Naming actions and objects in Italian preschool children

Developmental studies show that in young children’s productions, nouns are acquired earlier and more frequently produced compared to verbs (Bates et al., 1994; Gentner, 1991, 1992). Masterson, Druks & Gallienne (2008) explored the noun advantage with three- and five-year old children in an action-object naming paradigm. They found that objects were named more accurately than actions in both groups of children. Objects were also named faster than actions in five-year old children. The present study further investigated the noun-verb difference in Italian three- and five- year old children. The test battery by Druks and Masterson (2001) was adapted to the Italian sample by selecting 60 objects and 60 actions. Thirty-two three-year old and 31 five-year old children were required to name the 120 stimuli. The results showed a noun advantage in both accuracy and latencies in both groups of children. The variables that best explained the noun-verb difference were age of acquisition, imageability for both nouns and verbs, and familiarity only for verbs. A qualitative analysis of errors showed a greater tendency to make circumlocutions, and to shift the grammatical class for verbs than for nouns, Results are discussed in light of the conceptual and linguistic differences between the two word classes