ABSTRACT When hearing an object label, a specific object may come to mind. With the phrase, “There was a balloon in the pack/air” the representation of balloon varies based on the implied shape (deflated vs. inflated). The current study investigated whether the implied shape affects sentence-picture verification for adults and preschool children. Participants heard sentences and compared them to visual stimuli (congruent, incongruent, or filler). Adults were faster when the sentence and implied shape were congruent thereby demonstrating a match effect. Across both ages, responses were more accurate when the sentence and implied shape were congruent. The children’s response accuracy indicates young children activate a specific implied shape of an object and not just a generic or prototypical shape, demonstrating a match effect. The match effect is not specific to skilled readers and could be related to an embodied theory of language comprehension. This research has implications for understanding how people conceptualize words during language comprehension by demonstrating that even children utilize implied shape information in their visual representations.

中文翻译：

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成人和儿童视觉表现中物体的隐含形状

摘要 当听到一个对象标签时，可能会想到一个特定的对象。对于短语“包装/空气中有一个气球”，气球的表示根据隐含的形状（放气与充气）而变化。当前的研究调查了隐含形状是否影响成人和学龄前儿童的句子图片验证。参与者听到句子并将它们与视觉刺激（一致、不一致或填充）进行比较。当句子和隐含的形状一致时，成年人更快，从而表现出匹配效应。在两个年龄段，当句子和暗示的形状一致时，反应更准确。儿童的反应准确性表明幼儿激活了对象的特定隐含形状，而不仅仅是通用或原型形状，展示了匹配效应。匹配效应并非专门针对熟练的读者，可能与语言理解的具体理论有关。这项研究表明，即使是儿童在视觉表征中也会利用隐含的形状信息，这对理解人们在语言理解过程中如何概念化单词具有重要意义。