摘要：Two experiments examined the emergent mappingphenomenon in Portuguese-speaking children aged 3-13. Thisphenomenon is relevant to developmental psychologists' interestin "fast mapping" of new word-referent relations and also tobehavior analysts' interest in behavior that emerges withoutexplicit conditioning. We studied 52 children, using the "blankcomparison" matching-to-sample technique described byWilkinson and Mclivane (1997). The technique allows directmeasurement of the stimulus control bases of emergent mapping,for example, to determine whether new words and their referentsare related directly or via rejection (i.e., exclusion) of previouslydefined referents. Children demonstrated both types of controllingrelations. These studies systematically replicate prior emergentmapping research in a large cohort of non-English-speakingchildren. Also found were apparent developmental differencesbetween older and younger children. Although all children tendedto relate novel stimuli, the tendency appeared to decline aschildren aged. This study confirms the utility of the blankcomparison technique in emergent mapping research and alsoprovides the first data set from school-aged children.
