What are the cognitive consequences of having a name for something? Having a word for a feature makes it easier to communicate about a set of exemplars belonging to the same category (e.g., "the red things"). But might it also make it easier to learn the category itself? Here, we provide evidence that the ease of learning category distinctions based on simple visual features is predicted from the ease of naming those features. Across seven experiments, participants learned categories composed of colors or shapes that were either easy or more difficult to name in English. Holding the category structure constant, when the underlying features of the category were easy to name, participants were faster and more accurate in learning the novel category. These results suggest that compact verbal labels may facilitate hypothesis formation during learning: it is easier to pose the hypothesis "it is about redness" than "it is about that pinkish-purplish color". Our results have consequences for understanding how developmental and cross-linguistic differences in a language's vocabulary affect category learning and conceptual development.

中文翻译：

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通过单词查找类别：更可命名的功能改善了类别学习。

给某物起名字有什么认知后果？用一个词来形容一个功能，就可以更容易地传达一组属于同一类别的示例（例如“红色事物”）。但这是否也可以使学习类别本身变得更容易？在这里，我们提供的证据表明，从命名这些特征的难易程度出发，可以预测基于简单视觉特征的学习类别区别的难易程度。在七个实验中，参与者学习了由颜色或形状组成的类别，这些类别要么容易用英语命名，要么用英语难以命名。保持类别结构不变，当类别的基本特征易于命名时，参与者在学习新颖类别时会更快，更准确。这些结果表明，紧凑的语言标签可能有助于学习过程中的假设形成：将假设“关于红色”比“关于粉红色紫色”的假设容易。我们的结果对理解语言词汇中的发展和跨语言差异如何影响类别学习和概念发展具有影响。