Semantic representation and naming in young children.

Children's semantic representations and semantic naming errors were the focus of this study. In Experiment 1, 25 normally developing children (mean age = 5 years 4 months) named, drew, and defined 20 age-appropriate objects. The results suggested that functional and physical properties are core aspects of object representations in the semantic lexicon and that these representations are often organized and accessed according to a taxonomic hierarchy.