Where is under: From memories of instances to abstract featural concepts

Recent research on perceptual development in children and on concept development has resulted in a model of concept development: from iconic or integral percept/concept to featural or analytic. Findings from three experiments on comprehension of spatial prepositions by children are reported in this paper which are consistent with a three stage theory ofverbal concept development. The verbal concept as memories of instances is the earliest stage followed by verbal concept as iconic abstraction and last by the verbal concept as featural abstraction. All but 3 in a sample of 50 preschool children were dependent on extralinguistic reality for abstract-featural, concept use. The remaining 47 children displayed no evidence of having, in the absence of extralinguistic support, the semantic networks implied by their comprehension when it was supported by extralinguistic reality.