Slow mapping in color word acquisition across languages: a Japanese replication of Wagner et al. (2013)

Jiale Yang^1*Karen Dobkins²Katie Wagner²Yuiko Sakuta³So Kanazawa⁴Masami K Yamaguchi⁵

• ¹Chukyo University, Nagoya, Japan
• ²University of California San Diego, La Jolla, United States
• ³Jissen Joshi Daigaku, Hino, Japan
• ⁴Nihon Joshi Daigaku, Bunkyo, Japan
• ⁵Chuo Daigaku, Hachioji, Japan

It is well known that children have a delay between their first production of color words and acquisition of adult-like understanding. In a previous study, Wagner et al. (2013) showed that this delay could be attributed to a process of gradually converging on language-specific color word boundaries. In this study, we tested this account in a second language, Japanese. We presented 12 color samples to children and then conducted production and comprehension tasks to check whether children have adult-like understanding of color words. Our results were consistent with the finding of Wagner et al. (2013): children before acquiring adult-like understanding tend to use color words systematically as overextensions of adult meanings. These results indicate that the delay between production and adult-like understanding of color words reflects a gradual process of learning language-specific color boundaries, potentially shared across languages.