Linguistic cues are privileged over non-linguistic cues in young children's categorization

Language affects the way that humans build categories. When two objects share a verbal label, children and adults are encouraged to group them together. In the present study, we offer a stringent test of the potency of labels by comparing them to non-linguistic cues that have been matched in terms of critical properties. In Experiment 1, Four-year-old children were given two categorization tasks with novel natural kinds and artifacts. In both tasks, we compared the effectiveness of novel Labels like zeg and equally discriminable, intentionally introduced patterned Frames. In Experiment 2, we included pretest trials before each of the tasks to ensure children's awareness of the cues. We observed a pervasive advantage of Labels over Frames in both experiments. Our results offer some of the strongest evidence to date for the conclusion that young children prioritize labels over superficially equipotent non-linguistic cues when drawing category boundaries.