keep track of whether your child is choosing the object with the same shape; if they choose the same shaped objects on 3/5 trials, congratulations! they have learned the shape bias.]
* Though our intervention successfully increases attention to the shape of new object labels, we did not see evidence of a real-world vocabulary increase as Smith et al. (2002) had for non-autistic younger children. We do not guarantee that the videos will increase your child's vocabulary.