Normas categoriales semánticas para niños argentinos de escuela primaria

Abstract

Las normas categoriales semánticas permiten estudiar la organización del conocimiento conceptual a partir de la identificación de los ejemplares que los hablantes de una lengua incluyen en diferentes categorías semánticas. Hasta el momento, hay normas categoriales disponibles para diferentes lenguas. Para el español de Argentina, solo se han presentado para 20 categorías semánticas de adultos. Los objetivos de este trabajo son presentar los primeros datos de las normas categoriales para niños argentinos de escuela primaria y estudiar el impacto de la edad y el sexo en el desempeño. Para ello, se administró una tarea de fluencia semántica a tres grupos de niños de escolaridad primaria: 43 de 6-7 años; 37 de 8-9 y 56 de 10-12 años. Los primeros dos grupos respondieron a 17 categorías y los del último grupo, a 21 categorías. Se calculó la cantidad de ejemplares por categoría, el promedio de respuestas para cada una, los ejemplares más evocados, la frecuencia total de los ítems recuperados en posición inicial y el rango de aparición de cada uno. Los datos muestran que la cantidad de ejemplares recuperados se incrementa con la edad. Además de considerar las diferencias previamente identificadas con categorías biológicas y culturales, se analizó, la incidencia de la variable sexo. Los resultados no dan cuenta de diferencias de esa variable en la cantidad de ejemplares producidos. Este trabajo constituye un primer aporte a la obtención de normas categoriales semánticas para niños de escolaridad primaria, ya que no había bases infantiles disponibles para Argentina.

Category semantic norms are an instrument that allows the study of conceptual knowledge organization by identifying the exemplars that speakers include in different semantic categories. One of the ways to obtain them is to administer a semantic fluency task that consists of asking the participants to retrieve in a specific amount of time the largest number of exemplars that belong to a category. So far, there are category norms available for different languages. As regards Argentinian Spanish, they have been presented only for 20 semantic categories obtained from adult participants. Although there are normative studies carried out in children from other Spanish speaking countries, evidence has shown that using norms that were obtained from a different culture is problematic. In addition to culture, other sociodemographic variables, like age and sex, can also impact on the norms obtained from a certain population. Previous studies have shown that, as children grow up, they retrieve more words in semantic fluency tasks. Regarding sex, the evidence is controversial, as some studies have identified significant differences between the two sexes, but other investigations did not find an impact of this variable on children’s performance. The first aim of this study is to present the first category norms from Argentinian primary school children. Data will be presented according to age and sex. A second aim is to study the impact of age and sex on children’s performance in the most frequently studied categories: animals, fruits, means of transport and clothing. Three groups of primary school children were assessed with a semantic fluency task: 43 aged 6-7 years old, 37 aged 8-9 years old, and 56 aged 10-12 years old. The first two groups generated exemplars for 17 categories: animals, clothing, furniture, names of boys and girls, colors, drinks, foods, fruits, kitchen utensils, parts of the body, games and toys, green things, means of transport, countries, professions, musical instruments, and sports. The last group generated exemplars for the previous 17 categories along with four other categories: cities, flowers and trees, geographical features, and vegetables. The final database included the number of exemplars per category, the average of responses for each category, and the most evoked exemplars. The total frequency of the retrieved items and the range of appearances of each one were also obtained. To verify the possible impact of age and sex, a 4x3x2 mixed ANOVA was employed, taking as within-subject variable the semantic categories (animals, fruits, clothing and means of transport) and as inter-subject variables age (6-7 years, 8-9 years, and 10-12 years) and sex (boys vs. girls). Category norms were obtained for 17 semantic categories in the first two groups (6-7 and 8-9 years old) and for 21 categories in the third group (10-12 years old). Also, results showed a semantic category effect: animals differed significantly from fruits, clothing, and means of transport. Regarding the impact of sociodemographic variables, a significant age effect was identified: older children retrieved more exemplars for all semantic categories. As for sex, although girls retrieved more words in each category, significant differences between boys and girls were not found. This study constitutes a first contribution to obtaining category norms for primary school children in Argentina since, up to now, there were no databases available. This data could be consulted for: designing didactic materials, as it provides knowledge about which words are more frequent in each age; selecting the appropriate stimuli in psycholinguistic studies, and identifying the organization of semantic information according to age. In the future, it is expected to increase the amount of data from samples from the same age groups and from different sociocultural levels.